Hiroko Shimbo, a chef-instructor, a consulting chef to food service industries and a cookbook author based in the United States since 1999, is widely recognized as an expert on Japanese cuisine.

Her most recent restaqurant consulting project was to create an authentic Japanese curry restaurant, Kare-ken, in San Francisco. Other current projects include: TheIngredientFinder.com, Toyota (Bogota, Colombia), Bogota Wine & Food Festival, Zojirushi America, AVI Foodsystems, Uniliver, and UMass Dining. The companies with which Hiroko has worked with include: JETRO (Japanese Government Organization), New York Mutual Trading Company, PF Chang's China Bistro and Ruth's Chris Steak House.

Twice a year Hiroko teaches an intensive, hands-on, one week basic Japanese cooking course, Essentials of Japanese Cuisine, at International Culinary Center in New York City.

Hiroko is a frequent chef guest at The World of Flavors Conference at the Culinary Institute of America in Greystone, California.

Hiroko has written three cookbooks. Her first two award-winning books, The Japanese Kitchen (Harvard Common Press, 2000) and The Sushi Experience (Knopf, 2006), are considered primers on Japanese cuisine and continue to attract professional chefs and home cooks.

While her most recent book, Hiroko's American Kitchen: Cooking with Japanese Flavors (Andrews McMeel 2012) offers an entirely new perspective on Japanese cooking. Rather than teaching how to cook authentic Japanese cuisine, she focuses instead on integrating Japanese flavors, cooking techniques and staples onto the North American table.