Chef Yukichi Matsubara — The Standard I Was Once Afraid to Approach

I still remember the news in 2006.

I was sixteen years old then, still an apprentice, still trying to understand what kind of baker I wanted to become. Around that time, after Tun Dr Mahathir had stepped down as Prime Minister, it became big news that he was opening The Loaf in Langkawi and had invited Japanese baker Chef Yukichi Matsubara to help set up and lead the bakery as Grand Chef.

To me, Chef Matsubara felt very far away.

Before I had even met him, I had already heard many stories about him.

People said he was strict.
People said his standards were high.
People said his bread was different.

At that time, I did not fully understand how much he had already achieved.

Chef Matsubara had already built a serious path before coming to Malaysia. He began at Kimuraya in Ginza, Tokyo, trained there for eight years, continued his training in Paris, and later returned to Tokyo as Chef Boulanger at Boulangerie Patisserie MADU.

In 2004, he won a gold medal at the California Raisin Culinary Challenge in Las Vegas, rising above 260 participants with his raisin bread creation. He had also published work that explored the connection between bread and desserts — an idea that felt very contemporary at that time, and in many ways, still feels ahead of its time today.

Looking back at an interview from those years, what stayed with me was not only his background, but his way of thinking. He spoke about patience — about taking the time needed to make a quality product, about craftsmanship, passion, joy, and doing the extra work to make customers happy.

At sixteen, I did not know how to explain all of this clearly.

I only knew that his bread felt different.

Later, when The Loaf opened in Pavilion Kuala Lumpur, his bread became something I could see more closely. After he left The Loaf and went on to lead Bonjour Garden, I found myself visiting almost every day.

Not because I needed to buy anything special.

I just wanted to look at the bread.

I wanted to understand the shapes, the colours, the finishing, and the way he combined Japanese precision with European breadmaking. I would stand there quietly, observing the products, trying to understand his thinking from the outside.

In a way, I was reading the bread.

And I read his books the same way too — page by page.

I studied the photographs carefully.
I looked at the structure.
I looked at the scoring.
I looked at the finishing.
I looked at the ingredients he chose.
I looked at the way he paired flavours.

There were ideas in his work that felt very modern to me at that time — bread with dessert, savoury with sweet, Japanese sensitivity with French technique, familiar ingredients arranged in unfamiliar ways.

Some of those ideas are still contemporary today.

Some are still difficult to surpass.

The more I looked, the more I realised that his bread was not only about making something attractive. There was thought behind it. There was theory. There was a sense of balance between technique, flavour, texture, and presentation.

Maybe, deep down, I was also hoping to bump into him one day.

A chance encounter.
A small greeting.
Maybe one sentence.
Maybe one moment.

But even if I saw him, I probably would not have known what to say.

I was still young.
Still unsure.
Still measuring the distance between where I was and where he stood.

Looking back now, I realise that distance was important.

Because strangely, that insecurity became one of the forces that pushed me forward.

Even before I had the chance to meet him properly, Chef Matsubara had already become a kind of mentor in my mind. Not someone who taught me directly at first, but someone whose work reminded me that bread could be more serious, more thoughtful, and more deeply understood than I had imagined.

Over the years, I eventually had the chance to stand beside him and assist him in different bread demonstrations.

Through those moments, I began to understand that what he passed on was never only technique.

Chef Matsubara often said:

“If you want to bake good bread, you must first have the theoretical foundation to prove and support what you are doing.”

That sentence stayed with me.

Because bread is not only about feeling.
It is not only about habit.
It is not only about repeating what someone else has shown you.

Good bread needs understanding.
It needs theory.
It needs observation.
It needs the discipline to ask why something works, and why something fails.

But more than technique, what I remember most from Chef Matsubara is his attitude.

His energy, his seriousness, and his sense of responsibility affected many young bakers around him. A class with him was never only a class about Japanese methods for European-style bread. It was also a lesson about work ethic, professionalism, passion, and how a baker should carry himself in the kitchen.

He reminded us that attitude is still the most important thing.

There is a Japanese phrase:

一期一会
Ichi-go ichi-e
One time, one meeting.

It means that every encounter happens only once. Even if the same people meet again in the same place, that exact moment will never return.

I think about this often.

Sometimes, a very simple sentence from someone can affect our present, or even our future. Sometimes, a person may influence us long before they realise it. Sometimes, we are shaped not only by the people who teach us directly, but also by the people we once looked up to from a distance.

After Bonjour Garden, Chef Matsubara later created B-Lab as his own expression of bakery, bistro, and bar. It felt like another evolution of the same mind — bread not only as product, but as culture, food, hospitality, and experience.

Even his later work with Kinu, his Japanese milk bread, showed the same seriousness: quality ingredients, softness, consistency, packaging, and customer experience all treated as part of the bread itself.

And now, eighteen years after I first heard his name, I am happy to see him begin another new chapter with Galakuta Monkey. In his own humorous way, he calls himself an Izakaya Papasan.

We have spoken a lot over the years, and I can say honestly that Chef Matsubara has influenced many turning points in my life and my baking journey.

From the sixteen-year-old apprentice who was too insecure to approach him, to the baker I am today, his presence has stayed with me.

One day, if I have the chance, I would like to write more about how Chef Matsubara shaped my understanding of bread across all these years.

For now, I only want to say this:

Some teachers guide you with instructions.
Some guide you with their hands.
And some guide you simply by showing you the standard you are not yet ready for — until one day, you begin walking towards it.