![]() Kawafuku’s sushi bar opened around 1965, and as Wolff had predicted, it was a hit. The pair went for Little Tokyo’s Kawafuku - an influential spot that had opened in 1923 and hosted the city’s biggest names in entertainment, sports and politics. The final challenge, Daniel writes, was getting a restaurant in L.A. The timing couldn’t have been better for the pair: Recent innovations in shipping allowed them to safely import fish from Japan while a Japanese immigrant in California’s Central Valley had developed a new strain of medium-grain rice, inspired by what was available in Japan and perfect for sushi. Mutual Trading would import the ingredients and implements needed to serve sushi here - from the nori to the knives.” And as he told Kanai, he suspected other Americans would love it, too. Wolff had enjoyed the plates of nigiri so much, he had been slipping away to feast in secret for days. Daniel describes him as an imposing Jewish man who’d cut his teeth as a bouncer in his native Chicago before he found a talent for salesmanship and became a unique partner to Kanai, a trim Japanese man who’d served in the Japanese army.Īnd enjoy it Wolff did: Daniel reports that when Kanai received a bill from the restaurant to his office a few days later, he was shocked by the figure - the equivalent of nearly $2,650 today. For his open-minded palate, Wolff had a distinctly American upbringing. The pair went out to dinner, inspiration running low, and Kanai chose a spot he knew Wolff would enjoy. ![]() Kanai’s early bets had been so successful, other companies had begun to import the same cookies and crackers and cut into his profits. in hopes of finding a new product to introduce to customers in California. wholesaler of Japanese food products, was visiting the city with his friend and consultant Harry Wolff Jr. The mood: stressed and a little downbeat. The setting: a family-run spot in the Ginza district called Shinnosuke. Sushi wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t Tokyo-style nigiri - the mounds of rice draped with delicate slices of mostly raw fish we know today.Īs Miller tells it, our story begins in Tokyo 1965. The few Japanese restaurants that did open during this time catered to an American palate, my colleague Daniel Miller writes in a new piece. Even as Los Angeles’ cultural significance blossomed in the 1950s and ’60s, the city’s food scene remained decidedly homogeneous - meatloaf at your local dive, French cuisine if you were feeling fancy. I’ve never been to Nobu, but I’ve read enough celebrity gossip to feel like I have. Then there are your smaller neighborhood spots offering traditional rolls and unique spins, like the vegan tasting menu I recently tried at a spot in Culver City. The city boasts eight Michelin-starred sushi restaurants. There are nearly a dozen Sugarfish locations. But I wanted to focus on the flavor of the vegetable, appreciate the raw ingredient for what it is.These days, sushi isn’t hard to find in L.A. ![]() If you put too much, it’s not wrong customers wanted that. “I used to put a lot of stuff on top of sushi. She bundles asparagus that are thinner than pencils on top of rice, attached with a slender belt of seaweed. Corn, sheared from the sides of a cob so that the kernels remain attached to one another in filets, are battered and fried. Coins cut from the thick stems of king trumpet mushrooms are butterflied. Slivers of Fuji apple flank slices of tofu that Hasebe smoked over apple wood. On the counter in front of her is an array of ingredients and prepared neta, or toppings. Hasebe is standing in her kitchen, gently shaping an ingot of sushi rice for nigiri in the palm of her right hand. offering was set in motion in the 1960s by two friends bound by a love for food.īut Plant Sushi Yoko is thoroughly of the moment. Sushi’s norm-busting journey from culinary curiosity to mainstream L.A. Business The secret history of L.A.’s sushi revolution ![]()
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