The Japanese took it home. The winner of the Seven Sushi Samurai contest at the Eat-Japan Sushi Awards 2007 is Masashi Ogata! He represented the Asahizushi restaurant in Miyagi, Japan and won with his dish “Golden Shooting Star”.
“This ambitious dish recreates the exquisite taste and texture of shark’s fin, the traditional culinary speciality of Asashizushi’s homeground, whilst remaining 100% vegetarian. Assembling ingredients such as Japanese seaweed, fruit syrup, avocado and cornflakes (!), this is a truly remarkable culinary feat.” Mmm… Sounds interesting. And surprising. I have never tasted shark fin, but did not think it would taste anything like fruit syrup, avocado and cornflakes…
>> Continue reading ‘And the winner is… Masashi Ogata!’
Yosuke Imada is the owner of the gigantic sushi restaurant Kuybei in Tokyo. It was his father that originally founded the venerable, five-floor establishment in 1936. For more than 30 years, Mr. Imada has expanded Kyubei beyond Ginza - while maintaining its reputation as a veritable Japanese institution.
He has turned Kyubei into a $30 million enterprise with a total of seven restaurants, including several at some of the most prestigious hotels in Tokyo and Osaka, a thriving world-wide catering business, even a department store take-home sushi shop, all without losing the reputation for quality and service for which the restaurant is widely praised.
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It is almost sushi the Swedish chef is making, and it gives us a small view into how hard it is to kill a (muppet) fish! I sympathize with the swedish chef. Ordiibooordi fishy… Yeah. We pretty much talk the same language. And I think we have some similarities when it comes to cooking too!
Ken Kawasumi has pioneered the culinary art of transforming the simple sushi roll (maki-zushi) into an intricately designed masterpiece. He is famous for his kazari maki-zushi.
Since beginning a sushi apprenticeship at the age of 16, Kawasumi has spent 33 years perfecting his sushi crafting techniques. After working at a number of well-known sushi bars in the Tokyo precinct, he opened the popular sushi restaurant Kawasumi.
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Masayoshi Kazato has worked as a sushi chef for more than fifty years. At the age of twenty, he travelled around Japan and settled in Hokkaido, where he began his career as a sushi chef. He opened his first sushi bar aged 26, and his current establishment, Sakae-zushi, is highly regarded throughout Japan, attracting customers in droves.
Not only is Kazato a celebrity sushi chef, but he is also devoted to introducing sushi and training chefs in countries all over the world, including the US, Germany, the Czech Republic and the UK. He works for the International Public Relations department of the All Japan Sushi Association, an organization representing Japan’s sushi heritage and industry worldwide.
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Hanaya Yohei (1799 - 1858.06.10 [Kansei 11 - Ansei 5]) 華屋 与兵衛（花屋 与兵衛). Born in the Echizen-country (Fukui-han, or present Fukui Pref.) and came up to Edo (Tokyo) when he was nine year-old to work as a servant under apprenticeship at a ‘fuda-sashi’ (rice broker/warehouse and banker.)
After experiencing several other occupations, he lived at Ryogoku area in and around the period of Bunsei (1818 - 1830) of the Edo era. Then, he worked hard as a sushi peddler day and night, he finally opened his own shop named ‘Yohei-zushi’ and it was a great success by virtue of the new type of sushi of the time, Nigiri-zushi.
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Sotohiro Kosugi won Food & Wine Magazine’s annual Best New Chef award back in 1997, when he was working at Soto Japanese Restaurant, Atlanta (now closed).
For 11 years, Kosugi, a third-generation sushi chef, made sushi in the South, developing such an impressive reputation in Atlanta that he decided to try his hand up in New York.
Kosugi left Atlanta to open Soto in Manhattan’s West Village in May 2007. He serves as sushi chef, serving dishes like Japanese bream with ginger-scallion oil and Long Island fluke with lime, sea salt and yuzu zest from the 12-seat sushi bar, while his wife, Maho, oversees the kitchen.
Kosugi is famous for his “expansive, haute-Japanese cuisine”. Whatever that means..? Sounds interesting. Will have to go there once to try him (them) out.
(Not sure if the chef in the picture is Mr. Kosugi, but it is at least taken at his restaurant in NY)
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Chef Masatoshi Sugio has developed a sort of cult around the preciously presented, unusually sauced sushi at his tiny, out-of-the-way Sushi of Gari on far East 78th Street, NY. He opened a bigger place at Columbus and 78th Street, to make the commute easier for such devotees as Yoko Ono and Kevin Kline… (ah - more sushi celebrities!). He said the main barrier to expansion was not real estate, but finding someone to make sushi his way. “I had to train the new chef for many, many years to understand my style”. He has a branch in Aoyama, Tokyo too.
>> Continue reading ‘Sushi chef - Masatoshi “Gari” Sugio’
Los Angeles Hiroyuki Urasawa from the Restaurant Urasawa was a sous chef under another famous chef - Masayoshi Takayama. After Masa left for New York, his student Urasawa opened his own place in Beverly Hills.
The Rodeo Drive address has been Urasawa’s sole professional address in the States, but his training reaches back to childhood, where he grew up in the kitchens of his father’s restaurants in Tokyo. He then honed his skills under master chefs in Kyoto before emigrating to join Takayama at Ginza Sushi-ko.
Online reviews praise this Seattle sushi chef highly. According to one website, visiting Japanese baseball players swear by Yutaka Saito’s specialties, such as fresh ankimo (monkfish liver). For Saito the Sushi training began in Japan when he was only fifteen years old. A chef at heart, Saito received further training into his twenties until he left his native Japan and moved to the United States. He settled in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Keeping up the art of preparing Sushi, Saito maintains strong connections to his mentor in Japan. He eagerly awaits the expected arrival of his mentor’s son, who will join Saito’s cuisine team in Seattle.
