Sudachi's Yuto Omura: From a Taste of Home in the UK to a 704-Page Cookbook
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There's a cooking channel named after a small Japanese citrus fruit, and if you cook Japanese food at home, you may already know it: Sudachi. It's run by Yuto Omura, who was born and raised in Japan. He explains how to make dishes like miso soup, curry and tempura, in English, for viewers around the world.
Because the titles and descriptions are basically in English, people living in Japan may rarely come across the channel. It's made for viewers like you. As of October 31, 2026, the channel had 94,900 subscribers, and Omura has even published a 704-page cookbook with an American publisher.
Drawing on his website, his video descriptions and the publisher's page, we trace his path from life in the UK to that book.
Who Is Yuto Omura?
The channel description on YouTube puts it this way:
“My name is Yuto Omura, and I've got a big love and passion for cooking.”
After that introduction, he states plainly what he wants his videos to be: “No fluff, straight to the point.” Just the steps that matter, in other words. The description signs off with “Cooking Japanese food doesn't have to be hard!”
His video descriptions say he was born and raised in Japan and lived in the UK for several years. The description of a September 2026 video says Sudachi is based in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. The channel was created on March 18, 2020, and its country setting is Japan. As of October 31, 2026, it had about 13.77 million total views across 569 public videos.
What About Yuto Omura's Real Name and Age?
He goes by Yuto Omura, and his book is published under the same name. We found nowhere, though, where he says whether that is his real name. How his name is written in Japanese doesn't appear anywhere we could read, either: not on the pages of his official site we were able to open, and not in any of the 569 video descriptions, as of October 31, 2026. The same goes for his age.
We couldn't open the detailed biography page on his site, so this may be a bit of a letdown.
Why Name It After Sudachi, a Citrus Rarely Used at Home?
There's a reason behind the channel's name. On his site's About Us page, he says he gets “this question a lot, especially from fellow Japanese people” before explaining it. He writes that sudachi is a small green citrus native to Japan, a relative of yuzu, and that it is rarely actually used in Japanese home cooking. So it's something of a luxury, more of a treat.
That, he says, is why he chose the name: he wanted his recipes to be a little more than just a Japanese home cooking blog. His answer comes down to one line: “I want to create a delicacy for you to enjoy!”
Recreating the Taste of Home in the UK
It all seems to have started with his life in the UK. According to the publisher's page, after several years in the UK he began trying to recreate the flavors of home with local ingredients. It was challenging at first, the publisher says, but realizing that Japanese food can be made anywhere in the world is what led him to start sharing it through his website.
His own About Us page tells a similar story: “After living in England for a long time, I came back to Japan.” That experience, he writes, made him want to share Japanese food anyone can make with the ingredients they have on hand.
What's interesting is that he volunteers this himself: “I'm not a trained chef.” He has worked at a Spanish restaurant, a Thai restaurant and behind the bar at several bars and pubs, he explains, but he never trained as a chef. His aim is specific, too. He writes that he wants to find the line between dishes that are too common and dishes that are too difficult to make at home.
Sources differ on when it all began. The video descriptions call Sudachi a Japanese cooking media brand established in 2019, while his book page says he started the website in 2020. We couldn't confirm whether the two refer to the same thing.
The Oldest Public Video: Saizeriya-Style Doria
The oldest public video on the channel is a Saizeriya-style doria from April 23, 2020. Its title “Saizeriya-style Meat Doria Recipe (サイゼリヤ風ドリア)” includes Japanese alongside the English. Copycat versions of dishes from Japanese chains kept coming after that, with the chains' names right in the titles: Sukiya's gyudon (beef bowl), Ootoya's black vinegar chicken and Lawson's cheesecake.
Counting public videos by year in Japan time, as of October 31, 2026, there were 117 in 2021, and 62 of them were videos of three minutes or less. Then the numbers fall: 27 in 2022 and 19 in 2023. In the 15 months from June 2022 to August 2023, only five came out.
After that, they jump to 135 in 2024 and 184 in 2025. We found nowhere that he explains the rise and fall. With 51 from January through September 2026, the pace looks calmer again.
His Most-Watched Video: Miso Soup
The most-watched video on the channel is the miso soup video from December 17, 2021, with about 428,000 views as of October 31, 2026.
Judging by the ingredients in the description, the recipe starts by making dashi from 10 g of kombu (dried kelp) and 15 g of bonito flakes (katsuobushi). It's a video that doesn't cut corners.
In second place is the tempura batter video from October 28, 2024, with about 385,000 views on the same date. What catches the eye is the 100 ml of carbonated water and three ice cubes.
As of October 31, 2026, 33 videos had passed 100,000 views. Sixteen of them are videos of three minutes or less, and across the whole channel, 270 of the 569 videos are that short. Of the top 10 by views on the same date, six are from 2021, so videos that have been up for years crowd the top of the list. Public numbers, however, don't show when those views happened.
The 704-Page Japan: The Ultimate Cookbook
No profile of Omura would be complete without his first book, Japan: The Ultimate Cookbook.
According to his page about the book, it was released in the US on May 13, 2025, and in other countries on July 13, 2025. The publisher is Cider Mill Press, an American company. He writes that he was chosen as the author of the Japan volume in the Ultimate Cookbook series.
He describes it as “just like an encyclopedia”: a 704-page hardcover with over 300 recipes, written in English. It's so thick, he says, that it comes with three ribbon bookmarks. His Substack post about the book carries the subtitle “A cookbook that is thicker than a banana.”
Working with a publisher had been one of his big goals since he started the site. In the description of a video in May 2025, he reveals that a publishing house approached him the year before.
He put thought into the contents, too. His usual recipes are mainly metric, but for this book, he writes, they were developed in American measurements. The shoyu ramen soup that takes 1 hour 45 minutes on his website has, he says, been reworked for the book to take 15 minutes. He also names dishes he created for the book, such as Bifukatsu and Shio Lemon Nabe.
He also writes “This cookbook wouldn't exist without you” to thank the viewers who tried his recipes.
A Team with a Professional Cook, and Uploads at 5 a.m.
His site's About Us page shows that Sudachi isn't a one-person operation. The team listed there includes someone who handles editing, photography and video editing, and a registered dietitian who calculates the nutrition. Among the contributors are someone who started out in cooking at a hotel in 1989 and also holds a fugu (pufferfish) cook license, and a baker certified as a confectionery hygiene master.
So Omura, who says he never trained as a chef, has qualified people around him. His site also says it was named Best Japanese Recipe Website in the LuxLife Magazine Food & Drink Awards 2023.
The upload schedule is set, too. All 24 videos from August 5 to October 28, 2026, went up at 5 a.m. Japan time. Thirteen of them came out on Wednesdays and run up to about a minute; the rest are mostly Sunday videos of about 5 to 7 minutes.
The most-watched of those 24 is the September 21, 2026, video on ankake spaghetti, the Nagoya pasta, with about 12,000 views as of October 31, 2026.
On October 1, 2026, a Bikkuri Donkey-style hamburger steak video came out as well. Like the Saizeriya-style doria back in 2020, videos that bring the taste of Japanese restaurants into your kitchen, in English, are still going as of October 2026.
