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Ohayo Café: Saying good morning to Montreal with Japanese yoshoku

Rice, sandos, knives, basketball—this is chef Hiroshi Kitano’s journey from Japan to Montreal, and the restaurants he’s created for the city.

Ivy Lerner-Frank

Ivy Lerner-Frank

January 25, 2024- Read time: 6 min
Ohayo Café: Saying good morning to Montreal with Japanese yoshokuOhayo Café is an ode to yoshoku, Japanese dishes based on Western food, which has become a genre emblematic of a certain type of Japanese cuisine. | Photograph: Scott Usheroff / @cravingcurator

Montrealers know Hiroshi Kitano as the purposeful solo chef in the kitchen at Kitano Shokudo, his soulful Japanese bistro in the heart of the Plateau. 

But what they might not know is that twenty years ago, he left his home in Ise City, Mie prefecture on the southern Japanese island of Honshu with a dream to play basketball in America.

Now the co-owner of the light-filled, brand-new Ohayo Café right next door to Kitano Shokudo, Hiroshi’s passage to Montreal—and away from basketball—makes perfect sense. 

“We found the best place for me and my family to live,” he says. “We’re super happy here.”

Photograph: Scott Usheroff / @cravingcurator
“We found the best place for me and my family to live. We’re super happy here.”
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