Why the chef who has made sushi for 35 years still eats it every day

Michel Piare's morning starts before most people have opened their eyes. Five o'clock, up. Meditation, then yoga. By seven he is in the kitchen at Mishi Sushi in Sandyford, cutting fish.

Not because he has to. Because, as he puts it, he finds it therapeutic.

That detail matters. This is a man who has been preparing the same food, in one form or another, for the better part of four decades. He started as a part-time waiter in a Japanese restaurant in London, watched the kitchen, decided he wanted in, and spent the next two to three years washing rice in cold water before a chef trusted him with anything more. His hands were, in his words, "literally falling off" in winter.

He is still here. Still in the kitchen. Still eating the food.

What 35 years of conviction actually looks like

When the interview turns to what Michel orders on his own menu, there is no hesitation and no performance. Fresh salmon. Fresh tuna. The soft shell crab roll. Sashimi. He eats it because he likes it, because he has always liked it, and because it makes him feel good.

"All these years I've been making sushi, I still eat it," he said. "It's something I'll never, ever get bored of."

That is a remarkable thing to say about a product you have been making since the late 1980s. Most people, in most jobs, are managed by diminishing returns. The chef who has plated the same dish ten thousand times finds it harder each year to see it the way a customer sees it for the first time. Enthusiasm becomes professionalism. Professionalism becomes habit.

Michel does not seem to have arrived at habit. The word he uses for cutting fish at seven in the morning is therapeutic. The reason he still eats sushi every day is not obligation. It is genuine preference.

That kind of conviction is not something you can manufacture. And it tends to produce restaurants that last.

The health argument Michel makes without trying to

There is a second layer to Michel's relationship with his own food, and it goes beyond taste.

"I have to keep fit, especially to work in an arduous environment," he said. "Sushi is great food to eat. Fresh fish, good for you. Loads of nutrients."

He starts each morning with yoga and meditation. He plays golf on Saturdays and Sundays, partly for enjoyment and partly to maintain the mental separation that a kitchen this demanding requires. He is deliberate about his wellbeing in a way that is unusual in an industry famous for burning people out.

And the food he chooses to eat, every day, is his own.

That is not a small detail. It is the most credible health endorsement a restaurant can offer: the person who makes the food, who has made it for 35 years, who understands its nutritional profile at a level nobody else in the room can match, chooses it for himself.

The misconception most operators let go unchallenged

There is a persistent assumption among customers that ordering Asian takeaway is a guilty pleasure. That it is rich, heavy, indulgent food that sits well in the moment and less well afterwards. Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai: the category tends to get bundled together under a vague sense of caloric excess, regardless of whether the assumption has any basis in reality.

For sushi, the assumption is particularly unfounded. Raw fish. Seasoned rice. Seaweed. Pickled vegetables. Wasabi. The caloric density of a well-constructed sushi order is a fraction of a pizza or a burger meal. The protein content is high. The ingredients, handled correctly, are exactly what a nutritionist would put in front of you.

Michel knows this. He lives it. But like a lot of independent operators, how he tells his restaurant's story to customers who have not yet tried Mishi Sushi is a different question from how clearly that story gets heard.

"People don't always associate Asian food with healthy," he acknowledged. And then, with characteristic directness: "But it is."

Health is becoming a deciding factor for more diners in 2026, particularly among younger customers and those ordering regularly rather than occasionally. The operators who are already communicating the nutritional case for their food, rather than assuming customers will work it out for themselves, are ahead of where the market is moving.

Sixteen years at number one is not an accident

Mishi Sushi has held the top sushi ranking in Ireland for 16 consecutive years. Michel's explanation for that is, characteristically, simple.

"Keep it simple and keep the consistency there. Once you've got that, you can move with it."

Consistency is the word that sits underneath almost everything he says. The same fish, sourced fresh, every day. The same rice, washed and seasoned the same way. The same standards in the kitchen at five past seven in the morning that apply at eight forty-five at night. And the same personal relationship with the food that made him want to be in that kitchen in the first place.

Restaurant branding is often talked about in terms of logos, colour palettes, and social media presence. All of those things matter. But the restaurants that hold a number one ranking for sixteen years are doing something that no campaign can replicate: they are delivering a product their chef would choose to eat, every single day, without being asked.

That is the floor. Everything else builds on top of it.

The lesson for operators who know their food is good but never say so

Most independent restaurant owners have a version of Michel's story. They use good ingredients. They have thought carefully about their menu. They believe in what they are making. And they almost never communicate any of it directly to the customer browsing their online ordering options on a Wednesday evening.

The health angle is particularly under-used. Customers ordering sushi from Mishi Sushi are not eating badly. They are eating fresh fish, high-quality protein, and one of the more nutritionally complete takeaway meals available in Dublin. That is a fact. Michel knows it because it is part of how he keeps himself fit enough to do this job.

It is not a marketing claim that requires any embellishment. It is just the truth about the product, stated plainly. The right restaurant marketing tools make it straightforward to put that truth in front of customers at the moment they are deciding where to order.

The restaurants that win long-term tend to be the ones that believe in what they are making and say so. Not loudly, not with slogans. The way Michel says it: matter-of-factly, because to him it is simply obvious, and has been for 35 years.

Michel Piare is owner of Mishi Sushi, Sandyford, Dublin, Ireland's number one sushi restaurant for 16 consecutive years. This piece is based on a conversation recorded for the Flipdish Takeaways podcast. To talk to the Flipdish team about growing your restaurant, get in touch with the Flipdish team.

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