He never trained in Italy and never went to culinary school, but Tsubasa Tamaki has built one of Tokyo’s most talked-about pizzerias through process, repetition and an uncompromising idea of what great pizza should feel like. Sydney gets its first look in May.
Tsubasa Tamaki did not come into pizza through the usual route.
He grew up in Okinawa wanting to be an architect, moved to Tokyo at 20 chasing an acting career, and took kitchen work simply to pay the bills. There was no culinary school, no Italian apprenticeship, no inherited family tradition waiting for him on the other side.
What followed was built another way.
Tsubasa trained in Tokyo, opened Pizza Strada in 2011, then launched Pizza Studio Tamaki in Roppongi in 2017.
Since then, PST has become one of the most talked-about pizza names in Tokyo, earning Michelin Guide recognition, international attention and a level of demand most chefs would recognise immediately. The queues, the bookings and the profile matter, but they are not the real story.
The real story is what he does with the dough.
On 15 May, Pizza Studio Tamaki opens its first Australian venue at 259 George Street in Sydney. For local chefs, the interest is not just that a big international pizza name is arriving. It is that the opening brings with it a style of pizza built around process control, technical discipline and a very specific idea of texture.
A self-taught path with serious intent
What makes Tsubasa interesting is not just that he is self-taught. It is what he did with that freedom.
Without a fixed tradition telling him exactly how things had to be done, he built his own method through repetition and close attention to result. That approach has shaped PST from the start.
After training in Tokyo, Tsubasa opened Pizza Strada before going on to launch Pizza Studio Tamaki in Roppongi. The restaurant quickly built a following, not because it looked the part or traded on a familiar backstory, but because the pizza gave people a reason to come back.
For chefs, that matters. Plenty of venues can generate hype. Fewer build lasting demand around technical consistency.
Tsubasa has since been recognised by the Michelin Guide, ranked among the world’s best pizza chefs, and built a reputation that has travelled well beyond Japan. But even with that attention, PST still reads first and foremost as a process-driven operation.
The dough is the point
The most important thing to understand about Pizza Studio Tsubasa is that the dough is not just a base for toppings. It is the centre of the experience.
Tsubasa’s style sits within a Tokyo interpretation of Neapolitan pizza, but it has its own identity. The dough is built around a Japanese-milled flour blend and a fermentation-led process designed to create a crust that is light, elastic and highly digestible. The centre stays delicate. The rim carries the lift, colour and character.
That matters because it changes how the pizza eats.
This is not a style built around heaviness or abundance. It is built around balance, restraint and the kind of texture that makes a second pizza feel possible rather than excessive. For professional cooks, that kind of result is never accidental. It comes from controlling time, temperature, hydration and fermentation with real precision.
One of the details most associated with Tsubasa is his use of salt in the oven itself, rather than relying only on seasoning within the dough. It is a small move, but it says a lot about how he thinks. The process is not there to perform tradition. It is there to create a very specific result.
That is the part chefs tend to respect most. Not the story around the food, but the discipline behind it.
Why Sydney chefs will pay attention
Sydney already has strong pizza. That is not the question.
What PST brings is a style and level of process that still feels relatively uncommon here, particularly at a time when chefs are paying closer attention to how technique travels across markets and how certain formats evolve outside their place of origin.
Pizza Studio Tsubasa is not trying to be strictly traditional Neapolitan pizza in the old sense, and that is part of what makes it relevant. It is a Japanese interpretation built through method, adaptation and a willingness to challenge assumptions about how pizza should be made.
For chefs, that opens up a more interesting conversation.
It is easy to talk about authenticity. It is harder to build something distinctive enough that people want to copy it, study it or queue for it. Tsubasa has done that by focusing obsessively on process and by treating pizza not as a familiar comfort food, but as something that can still be refined.
A serious Sydney opening
The Sydney venue is being treated as a major opening, not a quiet extension of the brand.
The 78-seat restaurant at 259 George Street will be PST’s largest dining room to date, and Tsubasa is expected to be directly involved in the launch. That alone gives the opening extra weight. It suggests this is not simply a licensed expansion trading on the Tokyo name, but a market the business wants to get right.
That is worth watching.
Australia has a strong pizza culture, but direct exposure to Tokyo’s top end of the category is still limited. Sydney diners will no doubt respond to the name, the queue and the hype. Chefs will be watching something else.
They will be watching the dough, the structure, the bake, the restraint and the consistency.
