Just before 6 p.m., Tetsuya excuses himself to attend the nightly staff meeting. He has 54 people working for him, 22 in the kitchen. Together, they discuss who will be coming that night like a family running through a dinner party guest list. “This place is like my home,” he explains later. “I want the people who come here to feel that as well.” Accordingly, tables at Tetsuya’s are only booked once for the night, in the European style, rather than turned over as swiftly as possible in the increasingly annoying U.S. fashion. Tetsuya wants his guests to linger, to enjoy the food and their companions. “Food is the binding agent, but a great meal is more—the company, the service, the feeling that someone wants to give you the best he can.”

Tetsuya used to spend most of the day and night in the kitchen, “head down, chopping every vegetable myself.” He doesn’t do that any more. “About six or seven years ago I started giving the young chefs more responsibility. Everyone in there can cook everything we do now. Technique—anyone can learn it, and then you practice. After that, it all comes down to palate. You either got it, or you don’t.” There are no raised voices in this kitchen. A rebuke from Tetsuya takes the form of a light touch on the small of the back followed by a low-voiced admonition. “There are two things I might say. Either, ‘Do it over again,’ or else, ‘Never let me see you do that again.’ ”

These days, he spends more time visiting suppliers and thinking about produce and ingredients. Every dish he makes is ingredient-driven. A shot glass of an intensely flavored, reimagined gazpacho garnished with spiced tomato sorbet came about after one of Tetsuya’s suppliers started growing vibrantly flavored cherry tomatoes; his signature dish, the confit of Petuna Ocean trout with kombu crust, was developed in conjunction with the fish farmers who supply the trout. Wondering why the always-good fish were sometimes exceptional, Tetsuya worked with the Tasmanian couple who raise them until, together, they had perfected the growing conditions.

“Then you work to lift the taste,” Tetsuya says. “What kind of cooking is best for this? Sear? Cook through? I change the temperature, change the timing. Poach in oil, poach in stock. Try everything, find best. After that, what’s good with it?” Here, he draws on Japanese flavors—the zestiness of yuzu juice, the freshness of shiso leaves—and also the robust Mediterranean tastes he came to love while cooking and eating with other immigrant chefs of Sydney, as well as the produce, from tropical to cool-temperate, that his new country provides in abundance. So, a tian of lightly smoked trout will be infused with black truffle oil; seared swordfish will be served on wakame and sauced with a mix of mirin, soy, garlic, and black olive paste; scampi, marinated in walnut oil and lemon juice, will be set on top of a dice of pawpaw and cucumber and garnished with tonburi—Japan’s “mountain caviar” fern.

Tetsuya also puts a great deal of thought into the progression of dishes: “Each one must lead to the next, building on the taste; so, raw before cooked, steamed before grilled, sea before land.” A sliver of creamy Heidi Gruyère coupled with lentils and dates makes a brilliant transition between savory courses and sweet. Even the parade of desserts is carefully structured. This nod at a cheese course will be followed, in season, by a plain slice of perfect, intensely flavored muskmelon. Then, maybe, a meltingly soft bavarois of sesame swathed in a black sesame seed cream. This painterly combination of light and dark gray has flavors that are nutty, earthy, but still not too sweet. “Salty and sweet tires the palate, fills you up,” he explains.

In the evenings, he’s in the dining room as often as the kitchen, chatting with guests in a way that would have been unthinkable to him early in his career. “I had to grab him by the collar and drag him out front,” says Armando Percuoco, a Neapolitan chef who spent much of his early career charming Sydney diners into pushing beyond the then-accepted limits of Italian cuisine. Recalls Tetsuya: “Armando would say, ‘Explain! Express yourself! Tell them why you did this and not that.’ I didn’t want to do it—my language, my shyness—but Armando made me realize that you have to communicate.”

Tetsuya firmly believes in giving guests what they want. “If someone wants his meat cooked to buggery, I’ll make sure to cook it to buggery. Because when you come to a restaurant it’s a treat, isn’t it? I’m not running some school here where people have to come to learn what they’re supposed to like to eat.” And as it turns out, the greatest insight into Tetsuya’s approach to food comes not from watching him at the market, or at his restaurant, but by joining him at table. After the fish markets, he proposes we join his mentor Armando for lunch at MG Garage, the celebrated restaurant of their friend Yanni Kyritsis.