Yuki Tanaka

Yuki Tanaka grew up in Osaka, moved to Vancouver in her mid-twenties, and has spent the years since writing about Japanese food in North America with the double perspective that only distance from the original produces. She knows what Japanese cooking is supposed to taste like, and she is clear-eyed about which North American kitchens achieve it and which ones approximate it — a distinction her readers have come to rely on. She covers ramen, sushi, omakase, izakaya, tonkatsu, and the full range of Japanese regional cooking that has found expression in Vancouver, Toronto, and beyond. Her guides to ramen in Vancouver and sushi across the Pacific Northwest are considered benchmarks, and her long-form piece on the difference between omakase in Japan and omakase in North America is one of the most-shared pieces in TastyPals' history. Before TastyPals, she wrote about Japanese food for a Vancouver-based food and culture magazine and was a regular contributor to a Japanese culinary publication's English-language edition. She reads Japanese menus without assistance and occasionally uses that ability to intimidate chefs into their best work.

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