Tokyo-born Makiko Sano owns and runs a popular Japanese restaurant, sushi school and catering company, Suzu House, in Hammersmith, London. She wrote SushiSlim (2013, translated into 16 languages), which won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award, and Shoku-iku: Japanese Conscious Eating for a Long and Healthy Life (2016, translated into 8 languages), and most recently Welbeck's Ramen (2023) which topped the charts.