Hi, I'm Marc Matsumoto, and welcome to my secret stash of recipes!
Here you'll find my collection of original recipes I cook for my family and friends. It's how my other website started in 2007, and while that's moved on to demystifying classic dishes from around the world, this is where you'll find my most creative work. These are the everyday meals I cook for my wife and daughter based on what I have in my Tokyo kitchen that day.
Like my background, it's a hodgepodge of cuisines from around the world, but these are dishes you'll only find here. You'll need to sign up to see the recipes, but the mouthwatering photos and delectable descriptions are all openly accessible, so have a look and be prepared to get hungry!
How I got here
It all started in a small fishing village on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where I was born. We moved to San Francisco when I was a few months old, and my mom taught Japanese cooking classes to make ends meet. By the time I could see over the counter, I was in the kitchen helping her and learning everything I could, from creating umami to the subtle art of kakushiaji (hidden taste).
Video games (and eventually computers) drew my attention as I got older. After part-time gigs working with technology in high school, I worked full-time through college, developing websites. This left little time for the typical college experience, so I socialized through food by cooking for friends and family.
By the time I graduated from UC Davis, the tech industry was booming, and I was drawn to Silicon Valley, where I landed a gig at a little-known startup that rented DVDs through the mail in 2001. The success of Netflix led to a job offer in New York, and the allure of THE city drove me to leave everyone and everything I knew behind to start a new chapter of life.
New York was a wildly arousing and terrifyingly daunting place to dive into for this introvert, but it was there that I returned to socializing through food. Naturally, my dinners led to recipe requests, which I'd respond to with "no recipes" and a shrug. This presented a problem when someone asked for a dish again, so I started documenting my kitchen experiments and the techniques that made them work. I believe anyone can learn to cook without recipes if they understand the "why," not just the "how," and this is my focus at No Recipes.
In 2009 I quit my day job in tech to become a full-time food blogger, and I soon realized I didn't need to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. That's why I followed a growing curiosity about my culinary roots and moved to Japan in 2011.
I hope you enjoy exploring my work on No Recipes and Youtube as much as I enjoyed creating it. If you find value in what I do and have the means, I hope you'll consider signing up for access to the private stash of recipes on this site. There are no ads here, just good, original recipes you won't find anywhere else online.