From Dotori to The Azuki: Alan Tse's Journey Through Japanese Cuisine

A Childhood in the Kitchen

Every restaurant has an origin story. Some begin with a business plan and a gap in the market. Others start with something harder to pin down: a feeling, a memory, the taste of something that lodges itself in your mind and refuses to leave. For Alan Tse, chef and owner of The Azuki on Chancery Lane, the story starts in the kitchen of a Chinese takeaway in North London.

Alan grew up surrounded by food. His family ran a takeaway, and from a young age he understood the rhythm of a working kitchen: the clatter of woks, the late nights, the steady stream of regulars who became something close to family. It was honest, unpretentious cooking, and it taught him something that no culinary school ever could. Food is about connection. It is about making people feel welcome.

The Trip That Changed Everything

But it was a gap year trip to Tokyo that changed the course of his life. Landing in Japan as a young man with little more than curiosity and a willingness to eat everything put in front of him, Alan discovered a food culture that operated on an entirely different level. The precision of sushi counters, the warmth of neighbourhood izakayas, the intoxicating smoke of yakitori joints tucked beneath railway arches. He watched chefs who had spent decades mastering a single technique, and he understood for the first time what dedication to craft truly looked like.

That trip planted a seed. It would take years to grow, but it never went away.

Building Dotori Into a Cult Favourite

Back in London, Alan took over Dotori, a small Japanese and Korean restaurant on Stroud Green Road in Finsbury Park. The neighbourhood was not yet the destination dining spot it would later become. Dotori was modest, affordable, and utterly unpretentious. Under Alan's care, it became something special.

Over eight years, Dotori built a fiercely loyal following. The kind of restaurant where regulars did not need to look at the menu, where first-timers were guided through their order with genuine warmth, and where the food consistently punched well above the price point. It earned its reputation the hard way: one bowl of ramen, one plate of bibimbap, one evening at a time. Food critics took notice, but more importantly, the neighbourhood took ownership of it. Dotori was their place.

Running Dotori taught Alan everything about the realities of independent restaurants in London. The margins, the staffing challenges, the relentless pace. But it also confirmed what he already knew. He wanted to go deeper into Japanese cuisine. Not Japanese-inspired, not fusion, but something rooted in the real traditions he had fallen in love with in Tokyo.

Back to Tokyo: The Japan Culinary Institute

So he went back. Alan enrolled at the Japan Culinary Institute in Tokyo, studying under masters who had spent their entire careers perfecting Japanese cooking techniques. It was a humbling experience. The Institute's approach is uncompromising: before you can create, you must understand. Before you innovate, you must respect tradition. Alan trained in knife work, in dashi preparation, in the precise art of grilling over binchotan charcoal.

Binchotan became his obsession. This Japanese white charcoal, made from ubame oak in a process that takes weeks, burns at extraordinary temperatures with almost no smoke. It produces a clean, intense heat that transforms simple ingredients. A chicken thigh. A piece of leek. A shishito pepper. Over binchotan, these everyday items become something extraordinary, their surfaces lacquered and caramelised while the interior stays impossibly juicy.

The Azuki Takes Shape

The vision for The Azuki crystallised during those months in Tokyo. Not a formal restaurant, but an izakaya: warm, welcoming, slightly chaotic, open late. The kind of place where a couple could share sake and yakitori on a Tuesday night, where a group of friends could settle in after work and still be ordering at midnight. The kind of place Alan had loved as a customer and now wanted to build as a chef.

Finding the right space in London proved to be the easy part. Rolls Passage, a narrow alleyway off Chancery Lane, had exactly the hidden, discovered quality that defines the best izakayas in Tokyo. You have to know it is there, or stumble upon it by happy accident. That sense of discovery, of stepping out of the London bustle into something intimate and unexpected, was precisely what Alan wanted.

Setbacks and Resilience

What came next tested every ounce of his resilience. Before The Azuki could open, the premises were broken into. Squatters occupied the space. Equipment was stolen. There was damage that took months to repair. For many people, this sequence of setbacks would have been enough to walk away. Alan did not walk away.

He rebuilt. He repaired. He kept going. The same quiet determination that had sustained him through eight years at Dotori, through the rigours of culinary school in Tokyo, through the countless early mornings and late nights that define a life in hospitality, carried him through the worst of it.

The Azuki finally opened its doors in January 2026. The space is intimate, centred around a counter where guests can watch the grill at work. The menu is focused: binchotan yakitori, handmade ramen, small plates built for sharing, and a carefully chosen sake list. Every detail reflects the years of thought and training that went into it.

Every Guest Is Family

But the thing that strikes you most about The Azuki is not the food, exceptional as it is. It is the atmosphere. There is a warmth to the place that you cannot manufacture, a genuine hospitality that comes from Alan's deeply held belief that every guest should feel like family. This is the izakaya spirit: not just a style of restaurant, but a philosophy of welcome.

Alan often says that The Azuki is not the restaurant he planned. It is the restaurant that all of his experiences led to. The takeaway kitchen. The Tokyo backstreets. The eight years at Dotori. The culinary institute. Even the squatters and the setbacks. All of it is in the DNA of the place.

If you find your way down Rolls Passage on a cold London evening, pull open the door, and take a seat at the counter, you will taste that story in every bite. And you will almost certainly stay longer than you intended. That is the izakaya way.