If successful in his quest to open a yakitori restaurant in Honolulu next year, chef Mamoru Tatemori will have come full circle in a journey that began in 2003.

Back then he had been hired by a Japanese company to helm the kitchen at Tokyo Tokyo at The Kahala Hotel (then The Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hotel), after honing his skills in Tokyo, Amsterdam and Chicago.

Working conditions were brutal for the 25-year-old. In Amsterdam he was accustomed to working 22 hours a day, from 6 a.m. to 4 a.m., going home only to shower and nap. In Hawaii he worked about 12 hours a day for a year before he was allowed to take a day off.

Now with a name and reputation that commands respect, Tatemori will be calling the shots once he opens his new restaurant. He’s committed to Hawaii, having already moved his family here from Tokyo, and is scouting locations.

But two other projects are demanding his time before his Honolulu restaurant can materialize. He’s opening sushi and seafood restaurant Ichi-Gyo-Ichi in Pasadena, Calif., in December and a steakhouse in Tokyo in the spring.

Before all that, Tatemori will be reintroducing himself to local diners during the Hawai‘i Food & Wine Festival Spice Market event taking place 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Modern Honolulu. He’ll be serving a steamed Berkshire pork bowl with dashi broth, chive flower butter and sansho pepper, a variation on one of the signature dishes at his acclaimed Yakitori Restaurant Tatemori.

The chef closed his 5-year-old restaurant earlier this year, realizing that reopening in Honolulu and trying to maintain the quality of his food, which would have earned him a Michelin star if he hadn’t declined the offer, would have been overwhelming. Tatemori turned down the accolade because the frenzy surrounding Michelin-star restaurants would have made it difficult for his regulars to secure reservations.

While he’s glad that dining in Honolulu has come a long way in the eight years since he left, Tatemori said there’s still room for a greater understanding of traditional Japanese cuisine. Despite training for 15 years in the art of kaiseki — a centuries-old, multicourse dining style based on seasonal, regional ingredients — it’s one of the reasons he’s gravitated toward more casual dining concepts.

“I think Tokyo Tokyo was too early,” he said. “At that time I made a clear soup. The American people asked me, ‘Is this just warm water?’”

Although the soup was flavored with konbu and bonito, those accustomed to the heavy flavors and condiments of the West could not appreciate its subtlety.

“Even now Japanese food here is 70 percent traditional, 30 percent other style. In Japan we don’t use so many sauces,” he said.

Adding to the cultural disconnect, hotel visitors took one look at Tatemori’s elegant small courses and requested “one big plate.”

“They wanted volume,” he said. “Other people who grew up with wasabi served on the side of their sushi or with inside-out rolls told me, ‘You don’t know sushi, the rice is on the outside of the roll.’ It felt depressing.”

Rather than crying over the difficulties, he said he laughed, chalking it up to cultural differences rather than his capacity in the kitchen. He made adjustments to suit the Western palate, but after eight years of seasonless weather, he wanted to return to Japan to further develop his skills.

He began working more closely with farmers, one of whom he said developed a hormone-, antibiotic- and bacteria-free chicken that could be served raw. It was among the highlights of his menu at Yakitori Restaurant Tatemori. He’s now working with Hokkaido farmers to raise beef for his Tokyo steakhouse, and a farmer here to raise chicken to his specifications for what he envisions will be a members-only yakitori restaurant.

Once his restaurant projects are complete, Tatemori also would like to teach classes here in Japanese cooking, and possibly kaiseki. Even in Japan it’s becoming a dying art as culinary students flock to learn the techniques of French, Italian and Spanish cuisine instead of their native traditions.

That is not only about the novelty of an exotic cuisine, Tatemori said. Recalling the long hours he put in when getting started, he said, “They think all Japanese kitchens are like that.”