The Sushi Roundtable: A Discussion with Jiro Ono, Part 1

Photograph byCraig Mod

Kitamura: What motivates you? Customer satisfaction?

Jiro Ono: I’m motivated by my love for work. I can’t do this if I don’t love it. You have to be able to delve into your work. I never think too much about other things. I’m constantly asking myself: “What can I do to make this better?” Always. Even now. I’ve been independent now for forty-something years, but I still think about that.

If there’s anything you don’t know, you read books about it or go out and try other kinds of food. Otherwise you don’t acquire new skills. If you only do as you’re told, and I always say this to the young folks, you’ll remain an apprentice. You have to constantly think about improving. If you delve deep into your own work, ideas begin to spring forth.

It’s also very important to go out and eat — see what’s out there. In the end, hard work is what makes the difference in where you end up.

Kitamura: Do you feel stress as a sushi chef?

Jiro Ono: I have lots of stress! Ulcers alone, I’ve had seven times. I have heart problems that my doctor tells me are stress-related.

Kashiba: What causes the stress at this point in your career?

Jiro Ono: Dealings with customers. You have to care about your customers without being overbearing, without showing that too much. When you worry too much about your customers, they can tell and will react to it. So that’s a type of stress you shouldn’t show to your customers. Customers will resist that.

Kitamura: How does one become a good sushi chef? Is training important?

Kashiba: Yes it is. Nobody goes to Japan to train as a sushi chef. That’s just wrong. The reason French, Italian and Chinese food in Japan tastes so good is the Japanese go there to train. They return, open a restaurant and serve good food. Competition makes the food better. So when a foreigner without any training opens a sushi shop overseas, it can’t be good. How can you create good food without knowing the basics? If there’s a spiritual element to that endeavor, that’s it. There’s not a single soul who comes to Japan for training. And they are doomed to fail because they don’t know the real thing. There’s a spiritual and technical aspect to creating sushi. You need to feed the spiritual side before taking on the technical aspects.

But American sushi is changing. There’s a sense now that good material is really important. That’s a natural transition.

Foreigners who are in the food business think sushi is easy — something anybody can make. That’s why nobody comes to Japan for training. They have absolutely no idea how important prep work is. So they start a sushi place just about anywhere, but can’t make decent sushi. They don’t even understand material. If you give someone a fish and ask them to open it up, they can’t. They’ll try to cut off the head with scissors — that’s how they work. They have no respect for Japanese sushi.

Yoshikazu Ono: We may know sushi. But the customers don’t know what sushi is. If some Asian person is working behind a counter, whether he’s Korean, Chinese or Japanese, customers immediately think that’s sushi. That’s something we felt when we traveled overseas. Customers walk in, eat the terrible stuff and say, “Oh this is sushi.” Oh, but the food is awful, unbelievable. Americans are a group of people who like variety. They’ll point at another sushi bar and say, “You can eat a different kind of sushi there.” They don’t understand the tradition behind sushi.

Jiro Ono: But it’s not just Americans. The same thing applies to the Japanese. The Japanese will watch a sushi chef and think, “Wow that’s cool. I like to cook, I’m going to become a sushi chef.” But this young apprentice has just finished school, has lived at home all his life, and all of a sudden steps into a real kitchen for the first time. He then realizes that it’s not for him. Nine out of 10 are like that. Guys who come straight out of school don’t last. But the other kinds of guys — the ones who have worked as lowly scrubs somewhere else for years — they may last because they’re also thinking, “If I don’t really hunker down and take this seriously, I’m going to end up jobless.” One guy who came in said, “I’m used to hard training. I’ve been on a baseball team.” He didn’t last one week here. That’s how much work it is to prepare sushi. Nobody really knows that. Worst case scenario: You can go to the market, buy a filet of fish, slice that up and lay it on top of a bed of rice.

Kashiba: There are a hundred something sushi places around Seattle. Most of them have prepared fish, pre-cooked egg, pre-boiled shrimp, and they make a lot of money! So easy. Customers don’t know what sushi is, so that’s okay with them.

Customers have to educate themselves about good sushi. Otherwise, lesser chefs can serve the inferior stuff and sell it as sushi to anybody. But if customers learn and say, “Hey, this is not sushi,” then it raises the bar for everyone.

In part 2 of the roundtable, coming next month, the chefs will discuss the effects of global warming on fish and Japanese cuisine.

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