The Story of Sushi (11 page)

T
he next day Zoran taught the students another style of Japanese cooking that sushi chefs used in
omakase
—simmering in broth. Near the end of class, Toshi appeared and reviewed the results. He was horrified. The students had used small appetizer bowls, but they’d filled them to the brim. It was so American.

“Small portions!” Toshi yelled. Everything a sushi chef served at the sushi bar ought to be tiny, Toshi explained—lots of little courses, each one beautifully arranged. “You gotta eat with your eyes,” Toshi said. Kate liked that. She was glad to have Toshi back in the classroom, if only for a few minutes. Toshi showed the students how to arrange a miniscule serving into an elegant pyramid. He chuckled. “Like little Mount Fuji!”

As the students cleaned up around noon, Jay, the coordinator for student affairs, slipped through the classroom carrying takeout containers of Chinese dim sum. He’d found a fabulous hole-in-the-wall in a nearby mall. Jay had been eating too much raw fish and rice lately, and he was looking forward to a lunch of steaming-hot pork dumplings.

He carried the dim sum into one of the private dining rooms. Hama Hermosa only served dinner, so the place was deserted. He arranged five or six containers of fragrant food on the table.

Today Jay had invited a man named Jeffrey Nitta to lunch. Like Jay, Jeff was a Japanese American and a restaurant consultant who worked in the sushi business. Jay had come to his serious interest in sushi about five years ago, but Jeff had been analyzing Japanese food trends in the United States for decades.

Jeff arrived, and the two men oohed and aahed over the dumplings. Right away, they started talking about the early days of American sushi, when sushi was first catching on in L.A.

“I remember hearing about the headaches,” Jeff said, laughing. “Restaurant owners were saying, ‘Sushi chefs are worse than regular chefs!’ The Japanese chefs were stubborn, and they thought Americans were too stupid to understand sushi.”

Jeff had been raised in Los Angeles. At school, most of his friends were white. But at home, he lived in a world that was partly Japanese. His father had come to the United States from Japan as an adult; his mother had grown up in America but was in many ways a traditional Japanese woman. Jeff had spent his childhood with a foot in both cultures.

As a young adult, Jeff had eaten in sushi restaurants frequently during the period when sushi first took root in the United States. It was an exciting time. Freed from tradition, Japanese chefs innovated, adapting the cuisine to American tastes and experience. Ambitious chefs like Nobu Matsuhisa—championed by Robert De Niro—invented a new hybrid cuisine for the Western palate. But Jeff also saw Japanese chefs dumbing sushi down for Americans. It frustrated him that the chefs didn’t make the effort to educate their customers.

Toshi had been an exception. Jeff remembered visiting Hama Venice and thinking that Toshi’s approach was brilliant. Toshi didn’t try to adhere to tradition or even to explain anything to his customers. He acted like a crazy American. But he stocked high-quality fish and authentic Japanese ingredients, and he used his charisma to challenge his customers to try real sushi.

Jeff recounted a meeting of members of the Japanese food industry back in the 1980s. “I said, ‘Americans are ready if you educate them. It may take some time. But they will know what good fish is,
if
you educate them. You’re not educating them, you’re just writing them off.’”

At the time, Jeff would sit down at a sushi bar in L.A., and sometimes a real Japanese customer—from Japan—would be there. The Japanese chef would serve the Japanese customer authentic sushi, Japanese style. The Americans at the bar would look up from their American-style rolls and peer over at what the Japanese was eating. ‘Wow,’ they’d say, ‘I want to eat that!’ The Japanese chef would say, ‘No, you don’t want to eat that.
You
can’t eat that.’” Jeff looked at Jay and threw up his hands. “That’s what they said!”

It was easier just to serve the Americans inside-out rolls full of mayonnaise and chili pepper. The chefs were guaranteed to make money that way. They built big restaurants. The restaurants had lots of tables and they had menus, with lists of American-style rolls. They were sushi-roll factories.

As more and more sushi chefs jumped on the bandwagon, they competed with each other to appeal to American tastes. Non-Japanese joined the fray, too—Koreans, Chinese, Latinos, and others. Restaurants undercut each other with cheaper prices.

“You’re seeing them in a rut now,” Jeff said. “The all-you-can-eat places started coming in, and now the customers are like, ‘I’m not going back to my old sushi place because it’s half price across the street.’ And so the Japanese sushi chefs are saying, ‘Well, we’re going to do that, too.’ They start joining in with the fifty percent–off specials, and they’ve shot themselves in the foot. They didn’t educate.” Jeff shook his head. “They were greedy with the economics. And that’s what’s sad. Now you’re jeopardizing your Japanese culture, you’re selling out, you’re commercializing your product that was, you know, your history.”

As Japanese Americans, Jeff and Jay wondered how best to preserve Japanese culture in the United States. Jay’s father, an architect, had designed the restaurant Tokyo Kaikan, where the California roll had been invented. Tokyo Kaikan had been a showcase for traditional Japanese architecture. But the building had since been torn down to make room for a parking lot.

“The purists are still holding on,” Jeff said. He was thinking of the minority of Japanese chefs who still made authentic Japanese sushi. There were some in L.A. There were a good number in New York City. “But it’s only the high-level American customers who understand that, people who already know about Japanese culture.”

As a result, many of the purist chefs had jacked their prices up so high that an average American would never set foot in the door just to try it out, especially in New York. In Manhattan, the chef Masayoshi Takayama—popularly known simply as Masa—wouldn’t even consider serving you lunch or dinner unless you handed him $350. Thanks to him, America’s most expensive restaurant is, astonishingly, a sushi bar.

To Jeff, Masa and his prices were as much an affront to Japanese sushi as were inside-out rolls loaded with mayonnaise and chile—maybe worse. In Japan, the sushi experience was a matter of getting to know the chef at your neighborhood sushi bar, visiting frequently, and letting him choose what he thought you would like from the freshest ingredients that day.

Jay nodded. People were always asking him for the inside scoop on where to get the best sushi. He’d shrug and tell them to find a neighborhood place where they liked the chef.

Jeff smiled. “When my father introduced me to sushi, the sushi bar he took me to was in a bowling alley.”

“Holiday Bowl,” Jay said, nodding.

“Right,” Jeff said, “Holiday Bowl. And I remember as a little kid, he put me up on a stool, and we’d sit around eating sushi. The Japanese chefs were very traditional. They knew my dad. They knew that he liked his beer in a small glass instead of a big mug. My dad would never even have to order. He would just sit down and they’d make him sushi. It was
omakase,
automatically, you know?”

Jeff wanted most American sushi diners to be able to have a similar experience.

Toshi had done what he could. But times had changed. With competition from low-end sushi everywhere, even Toshi couldn’t draw the crowds any longer.

T
hursday evening, the back sushi bar at Hama Hermosa opened up to customers along with the front bar. Zoran and the gorgeous Dane, Fie, set up for business. Takumi helped out. He would be on hand in case things got busy.

The hostess cranked up disco music in the back room and set out stools and place settings around the classroom table, converting it into extra dining space—again, just in case it got busy.

But the back room languished for two hours. Zoran disappeared.

Finally, around 7:30 p.m. the manager ushered in a Caucasian couple and sat them at the back bar. Fie greeted them and offered to make them something.

“We’re here for Zoran,” they said.

“Ah, for Zoran.” Fie dipped her head and retreated.

Seconds later Zoran appeared in his chef’s whites.

“Hey!” Zoran bellowed, all smiles. “How’ve you been?” He sat in a chair next to the couple and chatted. The man slapped Zoran on the back. They laughed.

Zoran excused himself and disappeared into the kitchen. As soon as he was out of sight he dashed madly from one refrigerator to another, grabbing the special ingredients, garnishes, and sauces that underpinned his
omakase
arsenal. Every sushi chef who practiced
omakase
had secret weapons, and now Zoran installed himself behind the back sushi bar armed with his.

The couple had been coming to Hama Hermosa for Zoran’s
omakase
nearly every Thursday for the past year and a half. Zoran adored them. But every week, as Thursday rolled around, Zoran would feel anxious.
Omakase
customers always expect the sushi chef to surprise them. That meant Zoran had to come up with new ideas for eight to ten little dishes every week.

Jay, the academy’s coordinator for student affairs, wandered into the dining room, fresh from his lunchtime conversation with Jeff earlier in the day. Seeing Zoran about to serve
omakase,
Jay strolled over to an unobtrusive corner of the bar and sat down to watch.

Zoran delivered his opening shot right away—little blocks of egg tofu in small bowls. That bought him a few minutes to engage the couple in conversation, and he used the opportunity to probe their current preferences. The trick for Zoran was to expand their horizons in a way they’d enjoy. He spooned something out of a Tupperware container. The man peered at it.

“Oh, man, green stuff,” the man said.

Zoran smiled.

The man frowned. “What
is
that?”

Zoran kept smiling. “If I told you, you wouldn’t want to eat it!”

Jay sipped on a soda, amused. Part of the difficulty in encouraging Americans to appreciate the sushi experience was getting them to relinquish control. In America, you were considered a sophisticated eater if you insisted on having things a certain way. To really experience sushi, you had to let the chef decide what was best for you. It was hard for Americans to do. That was why the most uncompromising Japanese sushi chef in L.A.—a man named Kazunori Nozawa, more popularly known as “the sushi Nazi”—had a big sign hanging over his sushi bar. It said, “Today’s Special: Trust Me.”

Jay glanced at Takumi, who was standing behind the sushi bar watching Zoran work. By now it was clear to Jay that Takumi had talent in the kitchen. Judging from the food he made, he was a creative spirit, respectful of Japanese tradition but not constrained by it. He was capable of thinking outside the box without dumbing the food down. Yet Takumi was so shy and reserved that it was difficult to imagine him ever being the sort of sociable sushi chef that Zoran was tonight.

Zoran enjoyed displaying himself in front of customers while he worked. He used his charisma to enliven their meal and convince them to try new things. Kitchen skills were important, but a sushi chef needed more than kitchen skills. He had to be a performer.

Takumi caught Jay’s eye and ambled over to say hello. They chatted quietly across the bar, Takumi speaking slowly in his broken English. Takumi pointed at the empty space in front of Jay.

“You don’t want to eat?” he asked.

Jay chuckled. “I’ve eaten too much sushi lately.” He sighed. “I keep thinking about that fantastic bolognese sauce you made.”

Takumi’s eyebrows shot up. The previous week he’d cooked spaghetti for the staff. Jay had been raving about it ever since. Now Jay drew an imaginary fence around his seat at the bar, marking it off from the rest of the restaurant. “Italian section!” he laughed.

Takumi laughed, too, as he headed to the kitchen.

Zoran was handing his customers a pair of rectangular plates, each with three small bowls indented in the surface. Each bowl contained a small pyramid of something mysterious. Zoran proudly described the contents to the couple; squid marinated in rice vinegar and sesame oil, seaweed sprouts marinated the same way and sprinkled with sesame seeds, and strips of scallop and tiny rice noodles marinated in sweetened sake. The seaweed sprouts were the “green stuff.”

They were delighted. “Hey,” the man said, “let’s have a round of drinks for the chefs!”

The hostess fetched the biggest bottle of beer she could find and added it to their tab.

“Thank you!” Zoran smiled and bowed. Zoran’s customers knew he didn’t drink, but buying beer for the chefs was still the proper thing to do. “I’ll be right back,” Zoran shouted, “with some Diet Coke!”

Takumi had vanished, so the only person for whom the hostess could pour beer was Fie. Zoran returned with his Diet Coke. They all clinked glasses across the fish case and bellowed out a toast in Japanese.

“
Kanpai!
”

Fie pretended to sip her beer. Later she would pour it down the sink. Zoran went right back to work.

Takumi slipped back into the bar from the kitchen. He snuck over to Jay, reached across the fish case, and placed a tall shot glass in front of him. It contained half a dozen olives on a skewer. Takumi glanced around, like a spy, then tipped his upper body in a quick bow.

“First course,” he said. He disappeared back into the kitchen.

Takumi’s full name, Takumi Nishio, meant nothing to Americans. Takumi liked it that way. Unlike in Japan, here he could putter in the classroom at Hama Hermosa, or back in the kitchen, and no one except the Japanese chefs had any idea who he was.

There had been an awkward moment when one of the Japanese chefs had taken him out to a Japanese hostess club in Torrance. Toyota and Honda both had their American headquarters in Torrance, and it was full of Japanese people. At the hostess club that night somebody had recognized him. He’d taken it graciously.

None of Takumi’s classmates at the academy had a clue that he’d been a rock star. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the go-go years of Japan’s economic bubble, Takumi had been a member of a Japanese boy band called CHA-CHA. They had released five albums and ten singles. On stage they were known for their choreographed dance routines and their humorous banter. Takumi had traveled all over Japan, singing, dancing, and joking on stage for crowds of fans.

At the height of his career Takumi had married Tomomi Nishimura—more popularly known by her stage name Tororin—one of Japan’s biggest female pop idols during the bubble years. As many pop stars do in Japan, Takumi and his wife had transitioned out of their singing careers and become popular television personalities. They appeared frequently on quiz and talk shows. In 2002, they were named Japan’s “Ideal Couple of the Year.”

But Takumi had grown weary of celebrity, and he’d discovered that his true passion was cooking. His wife had continued her television work, but Takumi had withdrawn from show business into the kitchen.

First he’d dedicated himself to Italian cuisine. When he’d mas
tered making pasta by hand, he tested salt-to-water ratios from 0.5 percent to 2 percent for cooking it, and settled on 1.34 percent. He and a friend, a famous folk singer, opened a little Italian restaurant called Monpetquoi in the trendy Shibuya district of Tokyo. Takumi installed himself as the head chef. Off the stage and in the kitchen, out of sight, Takumi would be judged solely on the quality of his food.

But it didn’t turn out that way. People came to the restaurant and ate his handmade pasta, but they were really there just to get his autograph. Restaurant critics made fun of him—how could a Japanese pop star be taken seriously as an Italian chef? In the fall of 2004, the restaurant shut down.

The experience left Takumi feeling that people in Japan were closed-minded. He saw how Westerners had welcomed sushi, embracing Japanese food and altering it at the same time. He liked that. He didn’t think most Japanese appreciated the global reach of their traditions.

If his fellow Japanese weren’t going to take him seriously at home, he would go out and explore the larger world. Now, at the age of 38, he puttered happily in solitude in the kitchen at Hama Hermosa, sautéing garlic chips in olive oil for Jay.

Out at the sushi bar, on display, Zoran continued his performance. He prepared an octopus ceviche—a South American style of raw seafood—and delivered it across the fish case with a flourish, much to his customers’ delight. Next Zoran wowed them with something he called “herb
toro.
”

Jay chuckled. Even at their best, sushi chefs weren’t above serving old fish. “Herb
toro
” was fatty tuna that had been left in the walk-in refrigerator too long. It had changed color, from pink to gray, and could no longer be served raw. Marinating it with onion and herbs, tossing it in a sauté pan, and drizzling it with miso dressing had camouflaged its age. Zoran had served it with an additional dose of charm, and the couple loved it.

Takumi reappeared. He snuck over and placed a small bowl in front of Jay on the sushi bar,
omakase
-style. Its contents were
arranged in an elegant pyramid—a little Mount Fuji, just as Toshi had instructed that morning. But it wasn’t Japanese food. The bowl contained five mushroom ravioli, sprinkled with fried garlic chips and drizzled with olive oil. Jay waved the aromatic steam toward his nose.

Zoran sliced fish with samurai bravado. His hands flew around a wide dish of black lacquer with red and gold inlay. Slices of sashimi fell into place. Some slices became a staircase, others a fan, and still others petals in a flower.

Zoran handed the dish of sashimi across the bar. The couple was awestruck. “Wow.”

Takumi emerged from the kitchen a third time, holding something below the level of the sushi bar.

“Main course,” Takumi whispered to Jay.

It was another little Mount Fuji. Jay gazed down and inhaled deeply through his nose. Takumi had sautéed cubes of beef with fresh rosemary and more fried garlic. Jay tucked a morsel in his mouth. He closed his eyes and moaned. Takumi smiled and slipped back into the kitchen.

It was past ten o’clock when Zoran’s couple finally left. Zoran flew into a frenzy of cleaning. He stowed ingredients and sauces, returned trays of
neta
to the walk-in, and scrubbed countertops. He still had to prepare the following day’s lesson. He got to bed after 1:00 a.m. His alarm clock would go off at 4:30 a.m., for his weekly trip to the fish markets.