The History of Sushi in L.A.

[Music] this is a menu for a Japanese restaurant in Little Tokyo called kawafuku the menu Isn't dated but experts say it's likely from the late 1960s or early 70s here's what's interesting about this menu kawafuku holds claim to having the first sushi bar in LA and one of the first in the U.S you know the kind with the counter and case displaying a selection of fresh raw fish gleaming behind glass I wanted to write a story about how the sushi bar came to be I thought it'd be fun to see if I could find the location where kawafuku once stood as it turns out the story of kawafuku sushi bar fits into a larger narrative about the evolution of sushi in Los Angeles to become one of the most pervasive International Foods in the country there may not be a better neighborhood in Little Tokyo to experience the many forms of sushi available today we can go to a small local sushi bar a hand roll spot a conveyor belt sushi bar a grocery store an Omakase restaurant and even a place that offers vegan sushi rolls but I'll need some help this is gilasakawa [Music] Gil has written books in the Japanese American experience and Japanese Cuisine in the U.S as well as countless articles on these topics let's meet up with Gill and go for a walk literally on a walk just like this years ago now at this point I think it must have been like 2014 or 2015 where I just had this memory of a story that my dad had told us about the first time that he tried Sushi I remember even as a kid thinking so strange that sushi would be such a unique experience because it's not a unique experience any longer no it was a Peak at the time it was a peek into a completely foreign and exotic culture when I was a kid in grade school I had white kids come up to me and go you eat you eat raw fish ooh that's gross you eat sushi stuff and yeah I'm old but I'm not that old and so it wasn't that long ago and to think that it that those same kids that were teasing me probably have kids today that can go to the supermarket and buy mediocre sushi uh that's actually sort of why we're here I mean one of the ideas is is that in Little Tokyo we can see how Sushi as a cuisine in America has evolved from just one restaurant Cabo fuku having a sushi bar in 1965 or so to proliferating and and morphing and maybe you know taking in some of American food culture and adapting it food is the gateway to culture and Japanese culture has really been helped by food being its entree in the U.S I'm actually hungry now what are we working with here tofu skin with sushi rice in it California roll Maguro which is tuna this is salmon you want to get like a yeah combination and then like a combo nagiri and we should get a couple rolls I have to assume that like it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that like Sushi is a pretty Convenient Food that you could adapt for a supermarket so he has a long history in Japan as kind of like a fermented fish where they actually would throw out the rice after fermented with the fish for over a year but then during the Edo area era the samurai era of Japan it was sold from carts in you know in front of castles by vendors for people just walking by right and then the earliest form that you mentioned the rice was there to absorb moisture right so that the fish you're trying to observe doesn't rot basically right and then lo and behold people realize that that actually makes for a nice combo [Music] in Japan you can buy sushi very good sushi from convenience stores which are called combini if I went to a 7-Eleven in Denver and asked for their Sushi they go what but when you go to a place like Little Tokyo you can find pretty good sushi in a supermarket because they're Japanese supermarkets right I mean this is this is this is good you know it's fresh it's it's pretty to look at and it's tasty sushi in a way buying it from a supermarket like this really is almost full circle from street food street food in Japan centuries ago right it really is it's about the convenience it's about being able to eat it easily with your hands and pop it in your mouth one bite [Music] the convenience of sushi can't be understated sushi restaurants wear plates of nigiri hand rolls and More Travel on conveyor belts have been popular in Japan since the 70s that's thanks in part to a chain called Kura which operates more than 500 conveyor belt sushi bars in Japan nearly 40 in the U.S thankfully one of them is in Little Tokyo where kura's CEO Hajime uba who also goes by Jimmy sat down with us for an inexpensive lunch conveyor belt Sushi not not everybody is familiar with it and I want to try to understand I think it's good for our listeners our readers to get a sense of why why conveyor belt is it because of choice obviously there's a lot of choice coming down the line right or is it about speed Americans love fast food right and they're used to things being fast fast I mean I know this is not new to America the company's very big in Japan but what's the idea behind it sure our guests and start eating sushi I started eating sushi so our guests can control the pace of their meal without having to wait for some of us to bring out their food that's the key yeah what do they call us this is Fascination right yes people are familiar with drive-throughs people are familiar with I need food right now I go into McDonald's or in and out Taco Bell and I get it obviously Japan has a quick food culture like you go to a ramen bar you need a very quick lunch you can get it or you come to conveyor about sushi you get a quick meal do you think that the success of the conveyor belt style in America is because Americans have this fast food culture yes but yeah this is but the people come to our restaurant at first for the fun dining experience yes yes not because we're all trained on stuffing our faces with Burger King nothing has that I said it you didn't see it Sushi of course hasn't succeeded in the U.S just because it's convenient or affordable far from it one of the ways it has become so popular is by playing to local tastes when Americans think of sushi one thing often comes to mind the California roll foreign and even though we were looking for the site of kawafuku we also had to check out the place where the ultimate American sushi roll was invented or at least that's how one story goes so this is 339 East 329 East 335. I bet you it's that building 337 I'm just trying to figure out exactly which building it is we want to know exactly which building it is right Tokyo Kai Khan was one of the early restaurants to serve sushi and it was a well-known Restaurant in Little Tokyo it came after kawafuku some people told me it was the second place to serve sushi that's what I've read as well it's probably best known if you read a book about the history of sushi in America [Music] for a claim on inventing the California roll and I say claim because there's at least one competing claim yes tell me what you know about the Tokyo kaikon claim for the invention of the California roll in 1966 or 67 after Tokyo kaikon opened that they had a sushi chef who responded to this these complaints about sushi being scary by creating a role that had instead of raw fish he used avocado the story is that Otoro or fatty Tuna from the tuna belly was out of season but that avocado had the same mouth feel it's funny you have these myths about food that are never gonna ever really be settled look I think there's like nothing more Californian than an avocado and when you think about it like also imitation crab is it's very perfectly La too yeah so Omakase translates to I leave it up to you in the sushi world it's the highest order of fine dining where chefs prepare many courses often 10 or more for only a handful of diners at a time and they pay big money for the privilege of eating whatever the chefs want to serve kanayoshi is one of those restaurants all right so I have to tell you in trying to track the evolution of sushi in America we had an idea for all the sorts of restaurants that we would come to so I wanted to do Omakase would have been fun for you and I to just sit down to a thousand dollar uh dinner so kanayoshi is a renowned Omakase style sushi restaurant you know extremely limited seating and um I called them to explain what we were doing and uh the person who answered the phone cut me off and said I'm busy right now I can't talk to you about this and was about to hang up and I said whoa can I just email you the information no reply and then I sent him a second follow-up and I was just fully ghosted so I sort of get it if you're charging people 400 ahead for a three hour you know almost experience barging in so uh there you have it that's the place that we're not going to thank you for showing me [Music] moving closer to our final destination we had another stop on our tour tracing the evolution of sushi rice and Nori which specializes in hand rolls owners Regina Chen and Mika Nakata shenefeld explain why this form of sushi makes for the perfect quick bite why hand rolls why what's the idea behind it I've done sushi for a while I've done sushi in French but something we could start on our own because we we're not a big company so we're like okay I could do hand rolls that's that's something I could do it's casual easy and right now onigiri everybody's like interested in 180 it's become popular so okay let's just put a couple of that so people are familiar with it but this is like this is a restaurant that's meant to be you can get in and out quickly right I mean tell us about like the philosophy behind it very casual like first we're like okay deli style so we have the display case so we're like Okay order the the sides you could do the sides pickle hand rolls or when you're getting and get out of here I'm sure if we weren't here and you had a line of people out front you guys could be pranking them out like Turbo Charge knocking these out yeah we do it just really fast at rice and Nori the hand rolls don't have that standard cone-shaped look instead they're burrito-like form prevents them from being too seaweed heavy and chewy Regina and Mika are making common fare like spicy tuna rolls but they're also having fun with rolls featuring uni cheese baked snow crab and smoked scallop what is the mix of customers do you have do you have like Japanese people coming in here we have a lot of Japanese American and we have everything variety Chinese Korean but what's really interesting we get a lot of Japanese tourists that they come and they're like oh and they they love it yeah it feels like home It Feels Like Home yeah comfort food while rice and Nori may feel like home to a Japanese tourist visiting La for many angelenos the only way Sushi could feel like home is if it's vegan thankfully shojin exists just for that purpose why does this restaurant exist who does it serve I said just tell me the philosophy behind it okay full fall as the customers health and happiness is the most important thing we use a shooting jewelry techniques also a Japanese traditional cooking techniques but we kind of modernized and we create this kind of Cuisine for not only like people who have strict diet but it's enjoyable it's beautiful and everyone can enjoy some of shrojan's offerings are wholly original creations other dishes seem like vegan oats to items that you might find at any number of trendy sushi spots take shojin's baked crab cake hand roll it includes mushroom avocado and oat cream with Smoky sweet tamari wrapped in soy paper and it could probably fool more than a few people who enjoy sugarfish's blue crab hand roll an item popularized in La by Chef kazanori nazawa many years ago I'm actually curious about Japan and if this style of sushi is popular in Japan if this is something that is available if you're in Tokyo vegan Sushi do you know [Music] I think open discount was because there are a lot of more vegan people I think like here in New York or maybe I'm sorry Los Angeles or like New York but in Tokyo I think the vegan population is still really really low so maybe it's not attracting to most of the people do you ever have customers people visiting from Japan prize to see vegan Sushi yeah sometimes we have people from overseas and also Japanese people visiting from Japan but they never seen this kind of food what's their reaction oh they get excited and of course they like them foreign of rapidly declining fish populations and increasing acceptance of alternative protein sources it's not hard to imagine a future in which most Sushi looks a lot like what shojin offers not to get too dark but climate change is coming for your cradle for now though the mood was buoyant we were radiating in the Tranquility that only a multi-course vegan meal steeped in the tradition of shojinriori can generate and we were headed to the place that put La Sushi scene on the map so Weller is just this street right here yeah and I have to assume that it wasn't always a plaza that was closed off like it's probably a street right at some point and it's kind of hard to picture it in the days of kawafuku because there wasn't this enormous Hotel Tower and you know adjacent building would have been somewhere right around here you know kawafuku was a big building yeah um multi-story building I've seen pictures of it the Weller address and the first street address were basically different addresses for the same building interesting 109 and a half Weller have the entrance moved to Face First Street okay the perfect metaphor for Modern Life the old building is gone and Starbucks is here exactly so that's right here there's Los Angeles First Street as you said now there's a Starbucks and Justice Urban Tavern whatever that is oh yeah in its place wow kawafuku is Central to the story I'm telling remember this is the restaurant where LA's first sushi bar opened it was around 1965. now to be clear we're not saying Sushi hadn't been served in the Southland prior to then after all Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans ate sushi and sashimi at home and even a handful of restaurants over the years had offered items such as Inari Sushi which is a fried tofu pocket stuffed with rice but prior to 1966 there weren't sushi bars the type Mickey nagiri in La that's according to narutoshi Kanai one of the businessmen I'm writing about along with Harry wolf and canai's Innovation was building the food supply chain to support Sushi spread across la the effort began with convincing the owner of kawafuku to open a sushi bar inside his restaurant hawafuku had for decades been sort of the spot it could accommodate hundreds of people some say you know 500 or more for a wedding you could have Banquets there you could have big events when kaufuku was willing to take a chance on sushi it really kind of guaranteed Sushi's success in Los Angeles my guess is that at the time most of the customers were were people who had been in Japan who were stationed in Japan or Japanese workers you know salary men who stayed you know were sent to the U.S with in the mid 60s a ton of Japanese companies started to come to the U.S and Los Angeles was a was an ideal place to have headquarters so my guess is that a lot of the customers here were Japanese or Japanese adjacent or familiar with the culture it's too bad that there isn't any piece of it left maybe there could be some effort to put some sort of like historical marker here I think there's a lot of ethnic history that's worth preserving and educating people today about considering how commonplace and mainstream Sushi is today like There Was An Origin where it wasn't and it was weird and it was new and it was exotic and it was a risk and um and this is a restaurant that tried it [Music] while kawafuku doesn't exist today we can be thankful to find its DNA in every neighborhood sushi bar across la and even perhaps Beyond by now we'd almost had our fill still we had to stop by one of these inconspicuous yet indispensable spots Sushi go 55. when did you buy this restaurant 2018-2018 so four years ago four years ago but you began working here many years ago many years ago when did you begin working here this restaurant on this restaurant this one is already nine years so that was uh 2013. yeah and as a sushi chef yes behind the counter yeah 55 is me that you know the Yankee the baseball player masui his name is 55. so that one is me the go go go go go go Sushi go 55 yeah like it's right behind you there's a picture of it are you a baseball fan I'm no no not really I'm the baseball guy yeah oh you're a doctor fan I'm a dog yeah me too I mean Matsui I'm not really that interested I'll be honest and when did you come here when yeah 1988 Dodgers won the World Series yeah that's a good year and what was your impression of Americans and Sushi when you first came where you think were you surprised by how interested people were in it or were you horrified because they only wanted spicy tuna roll no that was the first time they started to learn into the eat the sushi they had to try to order for the California roll spicy tuna roll and then a few later later a few years later they changed gave me a tuna give me a salmon yeah this is it after finishing they changed a lot of fish and and in Japan as part of your training did they teach you how to make California roll because they said the Americans are going to want this in Japan no no so you had to learn that here Atlanta here so you do you all these years of training and then you come to Los Angeles and you need more training on California rolls yeah right on spicy tuna roll yeah right yeah American people they like the rule they did not really like the the raw fish but now that they change the rules is you know the young people the age people is a normal eat the normal on the the rule almost everything sushi sushi right [Music] Los Angeles is a sushi city outside of any municipality in Japan it is arguably the sushi city La is home to countless restaurants that treat raw fish with the kind of reverence a sort that's usually reserved for religious rights it's also known for places with a Mad Hatter Flair for incorporating Sushi into decidedly American concoctions we saw some of that and more on our tour of Little Tokyo traversing the neighborhood it's easy to trace the evolution of this influential Cuisine and in doing so you can wind up at some pretty outdoor places but in the end it was a simple meal at Sushi go 55's worn counter where we did as much talking as eating that felt more La than any other experience the area could offer and it was easy to see the through line from the restaurant back to kawafuku [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Los Angeles Times Food

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Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023