Lost Recipe from Dying Man Made His Daughter a Multimillionaire

Kushikatsu, a Japanese dish of deep-fried skewered meat and vegetables, is common in a town where Hiroe Tanaka grew up. When her father died, he left behind a recipe for the fried meat on a stick that would change her life. The lost recipe from his dying father made Tanaka a multimillionaire.

This story seems to come straight out of a fairy book. As a child, Tanaka loved to eat kushikatsu. Her father spent countless of hours mastering this dish made by battering skewered meat and vegetables while working as a a real estate agent. To her father, cooking is an art. When Tanaka was 21, her dad passed away and left her a handwritten recipe for Kushikatsu.

Now this street food is popular for Japanese laborers. With the guidance on how to cook the seemingly simple dish, Tanaka is now a multimillionaire as a vice president of a company named after her.

“I pay tribute to my father every day,” Tanaka, 46, says in an interview. “It all happened because of the recipe.”