I really respect the aesthetic that Hisato Hamada of Wagyumafia fame has crafted for himself. He's managed to make himself synonymous with an entire genre of Japanese food in about 3 years, which is no mean feat.

He wasn't the first to come up with the wagyu katsusando, nor does he serve the best around, but mention wagyusando to any globe-trotting foodie and his name will be the first to pop to mind. Almost every single wagyusando overseas copies his plating because it's so distinctive.

I'm not kidding when I say everyone copies it (these are all from different restaurants)

The intense stare, the way he holds it in such a way that it automatically draws your eyes to the food porn. You can almost sell and taste it through the screen. It's such a powerful aesthetic that once you see it, you can't unsee it.

He burst onto the scene a few short years ago, and he's gained a massive following since then. People pay hundreds of dollars to eat his food. David Beckham regularly flies him out to London to cook for him personally.

The fascinating part is that because his ascendance was so recent, you can see how he slowly honed his signature pose by scrolling through his Instagram feed.

Early 2017, he looked like he belonged in any other high-end Japanese steakhouse, double breasted waistcoat and all.

Perhaps inspired by Salt Bae (who went viral early 2017), he posted a flurry of different photos in Sep 2017, clearly playing around with different vibes

November 17: You can clearly see that he's converging on the pose that I posted at the start of the thread

More experimentation in December 17

Mar 18: I believe this when we can say he hit jackpot.

Interestingly, this was around the time that he started collaborating with Takayoshi Watanabe (Chef of Teruzushi, a very well regarded Sushi-ya in Kyushu), who has a rather similar pose. This was the cover for the Oct 17 issue of buono magazine.

You can actually see their aesthetic feeding off each other, converging to an equilibrium. April 2018.

Sidenote: I fucking love how he uses an actual samurai katana to cut his fish while wearing a bright red bowtie it's so over the top and completely ridiculous

Dude is pretty fucking henched casually lifting up a 72lbs grouper

Not much else to say so I'm ending this thread here, but this guy clearly also took @patio11's advice to charge more. He decided to do a pop-up selling ramen for a hundred bucks a bowl and was booked out almost instantly.