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Food

Sushi standards and the American way

By Tim Carman,January 24, 2012

Kaz Okochi, chef-restaurateur at KazSushi Bistro, says he tries to be innovativewith… (Bill O'Leary/The Washington…)

The bucket of tater tots has arrived at Sticky Rice, and I’m trying to figure out whether Kaz Okochi, chef and co-owner of the refined Kaz Sushi Bistro, will indulge in the processed snack at this semi-boho, pan-Asian, highly Americanized sushi house on H Street NE. He takes one of the bronzed nuggets, dips it in the spicy sauce and gobbles it like a pro. Before long, he’s outpacing my own tot consumption.

When I finally ask his opinion of the potato poppers, the usually composed Okochi gives it to me straight: “I love them,” he says. “I keep eating them.”

I offer this anecdote as a relevant peek into Okochi’s personality: He’s no snob. He’s not some 50-year-old crank — well, he did hit the half-century mark last year — who totters to the screen door on lazy Sunday afternoons to yell at the kids to get off his lawn. He’s an open-minded guy, certainly when it comes to the kind of restaurants that Americans care to frequent. He knows dining all boils down to enjoyment, not some mystic quest for authenticity every time you enter an eatery.

Still, in his more reflective moments, he worries about the state of genuine Japanese sushi, the kind that requires years of training, an almost obsessive attention to detail and a passion for fresh, clean flavors. The more he looks around, the more he sees places like Sticky Rice: fun, relaxed but indulgent operations that don’t always bow before the traditions of authentic sushi.

In all fairness, I should say Okochi’s worries are not aimed at Sticky Rice; I am, in fact, the one who dragged him here to gather his impressions of the popular place, where the waits can stretch to 30 minutes or longer. Okochi’s worries are far more universal: He foresees an America full of casual sushi houses, where the fish might be frozen and the rice is not prepared in-house. A place, in short, where the designer maki rolls steal the spotlight from those
elegant rectangles of seasoned rice and raw fish known as nigiri.

You could say Kaz Okochi fears for the future of sushi. “Is it really bright?” he asks, recalling the bastardizations that have occurred with Mexican and Chinese cuisines. “I can’t say that.”

Driving Okochi’s concerns are a
number of trends, almost all of which are out of his control. One, of course, is the economy, which forces many customers to seek dining options cheaper than sushi. Another is China’s newfound appetite for raw fish and how that affects the availability of fish, not to mention the long-term sustainability of fish stocks. Then there’s the issue of trained sushi chefs back in Japan: Apparently their interest in working in the United States is waning.

A shallow chef pool

For evidence of that last trend, Okochi refers me to a Tokyo-based headhunter named Tachio Katabira, who works with restaurants in San Francisco, Seattle, Orlando and other cities to place Japanese chefs and general managers. “These days, we have a big sushi boom in Japan,” Katabira writes via e-mail, translated by Okochi, “and there is so much demand for sushi chefs. They can earn a good salary in Japan so less and less, chefs are willing to take risks to go abroad.”

But more than that, immigrating to the United States is not as easy as it was in, say, the late 1980s, when Okochi left Japan and moved to America. Applicants from Japan often have to qualify for an E-2 visa, which is reserved for family members and employees of foreign nationals who make a substantial investment in the U.S. economy, perhaps as a partner in an American restaurant.

Darren Lee Norris, co-owner of Kushi Izakaya and Sushi in Mount Vernon Square, remembers the headaches involved in trying to bring over his Japanese chef, Yoshihisa Ota. Norris practically had to prove Ota was a national celebrity before immigrant officials would approve the visa. “We had to go through so much during the visa process,” Norris says.

“The U.S. consulate in Japan has been very tough to chef applicants and receiving a visa is much harder than before,” Katabira e-mails. “We believe the biggest reason is that in the past, there were so many chefs who got an E-2 visa who quit or got fired very quickly because restaurants [or headhunters] didn’t check the chef’s ability to adapt very carefully.”

The apparent crackdown on visas raises an interesting question: Who is preparing your sushi these days?

It could be someone like Jay Yu or Eliel Lopez, a pair of trained sushi chefs who work at Kaz Sushi Bistro. Yu is from China and Lopez from Guatemala, and both have been honing their skills in the raw-fish business for years. Their presence in Okochi’s restaurant underscores the owner’s belief that sushi chefs don’t necessarily have to be born in Japan (although, Okochi acknowledges, a chef’s immersion in Japanese sushi culture is invaluable).