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"title": "A Fire Shuts Down One of the Bay Area’s Best Tonkatsu Restaurants",
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"content": "\u003cp>A late-night fire at a downtown \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/danville\">Danville\u003c/a> strip mall has shut down one of the Bay Area’s top restaurants specializing in tonkatsu, or Japanese-style fried pork cutlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.jungdonkatsu.com/\">Jungdon Katsu\u003c/a> first opened mid-pandemic in 2022 as a tiny ghost kitchen takeout operation in Emeryville. Almost immediately, the shop’s juicy, preternaturally crunchy pork cutlets gained a loyal following — the \u003ci>San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/i>restaurant critic Cesar Hernandez called them “exceptional and satisfying” in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/jungdon-katsu-17618778.php\">rave review\u003c/a>. Last year, owner Joyce Kim \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/favorite-katsu-bay-area-new-restaurant-19760638.php\">opened the larger, sit-down version of the restaurant\u003c/a> in Danville, sharing a space with Taru Sushi, the sushi spot she’d run at that location with a business partner since 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jungdon and Taru were two of the several businesses that closed indefinitely after the \u003ca href=\"https://www.danvillesanramon.com/fire-wildfire/2025/10/21/businesses-shut-down-after-fire-damages-building-in-downtown-danville/\">Oct. 20 fire\u003c/a>. Reached by phone, Nicole Kim, the owner’s daughter, tells KQED it’s unclear whether the Danville restaurant will ever be able to reopen. Even though the Jungdon space wasn’t caught in the blaze, the whole building suffered so much structural damage that there’s no way for customers to safely enter the restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Luckily, no one got hurt,” Kim says. “It just feels really weird because my mom worked really, really hard to get to this point [for it to be lost], all because of this stupid fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13982930\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13982930\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior.jpg\" alt='Exterior courtyard of a restaurant. The banner in front reads \"Jung Don Katsu.\" ' width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The exterior courtyard at Jungdon’s Danville location. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For now, she says, her mother is trying to stay positive. Even before the fire, the Kims had already started working on building out a new full-fledged restaurant in Emeryville, at 6485 Hollis St. — a process they’re now trying to fast-track so they can open in the next month or two. Kim has also started a \u003ca href=\"https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-rebuild-taru-sushi-and-jungdon-katsu\">GoFundMe campaign\u003c/a> to help tide the business over during this transition — and, especially, to support workers at the Danville restaurant who now likely have to find new jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, Jungdon fans can get their fix at the Emeryville ghost kitchen location, which remains open for takeout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jungdon serves several varieties of breaded deep-fried meat, including menchi katsu (made with ground pork) and chicken katsu. But the pork katsu is the dish that made it a destination restaurant, with long lines out the door nearly every night at the Danville sit-down location.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13980829,arts_13971770,arts_13959432']You can find tonkatsu on the menu at most all-purpose Japanese restaurants, and the fried pork cutlets feature prominently at curry shops and casual cafes, where they’re often served in sandwich form. But specialized katsu shops that serve the fried cutlets the way they do in Japan — piping hot on a wire rack, with a mound of thinly shredded cabbage on the side — are extremely rare in the Bay Area. In the East Bay, in particular, Jungdon Katsu was basically one of one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During dinner service, the elder Kim would pound and bread each batch of katsu to order, using fresh panko breadcrumbs to make the shaggy breading puff out outrageously. For dine-in customers, the percussive \u003ci>thud-thud-thud\u003c/i> of Kim pounding each pork cutlet into tender submission made for a comforting soundtrack to the meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kim first fell in love with pork katsu in her native Korea, and at the new Emeryville location, she’s working on adding a thinner, sauce-soaked version of the dish to the menu — what Koreans call “old-fashioned katsu.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nicole Kim, the daughter, says the family is hoping for the best as far as reopening the Danville restaurant is concerned. If that proves to be impossible, they’ll explore the possibility of opening a new location closer to that part of the East Bay, perhaps in Dublin.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A late-night fire at a downtown \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/danville\">Danville\u003c/a> strip mall has shut down one of the Bay Area’s top restaurants specializing in tonkatsu, or Japanese-style fried pork cutlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.jungdonkatsu.com/\">Jungdon Katsu\u003c/a> first opened mid-pandemic in 2022 as a tiny ghost kitchen takeout operation in Emeryville. Almost immediately, the shop’s juicy, preternaturally crunchy pork cutlets gained a loyal following — the \u003ci>San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/i>restaurant critic Cesar Hernandez called them “exceptional and satisfying” in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/jungdon-katsu-17618778.php\">rave review\u003c/a>. Last year, owner Joyce Kim \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/favorite-katsu-bay-area-new-restaurant-19760638.php\">opened the larger, sit-down version of the restaurant\u003c/a> in Danville, sharing a space with Taru Sushi, the sushi spot she’d run at that location with a business partner since 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jungdon and Taru were two of the several businesses that closed indefinitely after the \u003ca href=\"https://www.danvillesanramon.com/fire-wildfire/2025/10/21/businesses-shut-down-after-fire-damages-building-in-downtown-danville/\">Oct. 20 fire\u003c/a>. Reached by phone, Nicole Kim, the owner’s daughter, tells KQED it’s unclear whether the Danville restaurant will ever be able to reopen. Even though the Jungdon space wasn’t caught in the blaze, the whole building suffered so much structural damage that there’s no way for customers to safely enter the restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Luckily, no one got hurt,” Kim says. “It just feels really weird because my mom worked really, really hard to get to this point [for it to be lost], all because of this stupid fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13982930\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13982930\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior.jpg\" alt='Exterior courtyard of a restaurant. The banner in front reads \"Jung Don Katsu.\" ' width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/jungdon-katsu-exterior-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The exterior courtyard at Jungdon’s Danville location. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For now, she says, her mother is trying to stay positive. Even before the fire, the Kims had already started working on building out a new full-fledged restaurant in Emeryville, at 6485 Hollis St. — a process they’re now trying to fast-track so they can open in the next month or two. Kim has also started a \u003ca href=\"https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-rebuild-taru-sushi-and-jungdon-katsu\">GoFundMe campaign\u003c/a> to help tide the business over during this transition — and, especially, to support workers at the Danville restaurant who now likely have to find new jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, Jungdon fans can get their fix at the Emeryville ghost kitchen location, which remains open for takeout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jungdon serves several varieties of breaded deep-fried meat, including menchi katsu (made with ground pork) and chicken katsu. But the pork katsu is the dish that made it a destination restaurant, with long lines out the door nearly every night at the Danville sit-down location.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>You can find tonkatsu on the menu at most all-purpose Japanese restaurants, and the fried pork cutlets feature prominently at curry shops and casual cafes, where they’re often served in sandwich form. But specialized katsu shops that serve the fried cutlets the way they do in Japan — piping hot on a wire rack, with a mound of thinly shredded cabbage on the side — are extremely rare in the Bay Area. In the East Bay, in particular, Jungdon Katsu was basically one of one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During dinner service, the elder Kim would pound and bread each batch of katsu to order, using fresh panko breadcrumbs to make the shaggy breading puff out outrageously. For dine-in customers, the percussive \u003ci>thud-thud-thud\u003c/i> of Kim pounding each pork cutlet into tender submission made for a comforting soundtrack to the meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kim first fell in love with pork katsu in her native Korea, and at the new Emeryville location, she’s working on adding a thinner, sauce-soaked version of the dish to the menu — what Koreans call “old-fashioned katsu.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nicole Kim, the daughter, says the family is hoping for the best as far as reopening the Danville restaurant is concerned. If that proves to be impossible, they’ll explore the possibility of opening a new location closer to that part of the East Bay, perhaps in Dublin.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>For multimedia artist David Horvitz, slurping noodles isn’t just a way of eating. The Los Angeles-based artist says that as a half-Japanese person, he sees it as part of his cultural heritage: In \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japan\">Japan\u003c/a>, after all, slurping is widely understood to be the correct way to enjoy a bowl of noodles, and to show appreciation to the person who cooked them. Here in America, where slurping is considered bad table manners, Horvitz always wanted to teach his own daughters the pleasures of a proper slurp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so Horvitz turned noisy eating into part of his art practice. Or, to be specific, he and Bay Area chef Leif Hedendal will be putting on a kid-friendly experiential art show of sorts at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive this Sunday entitled \u003ca href=\"https://bampfa.org/event/teach-your-children-slurp-noodles\">Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles\u003c/a>. Hedendal will serve bowls of homemade udon, and the young participants will slurp those noodles while mic’d up to an amplifier, creating live noise performance — a sonic soundscape of slurping, if you will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reached by phone, Horvitz explains that the origin of the project was a \u003ca href=\"https://mocastore.org/products/1037032\">screen print\u003c/a> he created in 2023, also called \u003ci>Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles\u003c/i>, for which he hand-wrote those words with actual udon noodles, let them dry, and then screen printed them onto Japanese washi paper. Later, he and five other Asian artist friends put on the first version of the live slurping performance at a \u003ca href=\"https://active-cultures.org/project/soup-tart-los-angeles/\">Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) event\u003c/a> in Little Tokyo in L.A. They ordered udon from a little Japanese diner called Suehiro Cafe, a couple blocks away. “We slurped [the noodles] with a microphone,” Horvitz recalls, “and my friend processed it live with an analog synth and made these crazy sounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976893\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976893\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-scaled.jpg\" alt='Screen print of squiggly letters made with udon noodles. The text reads, \"Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-scaled.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-1536x2048.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Horvitz, ‘Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles,’ 2023. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of David Horvitz)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13934852,arts_13935854']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Now, recasting the event in Berkeley with a focus on kids, Horvitz mostly hopes the noodle-slurping extravaganza will be a lot of fun. But he also sees an educational component. For Japanese American kids like his own, it’s a matter of knowing their history and lineage — and knowing that they can stand up for themselves if, say, a classmate sees them slurping and tells them it’s weird. And for non-Japanese kids? The message is that “slurping \u003ci>is \u003c/i>the proper etiquette,” Horvitz says. “You can tell that to your parents when you go home — that they should be slurping too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, and the udon for the BAMPFA event won’t be your run-of-the-mill cup o’ noodles. To prepare, Hedendal, known for cooking elaborate dinners \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/t-magazine/jessica-silverman-gallery.html\">for Bay Area art-world luminati\u003c/a>, asked \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101895308/rintaro-cookbook-brings-the-izakaya-to-your-kitchen\">Sylvan Mishima Brackett\u003c/a> (chef-owner of the Mission District izakaya Rintaro) to give him a lesson in making udon from scratch — in other words, these will be pedigreed, \u003ci>hand-rolled\u003c/i> noodles that the kiddos will be hoovering up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to enjoying a good, comforting meal, participants will also use some of the extra noodles to create sumi ink art that they can bring home. And Hedendal hopes to incorporate some impromptu noodle-making lessons as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, as Horvitz notes, even though the event is ostensibly geared toward children, noodle lovers of all ages are welcome to participate. “Adults who don’t slurp should learn how to slurp too,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>There will be two sessions of ‘Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles’ at BAMPFA (2155 Center St., Berkeley) on Sunday, June 1, at noon and 1 p.m. Space is limited, and \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://bampfa.org/event/teach-your-children-slurp-noodles\">\u003ci>advance tickets\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> are required, though Horvitz says he’ll do his best to accommodate anyone who comes.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For multimedia artist David Horvitz, slurping noodles isn’t just a way of eating. The Los Angeles-based artist says that as a half-Japanese person, he sees it as part of his cultural heritage: In \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japan\">Japan\u003c/a>, after all, slurping is widely understood to be the correct way to enjoy a bowl of noodles, and to show appreciation to the person who cooked them. Here in America, where slurping is considered bad table manners, Horvitz always wanted to teach his own daughters the pleasures of a proper slurp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so Horvitz turned noisy eating into part of his art practice. Or, to be specific, he and Bay Area chef Leif Hedendal will be putting on a kid-friendly experiential art show of sorts at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive this Sunday entitled \u003ca href=\"https://bampfa.org/event/teach-your-children-slurp-noodles\">Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles\u003c/a>. Hedendal will serve bowls of homemade udon, and the young participants will slurp those noodles while mic’d up to an amplifier, creating live noise performance — a sonic soundscape of slurping, if you will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reached by phone, Horvitz explains that the origin of the project was a \u003ca href=\"https://mocastore.org/products/1037032\">screen print\u003c/a> he created in 2023, also called \u003ci>Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles\u003c/i>, for which he hand-wrote those words with actual udon noodles, let them dry, and then screen printed them onto Japanese washi paper. Later, he and five other Asian artist friends put on the first version of the live slurping performance at a \u003ca href=\"https://active-cultures.org/project/soup-tart-los-angeles/\">Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) event\u003c/a> in Little Tokyo in L.A. They ordered udon from a little Japanese diner called Suehiro Cafe, a couple blocks away. “We slurped [the noodles] with a microphone,” Horvitz recalls, “and my friend processed it live with an analog synth and made these crazy sounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976893\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976893\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-scaled.jpg\" alt='Screen print of squiggly letters made with udon noodles. The text reads, \"Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-scaled.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/teach-your-children-to-slurp-1536x2048.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Horvitz, ‘Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles,’ 2023. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of David Horvitz)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Now, recasting the event in Berkeley with a focus on kids, Horvitz mostly hopes the noodle-slurping extravaganza will be a lot of fun. But he also sees an educational component. For Japanese American kids like his own, it’s a matter of knowing their history and lineage — and knowing that they can stand up for themselves if, say, a classmate sees them slurping and tells them it’s weird. And for non-Japanese kids? The message is that “slurping \u003ci>is \u003c/i>the proper etiquette,” Horvitz says. “You can tell that to your parents when you go home — that they should be slurping too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, and the udon for the BAMPFA event won’t be your run-of-the-mill cup o’ noodles. To prepare, Hedendal, known for cooking elaborate dinners \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/t-magazine/jessica-silverman-gallery.html\">for Bay Area art-world luminati\u003c/a>, asked \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101895308/rintaro-cookbook-brings-the-izakaya-to-your-kitchen\">Sylvan Mishima Brackett\u003c/a> (chef-owner of the Mission District izakaya Rintaro) to give him a lesson in making udon from scratch — in other words, these will be pedigreed, \u003ci>hand-rolled\u003c/i> noodles that the kiddos will be hoovering up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to enjoying a good, comforting meal, participants will also use some of the extra noodles to create sumi ink art that they can bring home. And Hedendal hopes to incorporate some impromptu noodle-making lessons as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, as Horvitz notes, even though the event is ostensibly geared toward children, noodle lovers of all ages are welcome to participate. “Adults who don’t slurp should learn how to slurp too,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>There will be two sessions of ‘Teach Your Children to Slurp Noodles’ at BAMPFA (2155 Center St., Berkeley) on Sunday, June 1, at noon and 1 p.m. Space is limited, and \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://bampfa.org/event/teach-your-children-slurp-noodles\">\u003ci>advance tickets\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> are required, though Horvitz says he’ll do his best to accommodate anyone who comes.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen you walk into \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mexihibachi/\">MexiHibachi\u003c/a>, a new \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/mexican-food\">Mexican\u003c/a>-Japanese fusion restaurant in Pinole, the first thing you notice is the giant mural on the wall: a stylized image of a samurai — full armor, katana held upright — facing off against an Aztec warrior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s just the first of many cultural collisions that grab the diner’s attention. There’s the endless loop of Karol G reggaeton music videos juxtaposed with traditional Japanese decor elements like red paper lanterns. There’s the name of the restaurant, “MexiHibachi,” painted in bold letters in the tricolor of the Mexican flag across the body of a flying dragon. And there are the smells — a potent mix of garlic butter, taco sauce and teriyaki that’s meant to get your mouth watering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is, after all, a restaurant that specializes in Benihana-style Japanese hibachi with a Mexican twist: big plates of steak and shrimp served over fried rice or garlic noodles, everything cooked on a flat-top grill — and also stuffed, sometimes, into a burrito or a quesadilla, and drizzled with the kind of creamy orange hot sauce you might find at your favorite taqueria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That unique combination of flavors and cross-cultural influences has made MexiHibachi one of the hottest new restaurants in Contra Costa County since it opened in January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971776\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971776\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed.jpg\" alt=\"A restaurant employee brings two plates of food out to customers.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">MexiHibachi employee Jocelyn Valadez brings out customers’ orders. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The brainchild of chef Francisco Arce and his wife Silvia Cortes, the business started during the pandemic-spurred economic downturn of 2022, when Arce’s day job as a union painter had slowed to a standstill. With medical bills piling up for their young daughter, who needed eye surgery, the couple decided to supplement their income by starting a home-based catering operation. At first they mostly sold quesabirria, but at that point \u003ci>everyone \u003c/i>was doing quesabirria. Meanwhile, Arce had picked up tens of thousands of followers on his \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@chefblackstone\">TikTok cooking channel\u003c/a>, where, among other recipes, he showed off the Benihana-style hibachi skills he’d learned working at a teppanyaki restaurant in Alameda. “Everyone was like, ‘Where can I get my hands on a plate?’” Cortes recalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So they decided to give it a shot. The first MexiHibachi pop-ups featured a portable flat-top grill that they set up in a 10-by-10-foot tent in front of their house in Richmond. Eventually, as word got out, they started booking big backyard quinceañera and anniversary parties, where Arce entertained guests by \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@mexihibachi/video/7219617566027779370\">flipping shrimp directly into their mouths\u003c/a> and casually lighting up the grill so the whole thing burst into flames.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one of those pop-ups, MexiHibachi caught the attention of their current business partner, Juan Nuñez, a local entrepreneur and tattoo artist. He set Arce and Cortes up in their first brick-and-mortar kitchen space, a little takeout shop attached to Nuñez’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/juannuneztattoo/?hl=en\">tattoo shop\u003c/a> on San Pablo Avenue in Richmond. Business was brisk, and before long, they’d outgrown that kitchen as well. With Nuñez’s help, they found their current space, in a Pinole strip mall, last April and renovated the space themselves. (Nuñez, with his tattoo art background, did all the murals.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971460\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971460\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29.jpg\" alt=\"A man and woman pose for a portrait seated inside a restaurant, in front of a mural of a samurai fighting an Aztec warrior.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Silvia Cortes (left) and Francisco Arce, owners of MexiHibachi, pose for a photo at their newly-opened teppanyaki restaurant. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On a surface level, MexiHibachi’s take on teppanyaki doesn’t look \u003ci>so \u003c/i>different from what you might find at a regular old Benihana. Its staple dishes are the combo plates — your choice of proteins (steak, shrimp, chicken, salmon or scallops) served over a bed of garlicky, buttery fried rice; spicy udon noodles; or, my favorite, an excellent, extra-savory version of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13900855/garlic-noodles-sf-bay-area-iconic-foods-thanh-long-smellys\">garlic noodles\u003c/a>. But then in addition to your standard hibachi shop “yum yum” sauce (a creamy, slightly tangy aioli) and ginger soy sauce, customers also have the option to drench their meal in MexiHibachi’s fiery housemade diablo sauce (again, something akin to a taqueria \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13958466/la-vics-orange-sauce-la-victoria-taqueria-late-night-san-jose\">orange sauce\u003c/a>). Even more fusion-minded customers have the option to pack the whole meal inside the confines of a cheesy quesadilla or a burrito — with or without the addition of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13913985/hot-cheeto-burrito-taqueria-el-mezcal-richard-montanez-san-pablo\">Hot Cheetos\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the coming weeks, Arce plans to introduce more new dishes that play with the restaurant’s Mexican and Japanese influences. There will be a Baja-style fried fish taco, topped with both the red diablo sauce and the white yum yum sauce, for a subtle Japanese touch. They’ll also serve a version of spicy Mexican caldo de siete mares that has elements of an Asian seafood noodle soup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971784\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971784\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed.jpg\" alt=\"A burrito cut in half to reveal steak, Hot Cheetos and fried rice on the inside.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1296\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-800x518.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-1020x661.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-768x498.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-1536x995.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-1920x1244.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A steak hibachi wrap with Hot Cheetos, one of the restaurant’s Mexican-Japanese fusion dishes. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Arce and Cortes didn’t invent the “Benihana-but-make-it-Mexican” food genre, but the trend seems to be fairly new, picking up steam in the early 2020s. A handful of other \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/losgallosxezbachi/\">restaurants\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/hibachiteppanyaki90/\">food trucks\u003c/a> with similar menus opened in the Bay Area in the past couple of years. There are even more of them in Southern California, where at least one popular chain — \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mexihanashibachigrill/?hl=en\">Mexihanas\u003c/a> — has been around since 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13900855,arts_13913985,arts_13963832']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>One might assume that the trend stems from some deep, abiding love that Mexican Americans have for Benihana and its offshoots, but Cortes says that hasn’t been her experience. While some of MexiHibachi’s younger Mexican American customers might have eaten at a Japanese teppanyaki spot like Benihana at some point, most of the older Latino customers have no idea what to make of the restaurant the first time they come. At first, she says, “we were being compared to Panda Express.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of our clientele at the beginning were more African American than anything,” Cortes recalls. But as word about MexiHibachi spread, Latino customers started to familiarize themselves with the pleasures of a steak-and-shrimp combo plate and griddle-top garlic fried rice. “Now they know what hibachi is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971461\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971461\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47.jpg\" alt=\"Stir-fried udon with shrimp, beef and broccoli.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The New York steak, chicken and shrimp spicy stir-fry udon plate. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Given that most Mexican American diners don’t have a long history with Japanese teppanyaki, the origin of the Mexican hibachi trend is probably even more obvious and mundane: As Nuñez notes, if you walk into any Benihana-style restaurant in the Bay Area these days, the vast majority of the chefs doing the fancy tricks on the grill will be Latino. (Arce himself learned his craft at one of those spots, after all.) It only makes sense, then, that some of those cooks would eventually open their own hibachi businesses and put their cultural stamp on the cuisine. It’s the same reason we’ve seen an infusion of ambitious Mexican-owned \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/hakashisushibar/?hl=en\">sushi restaurants\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13917556/davids-pastas-pizzas-richmond-red-sauce-italian-tortas\">red-sauce pasta joints\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course even more than the food itself, Benihanas are famous for their \u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/23737639/benihana-be-the-chef-onion-volcano-shrimp-tails-performance-anxiety\">bag of tricks\u003c/a> — the juggling of spatulas, the shrimp tails flipped into the chef’s hat, the eggs that magically multiply underneath a bowl. And, as it turns out, MexiHibachi’s kitchen crew all trained in this dinner-and-a-show approach to teppanyaki; they’re fully conversant in the language of \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kDxl_eiYycM\">flaming onion volcanos\u003c/a>. Arce has been honing his repertoire of crowd-pleasing stunts for years — one of his most popular moves, he says, is when he makes the steaks dance on the plancha to the tune of “I Like to Move It.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971777\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971777\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed.jpg\" alt=\"A chef in a black baseball cap lights his grill on fire.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Arce sets the grill aflame. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For now, Cortes says, only customers who book MexiHibachi for private catering events will get a whole show with their meal. Their current space in Pinole isn’t big enough for the chefs to do tableside grilling, and the kitchen is set up, conventionally, in the back. A big chunk of the restaurant’s business is just takeout orders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But,” Cortes says, “it’s definitely our goal and dream to open a fancy restaurant like that, like a Benihana, in the future.” There’s no precedent for that kind of grand, showy Mexican fusion teppanyaki restaurant in the Bay Area, and even L.A.’s more established Mexican hibachi scene mostly consists of food trucks and small takeout shops. But Arce and Cortes don’t think the idea is all that far-fetched — not when their business has already grown so much in the span of just a couple of years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I definitely see it happening,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mexihibachi/\">\u003ci>MexiHibachi\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday to Thursday noon–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday noon–10 p.m. and Sunday noon–8 p.m. at 1578 Fitzgerald Dr. in Pinole.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">W\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hen you walk into \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mexihibachi/\">MexiHibachi\u003c/a>, a new \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/mexican-food\">Mexican\u003c/a>-Japanese fusion restaurant in Pinole, the first thing you notice is the giant mural on the wall: a stylized image of a samurai — full armor, katana held upright — facing off against an Aztec warrior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s just the first of many cultural collisions that grab the diner’s attention. There’s the endless loop of Karol G reggaeton music videos juxtaposed with traditional Japanese decor elements like red paper lanterns. There’s the name of the restaurant, “MexiHibachi,” painted in bold letters in the tricolor of the Mexican flag across the body of a flying dragon. And there are the smells — a potent mix of garlic butter, taco sauce and teriyaki that’s meant to get your mouth watering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is, after all, a restaurant that specializes in Benihana-style Japanese hibachi with a Mexican twist: big plates of steak and shrimp served over fried rice or garlic noodles, everything cooked on a flat-top grill — and also stuffed, sometimes, into a burrito or a quesadilla, and drizzled with the kind of creamy orange hot sauce you might find at your favorite taqueria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That unique combination of flavors and cross-cultural influences has made MexiHibachi one of the hottest new restaurants in Contra Costa County since it opened in January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971776\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971776\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed.jpg\" alt=\"A restaurant employee brings two plates of food out to customers.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-20_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">MexiHibachi employee Jocelyn Valadez brings out customers’ orders. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The brainchild of chef Francisco Arce and his wife Silvia Cortes, the business started during the pandemic-spurred economic downturn of 2022, when Arce’s day job as a union painter had slowed to a standstill. With medical bills piling up for their young daughter, who needed eye surgery, the couple decided to supplement their income by starting a home-based catering operation. At first they mostly sold quesabirria, but at that point \u003ci>everyone \u003c/i>was doing quesabirria. Meanwhile, Arce had picked up tens of thousands of followers on his \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@chefblackstone\">TikTok cooking channel\u003c/a>, where, among other recipes, he showed off the Benihana-style hibachi skills he’d learned working at a teppanyaki restaurant in Alameda. “Everyone was like, ‘Where can I get my hands on a plate?’” Cortes recalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So they decided to give it a shot. The first MexiHibachi pop-ups featured a portable flat-top grill that they set up in a 10-by-10-foot tent in front of their house in Richmond. Eventually, as word got out, they started booking big backyard quinceañera and anniversary parties, where Arce entertained guests by \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@mexihibachi/video/7219617566027779370\">flipping shrimp directly into their mouths\u003c/a> and casually lighting up the grill so the whole thing burst into flames.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one of those pop-ups, MexiHibachi caught the attention of their current business partner, Juan Nuñez, a local entrepreneur and tattoo artist. He set Arce and Cortes up in their first brick-and-mortar kitchen space, a little takeout shop attached to Nuñez’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/juannuneztattoo/?hl=en\">tattoo shop\u003c/a> on San Pablo Avenue in Richmond. Business was brisk, and before long, they’d outgrown that kitchen as well. With Nuñez’s help, they found their current space, in a Pinole strip mall, last April and renovated the space themselves. (Nuñez, with his tattoo art background, did all the murals.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971460\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971460\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29.jpg\" alt=\"A man and woman pose for a portrait seated inside a restaurant, in front of a mural of a samurai fighting an Aztec warrior.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-29-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Silvia Cortes (left) and Francisco Arce, owners of MexiHibachi, pose for a photo at their newly-opened teppanyaki restaurant. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On a surface level, MexiHibachi’s take on teppanyaki doesn’t look \u003ci>so \u003c/i>different from what you might find at a regular old Benihana. Its staple dishes are the combo plates — your choice of proteins (steak, shrimp, chicken, salmon or scallops) served over a bed of garlicky, buttery fried rice; spicy udon noodles; or, my favorite, an excellent, extra-savory version of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13900855/garlic-noodles-sf-bay-area-iconic-foods-thanh-long-smellys\">garlic noodles\u003c/a>. But then in addition to your standard hibachi shop “yum yum” sauce (a creamy, slightly tangy aioli) and ginger soy sauce, customers also have the option to drench their meal in MexiHibachi’s fiery housemade diablo sauce (again, something akin to a taqueria \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13958466/la-vics-orange-sauce-la-victoria-taqueria-late-night-san-jose\">orange sauce\u003c/a>). Even more fusion-minded customers have the option to pack the whole meal inside the confines of a cheesy quesadilla or a burrito — with or without the addition of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13913985/hot-cheeto-burrito-taqueria-el-mezcal-richard-montanez-san-pablo\">Hot Cheetos\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the coming weeks, Arce plans to introduce more new dishes that play with the restaurant’s Mexican and Japanese influences. There will be a Baja-style fried fish taco, topped with both the red diablo sauce and the white yum yum sauce, for a subtle Japanese touch. They’ll also serve a version of spicy Mexican caldo de siete mares that has elements of an Asian seafood noodle soup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971784\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971784\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed.jpg\" alt=\"A burrito cut in half to reveal steak, Hot Cheetos and fried rice on the inside.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1296\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-800x518.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-1020x661.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-768x498.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-1536x995.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-48_qed-1920x1244.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A steak hibachi wrap with Hot Cheetos, one of the restaurant’s Mexican-Japanese fusion dishes. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Arce and Cortes didn’t invent the “Benihana-but-make-it-Mexican” food genre, but the trend seems to be fairly new, picking up steam in the early 2020s. A handful of other \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/losgallosxezbachi/\">restaurants\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/hibachiteppanyaki90/\">food trucks\u003c/a> with similar menus opened in the Bay Area in the past couple of years. There are even more of them in Southern California, where at least one popular chain — \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mexihanashibachigrill/?hl=en\">Mexihanas\u003c/a> — has been around since 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>One might assume that the trend stems from some deep, abiding love that Mexican Americans have for Benihana and its offshoots, but Cortes says that hasn’t been her experience. While some of MexiHibachi’s younger Mexican American customers might have eaten at a Japanese teppanyaki spot like Benihana at some point, most of the older Latino customers have no idea what to make of the restaurant the first time they come. At first, she says, “we were being compared to Panda Express.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of our clientele at the beginning were more African American than anything,” Cortes recalls. But as word about MexiHibachi spread, Latino customers started to familiarize themselves with the pleasures of a steak-and-shrimp combo plate and griddle-top garlic fried rice. “Now they know what hibachi is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971461\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971461\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47.jpg\" alt=\"Stir-fried udon with shrimp, beef and broccoli.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-47-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The New York steak, chicken and shrimp spicy stir-fry udon plate. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Given that most Mexican American diners don’t have a long history with Japanese teppanyaki, the origin of the Mexican hibachi trend is probably even more obvious and mundane: As Nuñez notes, if you walk into any Benihana-style restaurant in the Bay Area these days, the vast majority of the chefs doing the fancy tricks on the grill will be Latino. (Arce himself learned his craft at one of those spots, after all.) It only makes sense, then, that some of those cooks would eventually open their own hibachi businesses and put their cultural stamp on the cuisine. It’s the same reason we’ve seen an infusion of ambitious Mexican-owned \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/hakashisushibar/?hl=en\">sushi restaurants\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13917556/davids-pastas-pizzas-richmond-red-sauce-italian-tortas\">red-sauce pasta joints\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course even more than the food itself, Benihanas are famous for their \u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/23737639/benihana-be-the-chef-onion-volcano-shrimp-tails-performance-anxiety\">bag of tricks\u003c/a> — the juggling of spatulas, the shrimp tails flipped into the chef’s hat, the eggs that magically multiply underneath a bowl. And, as it turns out, MexiHibachi’s kitchen crew all trained in this dinner-and-a-show approach to teppanyaki; they’re fully conversant in the language of \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kDxl_eiYycM\">flaming onion volcanos\u003c/a>. Arce has been honing his repertoire of crowd-pleasing stunts for years — one of his most popular moves, he says, is when he makes the steaks dance on the plancha to the tune of “I Like to Move It.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13971777\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13971777\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed.jpg\" alt=\"A chef in a black baseball cap lights his grill on fire.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/20250205_MexiHibachi_GC-25_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Arce sets the grill aflame. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For now, Cortes says, only customers who book MexiHibachi for private catering events will get a whole show with their meal. Their current space in Pinole isn’t big enough for the chefs to do tableside grilling, and the kitchen is set up, conventionally, in the back. A big chunk of the restaurant’s business is just takeout orders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But,” Cortes says, “it’s definitely our goal and dream to open a fancy restaurant like that, like a Benihana, in the future.” There’s no precedent for that kind of grand, showy Mexican fusion teppanyaki restaurant in the Bay Area, and even L.A.’s more established Mexican hibachi scene mostly consists of food trucks and small takeout shops. But Arce and Cortes don’t think the idea is all that far-fetched — not when their business has already grown so much in the span of just a couple of years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I definitely see it happening,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mexihibachi/\">\u003ci>MexiHibachi\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday to Thursday noon–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday noon–10 p.m. and Sunday noon–8 p.m. at 1578 Fitzgerald Dr. in Pinole.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "msg-play-sf-playhouse-exotic-deadly-time-travel-asian-stereotypes",
"title": "How to Debunk MSG Myths? Go Back in Time and Alter History, Of Course",
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"headTitle": "How to Debunk MSG Myths? Go Back in Time and Alter History, Of Course | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>When playwright Keiko Green was in her early teens, she learned that her grandfather — her ojiichan — had worked as a food scientist for Ajinomoto, the Tokyo-based company best known for inventing monosodium glutamate, a.k.a. MSG. In that moment, Green recalls, she didn’t feel a sense of pride in her family’s contribution to culinary history. Instead, she felt something more akin to shame. For a biracial \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japanese-american\">Japanese American\u003c/a> kid growing up in a predominantly white suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, the MSG link was just one more thing that made her different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just felt like I was sticking out so much,” she recalls. “And there was that teenage part of you that wants to just disappear into the background and be a little invisible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And anyway, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13966489/asian-american-chefs-msg-event-series-sf-chinatown-edge-on-the-square\">wasn’t MSG \u003ci>bad\u003c/i>\u003c/a>?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, no. Years later — long after Green had learned that those old “\u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-rotten-science-behind-the-msg-scare/\">Chinese Restaurant Syndrome\u003c/a>” campaigns were based on \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/an-msg-convert-visits-the-high-church-of-umami\">bad science\u003c/a> and, often, blatant \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/eddie-huang-racial-insensitivities-behind-msg-chinese-food-criticisms-n1115386\">racism\u003c/a> — the playwright recreated this moment of racialized teen angst in her play \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfplayhouse.org/sfph/2024-2025-season/exotic-deadly-or-the-msg-play/\">\u003ci>Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, which opens at San Francisco Playhouse on Jan. 30, directed by Jesca Prudencio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13970888\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13970888\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in a baseball cap seated in a theater with her arms outstretched. \" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Keiko Green wrote ‘Exotic Deadly’ during the pandemic, drawing on her own family connection to the Japanese company that invented MSG. \u003ccite>(Jessica Palopoli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Like Green, the protagonist, Ami (played by Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer), is an Asian American teen growing up in the late ’90s. Ami first hears about MSG from a doctor on TV who warns about the flavor enhancer “poisoning America.” When she learns that her grandfather was the Japanese scientist who invented the headache-inducing powder, it’s like finding out that her own blood is tainted. She, too, wishes she could just make herself invisible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is where the play deviates a bit from personal biography. Ami decides that the best thing to do is to travel back in time to prevent her ojiichan from ever inventing MSG, thus redeeming her family’s reputation and saving the entire world in the process. As you do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Madcap sci-fi twists notwithstanding, Green says \u003ci>Exotic Deadly\u003c/i> draws on her own adolescent experience more than any of her previous work. The play taps into the self-consciousness that Green felt about her Asian identity, especially when it came to the “lovely, nutritious bento” lunches that her mother packed for her every day. Those lunchboxes became a daily battle, Green recalls, even though she \u003ci>loved \u003c/i>her mother’s cooking. She especially relished her traditional Japanese breakfasts: a full spread of grilled fish, rice, miso soup, pickled plums and, her favorite, the sticky, funky fermented soybeans known as natto. (“I would obviously never take natto to school,” she says.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Green remembers having bottles of the MSG seasoning powder at home, but her mom kept them hidden in a little cupboard — as though she, too, believed there was something shameful about the stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Later on, when I thought about that shame of internalized racism, I really thought back to the image of my mom keeping that bottle hidden away,” Green says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13970890\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13970890\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-1920x1278.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Director Jesca Prudencio (left) and Green at a workshop for SF Playhouse’s production of ‘Exotic Deadly.’ \u003ccite>(Jessica Palopoli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Green, whose recent work includes a writing credit on \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/11/29/1215793965/interior-chinatown-is-a-genre-bending-exploration-of-asian-american-identity\">Hulu’s genre-bending adaptation of Charles Yu’s \u003ci>Interior Chinatown\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, knew she wanted to write a play about her family connection to MSG. But every time she tried, it always felt a little bit too clichéd. It was only after the COVID shutdown hit, she says, that she stopped worrying about whether the “gatekeepers” of the theater world would approve of the play. She wrote \u003ci>Exotic Deadly \u003c/i>mainly just to make herself laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the play does deal with heavy themes of racism, Green says, it’s also by far the “craziest” play she’s ever written. “It breaks every rule,” she says. “It has a bajillion characters. Sometimes we change locations three times on a page.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And since pseudoscience had imbued MSG with so many fake, insidious properties, Green thought it would be fun to give MSG even \u003ci>more \u003c/i>fake effects: “In this play, MSG makes you really good at kung fu fighting. It can make you time travel. It heals your bones.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the character who goes by “Exotic Deadly” (played by Francesca Fernandez) — a phrase that Green took directly from an old article about MSG. The name also evokes her memories of her early days as a stage actress, when every role for Asian American women seemed overtly sexualized. “Even in Shakespeare, they wanted you to play the prostitute,” she recalls. In the play, Exotic Deadly is the new girl from Japan who serves as Ami’s foil — who loves MSG, is proud of her Asian identity, and is full of rage toward the systems and stereotypes that oppress her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play ends with a big spectacle, and the idea, Green says, is for the climactic moment to \u003ci>feel\u003c/i> the way that MSG tastes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13966489,arts_13934852,arts_13920714']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>For Asian Americans who grew up in the heyday of \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/aznidentity/comments/qhxho4/what_are_all_the_azn_pride_people_back_in_the/\">AZN Pride\u003c/a>, the reclamation of MSG has been a major project of the past dozen years, championed by chefs like David Chang and Anthony Bourdain, and food scientists like \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20150115205527/https://luckypeach.com/on-msg-and-chinese-restaurant-syndrome/\">Harold McGee\u003c/a>. These days, MSG pride is as mainstream — and as widely \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@iantedy/video/7056639071141121306\">memeified\u003c/a> — as boba pride, and “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” has been thoroughly debunked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even still, Green says that every time she wonders if a play like \u003ci>Exotic Deadly \u003c/i>is still relevant after such a sea change, she’ll see a comment from a theater colleague or a random poster on the internet who says, in full earnestness, “Finally, someone is talking about how deadly [MSG] is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while COVID helped birth the play, it also set off a wave of anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S. In March 2021, when Green was preparing for the first big stage reading for \u003ci>Exotic Deadly\u003c/i> at The Old Globe in San Diego, the Atlanta spa shootings happened — eight people, including six women of Asian descent, shot and killed by a young man who told police he had a sex addiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Exotic Deadly\u003c/i> doesn’t deal directly with the violent side of exotification — to be clear, by Green’s own account, the play is a pure comedy. But the spate of anti-Asian hate crimes in the past few years has made her think about how for so many immigrants, their culture’s food is often the very first thing they’re made to feel ashamed of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re taught at such a young age that it’s okay to ‘other’ certain kinds of culture and food,” she says. “So when I see violence, when I see anti-Asian hate, I actually feel like it’s all extremely connected.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfplayhouse.org/sfph/2024-2025-season/exotic-deadly-or-the-msg-play/\">Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play\u003c/a>\u003ci> runs from Jan. 30 through March 8 at SF Playhouse (450 Post St., San Francisco).\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "SF Playhouse's New Play About MSG Debunks Anti-Asian Stereotypes | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When playwright Keiko Green was in her early teens, she learned that her grandfather — her ojiichan — had worked as a food scientist for Ajinomoto, the Tokyo-based company best known for inventing monosodium glutamate, a.k.a. MSG. In that moment, Green recalls, she didn’t feel a sense of pride in her family’s contribution to culinary history. Instead, she felt something more akin to shame. For a biracial \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japanese-american\">Japanese American\u003c/a> kid growing up in a predominantly white suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, the MSG link was just one more thing that made her different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just felt like I was sticking out so much,” she recalls. “And there was that teenage part of you that wants to just disappear into the background and be a little invisible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And anyway, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13966489/asian-american-chefs-msg-event-series-sf-chinatown-edge-on-the-square\">wasn’t MSG \u003ci>bad\u003c/i>\u003c/a>?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, no. Years later — long after Green had learned that those old “\u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-rotten-science-behind-the-msg-scare/\">Chinese Restaurant Syndrome\u003c/a>” campaigns were based on \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/an-msg-convert-visits-the-high-church-of-umami\">bad science\u003c/a> and, often, blatant \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/eddie-huang-racial-insensitivities-behind-msg-chinese-food-criticisms-n1115386\">racism\u003c/a> — the playwright recreated this moment of racialized teen angst in her play \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfplayhouse.org/sfph/2024-2025-season/exotic-deadly-or-the-msg-play/\">\u003ci>Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, which opens at San Francisco Playhouse on Jan. 30, directed by Jesca Prudencio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13970888\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13970888\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in a baseball cap seated in a theater with her arms outstretched. \" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli4-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Keiko Green wrote ‘Exotic Deadly’ during the pandemic, drawing on her own family connection to the Japanese company that invented MSG. \u003ccite>(Jessica Palopoli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Like Green, the protagonist, Ami (played by Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer), is an Asian American teen growing up in the late ’90s. Ami first hears about MSG from a doctor on TV who warns about the flavor enhancer “poisoning America.” When she learns that her grandfather was the Japanese scientist who invented the headache-inducing powder, it’s like finding out that her own blood is tainted. She, too, wishes she could just make herself invisible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is where the play deviates a bit from personal biography. Ami decides that the best thing to do is to travel back in time to prevent her ojiichan from ever inventing MSG, thus redeeming her family’s reputation and saving the entire world in the process. As you do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Madcap sci-fi twists notwithstanding, Green says \u003ci>Exotic Deadly\u003c/i> draws on her own adolescent experience more than any of her previous work. The play taps into the self-consciousness that Green felt about her Asian identity, especially when it came to the “lovely, nutritious bento” lunches that her mother packed for her every day. Those lunchboxes became a daily battle, Green recalls, even though she \u003ci>loved \u003c/i>her mother’s cooking. She especially relished her traditional Japanese breakfasts: a full spread of grilled fish, rice, miso soup, pickled plums and, her favorite, the sticky, funky fermented soybeans known as natto. (“I would obviously never take natto to school,” she says.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Green remembers having bottles of the MSG seasoning powder at home, but her mom kept them hidden in a little cupboard — as though she, too, believed there was something shameful about the stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Later on, when I thought about that shame of internalized racism, I really thought back to the image of my mom keeping that bottle hidden away,” Green says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13970890\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13970890\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/SFP_ExoticDeadlyWorkshop_JessicaPalopoli2-1920x1278.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Director Jesca Prudencio (left) and Green at a workshop for SF Playhouse’s production of ‘Exotic Deadly.’ \u003ccite>(Jessica Palopoli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Green, whose recent work includes a writing credit on \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/11/29/1215793965/interior-chinatown-is-a-genre-bending-exploration-of-asian-american-identity\">Hulu’s genre-bending adaptation of Charles Yu’s \u003ci>Interior Chinatown\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, knew she wanted to write a play about her family connection to MSG. But every time she tried, it always felt a little bit too clichéd. It was only after the COVID shutdown hit, she says, that she stopped worrying about whether the “gatekeepers” of the theater world would approve of the play. She wrote \u003ci>Exotic Deadly \u003c/i>mainly just to make herself laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the play does deal with heavy themes of racism, Green says, it’s also by far the “craziest” play she’s ever written. “It breaks every rule,” she says. “It has a bajillion characters. Sometimes we change locations three times on a page.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And since pseudoscience had imbued MSG with so many fake, insidious properties, Green thought it would be fun to give MSG even \u003ci>more \u003c/i>fake effects: “In this play, MSG makes you really good at kung fu fighting. It can make you time travel. It heals your bones.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the character who goes by “Exotic Deadly” (played by Francesca Fernandez) — a phrase that Green took directly from an old article about MSG. The name also evokes her memories of her early days as a stage actress, when every role for Asian American women seemed overtly sexualized. “Even in Shakespeare, they wanted you to play the prostitute,” she recalls. In the play, Exotic Deadly is the new girl from Japan who serves as Ami’s foil — who loves MSG, is proud of her Asian identity, and is full of rage toward the systems and stereotypes that oppress her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play ends with a big spectacle, and the idea, Green says, is for the climactic moment to \u003ci>feel\u003c/i> the way that MSG tastes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>For Asian Americans who grew up in the heyday of \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/aznidentity/comments/qhxho4/what_are_all_the_azn_pride_people_back_in_the/\">AZN Pride\u003c/a>, the reclamation of MSG has been a major project of the past dozen years, championed by chefs like David Chang and Anthony Bourdain, and food scientists like \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20150115205527/https://luckypeach.com/on-msg-and-chinese-restaurant-syndrome/\">Harold McGee\u003c/a>. These days, MSG pride is as mainstream — and as widely \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@iantedy/video/7056639071141121306\">memeified\u003c/a> — as boba pride, and “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” has been thoroughly debunked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even still, Green says that every time she wonders if a play like \u003ci>Exotic Deadly \u003c/i>is still relevant after such a sea change, she’ll see a comment from a theater colleague or a random poster on the internet who says, in full earnestness, “Finally, someone is talking about how deadly [MSG] is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while COVID helped birth the play, it also set off a wave of anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S. In March 2021, when Green was preparing for the first big stage reading for \u003ci>Exotic Deadly\u003c/i> at The Old Globe in San Diego, the Atlanta spa shootings happened — eight people, including six women of Asian descent, shot and killed by a young man who told police he had a sex addiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Exotic Deadly\u003c/i> doesn’t deal directly with the violent side of exotification — to be clear, by Green’s own account, the play is a pure comedy. But the spate of anti-Asian hate crimes in the past few years has made her think about how for so many immigrants, their culture’s food is often the very first thing they’re made to feel ashamed of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re taught at such a young age that it’s okay to ‘other’ certain kinds of culture and food,” she says. “So when I see violence, when I see anti-Asian hate, I actually feel like it’s all extremely connected.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfplayhouse.org/sfph/2024-2025-season/exotic-deadly-or-the-msg-play/\">Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play\u003c/a>\u003ci> runs from Jan. 30 through March 8 at SF Playhouse (450 Post St., San Francisco).\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959437\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959437\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating noodles and sushi hand rolls at a bar counter.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Berkeley’s Kinda Izakaya stands apart from the masses of expensive and overly precious izakayas in the Bay Area. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on vibes alone, I knew \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kinda.izakaya/\">Kinda Izakaya\u003c/a> was going to be my kind of spot the moment I walked in. The walls were papered over with manga panels and vintage-y beer posters featuring sumo wrestlers and lucky cats. Yellow Asahi beer crates had been flipped upside down to use as stools. Strings of paper lanterns and colorful little flags gave the feeling of dining outdoors in an alleyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I took one whiff of the smoke coming off the charcoal grill, and all of the pleasure receptors in my brain started firing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since last summer, Kinda is Berkeley’s newest izakaya — which, broadly defined, is a kind of Japanese pub that serves food that goes well with beer and sake. It’s one of my favorite restaurant genres. But with a few notable \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/review-abura-ya-a-punk-rock-fried-chicken-pop-up-1/\">exceptions\u003c/a>, Bay Area restaurateurs have tended to reinterpret the izakaya to mean an upscale bar that traffics in $15 meat skewers and stingily-portioned $25 plates of raw fish — and closes well before 10 p.m., as if to add insult to injury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What Kinda seems to understand on a molecular level is that izakaya culture is meant to be fun, a little bit boisterous and very, very casual. The restaurant is open until midnight on weekends, and at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the place was packed — a mix of middle-aged couples seated shoulder to shoulder at the bar and groups of twenty- and thirtysomethings chatting happily as they split a big spread of dishes. The dining room thrummed with upbeat J-pop that made you want to dance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959438\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959438\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: View of a Japanese izakaya from outside the front window. Paper lanterns and flags are hung up both inside and out.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">On weekends, Kinda is open — and lively — until midnight. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kinda has the fun and casual part down, even if it isn’t exactly a cheap restaurant; it’d still be a splurge for most college students schlepping over from Cal’s campus, which is a few blocks away. That said, you can buy a big-ass pitcher of cold beer for $24. And the menu is broad and varied enough to make it just as easy to piece together a tasty meal for about $30 a person as it is to ball out and drop a couple hundred bucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most importantly, the menu runs the gamut of typical izakaya food categories — raw seafood, salads, skewers, fried things, skewers, rice bowls, noodles and more — with enough verve and creativity to keep things interesting. If anything, the menu is so long, and everything sounds so fun, that you might be hit with decision-making panic. “Golden spoons” with ikura, uni and Hokkaido scallops? Grilled beef tongue with ponzu, egg yolk and fresh wasabi? That same tongue served on a curry plate? With sufficient stomach space and a more robust budget, we would have ordered it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13958926,arts_13957599,arts_13955884']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Most everything we did order hit the spot. There was a block of cold tofu topped with sweet seaweed and salmon roe, equal parts briny and refreshing. There was a big bowl of fried chicken skin (at $10, the deal of the night), as immaculately crunchy as the wonton strips they serve at Americanized Chinese restaurants, which was the ideal match for cold beer. There were hand rolls piled high with grilled eel and ponzu-kissed raw yellowtail. Our favorite was a bowl of udon carbonara topped with bonito flakes and spicy, bright-orange cod roe — a creamy, buttery taste of the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We finished with a grilled rice ball that had been brushed with a sweet soy sauce glaze and cooked over hot charcoal until it was smoky and crunchy and perfectly golden-brown: an elite-tier final bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kinda is also the rare Bay Area restaurant that feels tailor-made for a solo (midnight) diner — where you can swing by after work, grab a seat at the bar, order a couple of cold appetizers and a plate of mentaiko pasta, and feel completely comfortable and unhurried. I think we can all toast to that.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://kindaizakaya.com/\">\u003ci>Kinda Izakaya\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday 5:30–11 p.m. and Friday to Saturday 5:30 p.m.–midnight at 1941 University Ave. in Berkeley.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on vibes alone, I knew \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kinda.izakaya/\">Kinda Izakaya\u003c/a> was going to be my kind of spot the moment I walked in. The walls were papered over with manga panels and vintage-y beer posters featuring sumo wrestlers and lucky cats. Yellow Asahi beer crates had been flipped upside down to use as stools. Strings of paper lanterns and colorful little flags gave the feeling of dining outdoors in an alleyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I took one whiff of the smoke coming off the charcoal grill, and all of the pleasure receptors in my brain started firing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since last summer, Kinda is Berkeley’s newest izakaya — which, broadly defined, is a kind of Japanese pub that serves food that goes well with beer and sake. It’s one of my favorite restaurant genres. But with a few notable \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/review-abura-ya-a-punk-rock-fried-chicken-pop-up-1/\">exceptions\u003c/a>, Bay Area restaurateurs have tended to reinterpret the izakaya to mean an upscale bar that traffics in $15 meat skewers and stingily-portioned $25 plates of raw fish — and closes well before 10 p.m., as if to add insult to injury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What Kinda seems to understand on a molecular level is that izakaya culture is meant to be fun, a little bit boisterous and very, very casual. The restaurant is open until midnight on weekends, and at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the place was packed — a mix of middle-aged couples seated shoulder to shoulder at the bar and groups of twenty- and thirtysomethings chatting happily as they split a big spread of dishes. The dining room thrummed with upbeat J-pop that made you want to dance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959438\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959438\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: View of a Japanese izakaya from outside the front window. Paper lanterns and flags are hung up both inside and out.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">On weekends, Kinda is open — and lively — until midnight. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kinda has the fun and casual part down, even if it isn’t exactly a cheap restaurant; it’d still be a splurge for most college students schlepping over from Cal’s campus, which is a few blocks away. That said, you can buy a big-ass pitcher of cold beer for $24. And the menu is broad and varied enough to make it just as easy to piece together a tasty meal for about $30 a person as it is to ball out and drop a couple hundred bucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most importantly, the menu runs the gamut of typical izakaya food categories — raw seafood, salads, skewers, fried things, skewers, rice bowls, noodles and more — with enough verve and creativity to keep things interesting. If anything, the menu is so long, and everything sounds so fun, that you might be hit with decision-making panic. “Golden spoons” with ikura, uni and Hokkaido scallops? Grilled beef tongue with ponzu, egg yolk and fresh wasabi? That same tongue served on a curry plate? With sufficient stomach space and a more robust budget, we would have ordered it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Most everything we did order hit the spot. There was a block of cold tofu topped with sweet seaweed and salmon roe, equal parts briny and refreshing. There was a big bowl of fried chicken skin (at $10, the deal of the night), as immaculately crunchy as the wonton strips they serve at Americanized Chinese restaurants, which was the ideal match for cold beer. There were hand rolls piled high with grilled eel and ponzu-kissed raw yellowtail. Our favorite was a bowl of udon carbonara topped with bonito flakes and spicy, bright-orange cod roe — a creamy, buttery taste of the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We finished with a grilled rice ball that had been brushed with a sweet soy sauce glaze and cooked over hot charcoal until it was smoky and crunchy and perfectly golden-brown: an elite-tier final bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kinda is also the rare Bay Area restaurant that feels tailor-made for a solo (midnight) diner — where you can swing by after work, grab a seat at the bar, order a couple of cold appetizers and a plate of mentaiko pasta, and feel completely comfortable and unhurried. I think we can all toast to that.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://kindaizakaya.com/\">\u003ci>Kinda Izakaya\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday 5:30–11 p.m. and Friday to Saturday 5:30 p.m.–midnight at 1941 University Ave. in Berkeley.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957148\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957148\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a man shovels scallops into his mouth while sitting at an elegant bar. On the counter are tidy lobster sandwiches and fizzy cocktails in highball glasses.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nokori is a Japanese whisky highball bar hidden inside Sunnyvale’s TETRA Hotel. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, the search for late-night food is mostly a matter of excavating the unexpected gems that are hiding in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To wit: In order to get to \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/nokori-sunnyvale\">Nokori\u003c/a>, an elegant Japanese whisky bar in Sunnyvale that most Sunnyvaleans haven’t even heard of, you first have to navigate the city’s maze of identical high-tech office parks. Sandwiched between a couple of these anonymous tech campuses sits a \u003ca href=\"https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/sjcva-tetra-hotel-autograph-collection/overview/\">stylish boutique hotel\u003c/a>. And inside that hotel, after you walk through the cool, minimalistic lobby, past the shiny gold leaves dangling from the ceiling, you’ll spot this very chic, very Japanese little cocktail bar — with room for no more than seven or eight people at the counter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we sidled up to that counter at around 10 o’clock on a recent Friday, there was only one other gentleman there, nursing a cocktail and watching the Japanese F1 race on the TV with the volume turned off. So it really felt like we had stumbled on a secret spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we had come because we’d heard Nokori was open until midnight every night, and that it served a concise, appealing menu of fancy izakaya-style small plates until the kitchen did its last call at 11. And also because the bar specializes in the Japanese whisky highball, which happens to be my favorite drink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A basic highball is just Japanese whisky, soda water and ice, but Nokori is one of a handful of bars around the Bay Area that has installed a \u003ca href=\"https://punchdrink.com/articles/toki-japanese-whisky-highball-machine-has-been-hacked/\">special soda dispenser\u003c/a> from Japan that makes the soda water extra-extra fizzy — so much so that the bubbles look visibly angry. The bar serves a whopping nine different highballs, and it uses the expensive kind of ice that’s just one long, perfectly clear cuboid in your glass. All of which to say: My yuzu highball was fantastic. Cold and refreshing as could be. Subtly citrusy. Sneakily strong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957149\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957149\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: An elegant hotel lobby with modern, minimalist couches and an elegant bar at one end of the room, with sparkly gold leaves dangling from the ceiling.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">For late-night diners looking for a more quiet and chill experience. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It was the food, however, that will bring me back. We ordered torched Hokkaido scallops that were served in a style you might expect to find at one of the Bay Area’s buzzier, Asian-inflected fine dining restaurants. The mostly raw scallops had a zippy leche de tigre dressing and were artfully garnished with algae, rice puffs and briny sea grapes that burst in your mouth — a fun pop-and-crunch effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13956683,arts_13955884,arts_13954112']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>I also had one of the tastiest versions of Japanese karaage-style fried chicken that I’ve eaten in months — just impeccably crispy, well-seasoned and juicy thighs, no bells and whistles other than the little bowl of watery onion salsa that you could spoon over the chicken for a bit of brightness. And, perhaps most decadently, there were furikake-topped lobster grilled cheese sandwiches, served on bouncy Japanese milk bread. (Could I \u003ci>really\u003c/i> taste that it was lobster, instead of some less rarefied protein, under all that cheese? Maybe not. But I did want to dunk everything on the table into the savory miso aioli that came with the sandwich.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No surprise, all those small plates can add up to a bit of a hefty bill if you’re eating \u003ci>dinner\u003c/i> dinner. But for a fancy late-night snack at the bar? Considering that we were the only people ordering food at that hour, everything was so much more ambitious and better-tasting than it really needed to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So many of the Bay Area’s other after-hours spots are notable because of how crowded and bustling they are even late into the night, but Nokori’s virtues run in the opposite direction, appealing to anyone looking for a more chill and quiet late-night experience. This is the kind of elegant hotel bar where you might imagine yourself striking up a conversation with a beautiful stranger, or maybe your side-piece — or, if luck isn’t on your side, a couple of unkempt food writer types.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tetrahotelsv.com/dining/nokori/\">\u003ci>Nokori\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open daily from 3 p.m. to midnight inside TETRA Hotel (400 W. Java Dr., Sunnyvale); the kitchen is open 4–11 p.m. If you park in the hotel parking garage, Nokori will validate your parking.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Sunnyvale’s Secret Japanese Whisky Bar Serves Killer Late-Night Karaage | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957148\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957148\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a man shovels scallops into his mouth while sitting at an elegant bar. On the counter are tidy lobster sandwiches and fizzy cocktails in highball glasses.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nokori is a Japanese whisky highball bar hidden inside Sunnyvale’s TETRA Hotel. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, the search for late-night food is mostly a matter of excavating the unexpected gems that are hiding in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To wit: In order to get to \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/nokori-sunnyvale\">Nokori\u003c/a>, an elegant Japanese whisky bar in Sunnyvale that most Sunnyvaleans haven’t even heard of, you first have to navigate the city’s maze of identical high-tech office parks. Sandwiched between a couple of these anonymous tech campuses sits a \u003ca href=\"https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/sjcva-tetra-hotel-autograph-collection/overview/\">stylish boutique hotel\u003c/a>. And inside that hotel, after you walk through the cool, minimalistic lobby, past the shiny gold leaves dangling from the ceiling, you’ll spot this very chic, very Japanese little cocktail bar — with room for no more than seven or eight people at the counter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we sidled up to that counter at around 10 o’clock on a recent Friday, there was only one other gentleman there, nursing a cocktail and watching the Japanese F1 race on the TV with the volume turned off. So it really felt like we had stumbled on a secret spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we had come because we’d heard Nokori was open until midnight every night, and that it served a concise, appealing menu of fancy izakaya-style small plates until the kitchen did its last call at 11. And also because the bar specializes in the Japanese whisky highball, which happens to be my favorite drink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A basic highball is just Japanese whisky, soda water and ice, but Nokori is one of a handful of bars around the Bay Area that has installed a \u003ca href=\"https://punchdrink.com/articles/toki-japanese-whisky-highball-machine-has-been-hacked/\">special soda dispenser\u003c/a> from Japan that makes the soda water extra-extra fizzy — so much so that the bubbles look visibly angry. The bar serves a whopping nine different highballs, and it uses the expensive kind of ice that’s just one long, perfectly clear cuboid in your glass. All of which to say: My yuzu highball was fantastic. Cold and refreshing as could be. Subtly citrusy. Sneakily strong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957149\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957149\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: An elegant hotel lobby with modern, minimalist couches and an elegant bar at one end of the room, with sparkly gold leaves dangling from the ceiling.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">For late-night diners looking for a more quiet and chill experience. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It was the food, however, that will bring me back. We ordered torched Hokkaido scallops that were served in a style you might expect to find at one of the Bay Area’s buzzier, Asian-inflected fine dining restaurants. The mostly raw scallops had a zippy leche de tigre dressing and were artfully garnished with algae, rice puffs and briny sea grapes that burst in your mouth — a fun pop-and-crunch effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>I also had one of the tastiest versions of Japanese karaage-style fried chicken that I’ve eaten in months — just impeccably crispy, well-seasoned and juicy thighs, no bells and whistles other than the little bowl of watery onion salsa that you could spoon over the chicken for a bit of brightness. And, perhaps most decadently, there were furikake-topped lobster grilled cheese sandwiches, served on bouncy Japanese milk bread. (Could I \u003ci>really\u003c/i> taste that it was lobster, instead of some less rarefied protein, under all that cheese? Maybe not. But I did want to dunk everything on the table into the savory miso aioli that came with the sandwich.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No surprise, all those small plates can add up to a bit of a hefty bill if you’re eating \u003ci>dinner\u003c/i> dinner. But for a fancy late-night snack at the bar? Considering that we were the only people ordering food at that hour, everything was so much more ambitious and better-tasting than it really needed to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So many of the Bay Area’s other after-hours spots are notable because of how crowded and bustling they are even late into the night, but Nokori’s virtues run in the opposite direction, appealing to anyone looking for a more chill and quiet late-night experience. This is the kind of elegant hotel bar where you might imagine yourself striking up a conversation with a beautiful stranger, or maybe your side-piece — or, if luck isn’t on your side, a couple of unkempt food writer types.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tetrahotelsv.com/dining/nokori/\">\u003ci>Nokori\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open daily from 3 p.m. to midnight inside TETRA Hotel (400 W. Java Dr., Sunnyvale); the kitchen is open 4–11 p.m. If you park in the hotel parking garage, Nokori will validate your parking.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Umami Mart Pours Fresh, Raw Sake at NamaFest in Oakland",
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"content": "\u003cp>Over a decade ago, when the owners of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/umamimart/\">Umami Mart\u003c/a> — the sleek Japanese boutique that sells hard-to-find liquor and high-end barware like 24-karat gold bar spoons and diamond-cut mixing glasses — first arrived in Oakland, they hoped to celebrate Japan’s diverse beverage offerings. And they’ve done exactly that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13955219,arts_13935854,arts_13954939']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>Providing one of the Bay Area’s largest selections of Japanese craft beers and spirits, owners Yoko Kumano and Kayoko Akabori — who met while growing up in Cupertino — have \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/95914/japanese-craft-beer-comes-to-oakland-and-heres-what-you-should-try\">successfully imported Japan’s cheerful “kanpai” culture to the East Bay\u003c/a>. If you’ve ever wandered around their quaint brick-and-mortar outpost on Broadway & 40th, you’ve certainly discovered their lo-fi bar at the back, where whiskey highballs and shochu (a Japanese grain- and vegetable-based spirit) are served with a generous hand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, April 13, they’ll be upping the ante with their annual \u003ca href=\"https://umamimart.com/collections/events/products/namafest-2024\">NamaFest\u003c/a>. A “nama” — an abbreviation for namazake, or raw, unpasteurized sake — is the most freshly pressed iteration of sake you can find. Every spring, the seasonal sakes are ceremoniously made and bottled. In honor of the tradition, Umami Mart has held a small-scale NamaFest celebration at the bar each spring, but this year’s event will be the biggest one yet — the first time they’ll be hosting a full-on outdoor festival with 16 sake makers, both local and international, pouring up for the Bay Area’s most avid rice wine lovers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955492\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13955492\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"an outdoor event where patrons sit and dine on a sunny afternoon\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Umami Mart’s back lot has been used for events in the past, but never a full-on outdoor sake fest until now. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Umami Mart)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The event will take place in the shop’s back lot and will also include bites from pop-up \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/casadekei/?hl=en\">Casa de Kei\u003c/a>. With a one-ticket-gives-you-access-to-drinking-everything model, visitors can rotate through each glass of undiluted sake — including offerings from \u003ca href=\"https://sequoiasake.com/\">Sequoia Sake\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sipfifthtaste.com/\">Fifth Taste Sake\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.jotosake.com//\">Joto Sake\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.takarasake.com/\">Takara Sake\u003c/a> and, for the non-sake drinkers, \u003ca href=\"https://www.suntory.com/beer/premium/en/\">Suntory malt beer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterwards — or better yet, beforehand, while you still have your wits about you — festival-goers can peruse the shop and snag a miniature ceramic ghost or cat-themed can of beer. In my experience, Umami Mart sells top-shelf Japanese goods and beverages I’ve otherwise only ever seen while visiting Tokyo. Except this is in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://umamimart.com/collections/events/products/namafest-2024\">NamaFest\u003c/a> will take place in Umami Mart’s back lot (4027 Broadway, Oakland) on Sat., April 13, from 1–5 p.m. \u003ca href=\"https://umamimart.com/collections/events/products/namafest-2024\">Tickets are $55 and include a tasting of all 16 sakes\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>Providing one of the Bay Area’s largest selections of Japanese craft beers and spirits, owners Yoko Kumano and Kayoko Akabori — who met while growing up in Cupertino — have \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/95914/japanese-craft-beer-comes-to-oakland-and-heres-what-you-should-try\">successfully imported Japan’s cheerful “kanpai” culture to the East Bay\u003c/a>. If you’ve ever wandered around their quaint brick-and-mortar outpost on Broadway & 40th, you’ve certainly discovered their lo-fi bar at the back, where whiskey highballs and shochu (a Japanese grain- and vegetable-based spirit) are served with a generous hand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, April 13, they’ll be upping the ante with their annual \u003ca href=\"https://umamimart.com/collections/events/products/namafest-2024\">NamaFest\u003c/a>. A “nama” — an abbreviation for namazake, or raw, unpasteurized sake — is the most freshly pressed iteration of sake you can find. Every spring, the seasonal sakes are ceremoniously made and bottled. In honor of the tradition, Umami Mart has held a small-scale NamaFest celebration at the bar each spring, but this year’s event will be the biggest one yet — the first time they’ll be hosting a full-on outdoor festival with 16 sake makers, both local and international, pouring up for the Bay Area’s most avid rice wine lovers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955492\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13955492\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"an outdoor event where patrons sit and dine on a sunny afternoon\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/img_6419-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Umami Mart’s back lot has been used for events in the past, but never a full-on outdoor sake fest until now. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Umami Mart)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The event will take place in the shop’s back lot and will also include bites from pop-up \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/casadekei/?hl=en\">Casa de Kei\u003c/a>. With a one-ticket-gives-you-access-to-drinking-everything model, visitors can rotate through each glass of undiluted sake — including offerings from \u003ca href=\"https://sequoiasake.com/\">Sequoia Sake\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sipfifthtaste.com/\">Fifth Taste Sake\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.jotosake.com//\">Joto Sake\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.takarasake.com/\">Takara Sake\u003c/a> and, for the non-sake drinkers, \u003ca href=\"https://www.suntory.com/beer/premium/en/\">Suntory malt beer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterwards — or better yet, beforehand, while you still have your wits about you — festival-goers can peruse the shop and snag a miniature ceramic ghost or cat-themed can of beer. In my experience, Umami Mart sells top-shelf Japanese goods and beverages I’ve otherwise only ever seen while visiting Tokyo. Except this is in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://umamimart.com/collections/events/products/namafest-2024\">NamaFest\u003c/a> will take place in Umami Mart’s back lot (4027 Broadway, Oakland) on Sat., April 13, from 1–5 p.m. \u003ca href=\"https://umamimart.com/collections/events/products/namafest-2024\">Tickets are $55 and include a tasting of all 16 sakes\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "How Miso Helped Me Find My Community in San Francisco",
"headTitle": "How Miso Helped Me Find My Community in San Francisco | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934485\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934485\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person sits on the hood of a car parked on the side of a street.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kofi Ansong grabs a seat in front of Aedan Koji Kitchen, the fermented foods shop that helped him cultivate his newfound passion for miso. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap] knew nothing about miso when I moved to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the whole first year, I felt out of place meandering the city’s foggy hills and longed to feel at home — or, short of that, to at least recreate the life I had back in New England. Instead of reaching out to new acquaintances, I socialized primarily through FaceTime calls with friends back East. Instead of exploring the city’s food scene, I frequently Ubered to familiar chain restaurants like Shake Shack. And when I cooked for myself, it was exclusively a spaghetti recipe I’d learned in high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was back in 2021, and as I grappled with my own displacement, I was also becoming aware of the displacement around me. My new neighbors in the Mission consisted of well-to-do transplants and the houseless people that I passed by every day, splayed out along the sidewalks. The worst thing about it was my sense that I was becoming numb to these sights of human suffering. Was I doing anything to make San Francisco a better place? If not, I felt leaving the Bay was the only contribution I could make.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amidst these tormented thoughts, one day I noticed my neighbor was reselling the Japanese chef’s Maori Murota’s book \u003ci>Japanese Home Cooking\u003c/i>. Honestly, I had no intention of breaking our tacit vow to only ever nod silently at one another. But the book’s cover had a drawing of a bowl of ramen — the preferred meal of my favorite childhood manga character, Naruto. Immediately, I wanted nothing more but to forget my present worries, binge-watch the Chunin Exams arc and scarf down a big bowl of noodles. I finally introduced myself to the neighbor, an interior designer named Seth, and bought the book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13935911\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13935911\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi.jpg\" alt=\"The cover of a cookbook titled 'Japanese Home Cooking' by Maori Murota. The cover illustration depicts a pair of chopsticks lifting half a soft-boiled egg from a bowl of ramen noodles.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"2400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-1638x2048.jpg 1638w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The book that launched Ansong’s yearlong exploration of miso. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kofi Ansong)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One obstacle remained: Murota’s instructions for preparing the broth, which called for hours of simmering and many different pots, intimidated novice-cook me. In contrast, Murota’s brown miso vegetable soup seemed more approachable, with a simple dashi base made by soaking shiitake mushrooms and kombu in water overnight. I was relieved that my local grocery store carried the soup’s key ingredient: brown miso paste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Growing up in the suburbs of Connecticut didn’t lend itself to exposure to Japanese cuisine. My mother cooked foods from our Ghanaian heritage like banku, a ball of corn dough served in rich stew, and I understood it was the fermenting of the corn’s starches that gave the banku its bittersweetness. This thick, salty paste, made from fermented soybeans, was something different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turned out, the vegetables I’d selected for the soup emerged transformed and delicious after being steeped in the miso broth. The radishes had mellowed and were now earthy rather than spicy. Tender potatoes made the soup creamy. The broth itself was excellent, each sip full of savory umami yet still refreshing. In short, I was hooked on miso.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934483\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934483\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A collection of mason jars of beans and preserves.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Miso ingredients and products at San Francisco’s Aedan Koji Kitchen. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I soon began exploring more dishes I could make with the seasoning paste. Murota’s book contains a recipe for Japanese curry, and I found that adding miso deepened the sweetness from the apple and brought out the stew’s mouth-watering aromas. On another occasion, when I was recovering from a cold, I soothed myself with a cup of steaming hot water mixed with miso. I liked the nutty concoction so much that I now alternate between it and tea for breakfast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miso’s brilliance comes from both its versatility and complexity. It has an intricate flavor, and it’s also easy and rewarding to use. And my success with these new recipes encouraged me to embrace changes that extended beyond cooking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, I wanted to share my newfound interest with others — and FaceTiming my friends on the East Coast was no longer cutting it. Two classmates I vaguely knew from college had also moved to San Francisco, and I decided to invite them to my first dinner party. I prepared a pot of my miso curry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before I knew it, Jason and I were discussing the merits of our respective approaches to chopping onions. As I squeezed a packet of miso into the stew, Daniel lamented that he forgot to bring the miso he had been cooking with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934484\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934484\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"People stick toothpicks into balls of rice covered in toppings.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rice balls topped with miso and other ingredients at Aedan Koji Kitchen. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Once we realized we were all aspiring cooks, any initial awkwardness melted away. The conversation rapidly bounced around from miso to cooking more generally to cooking memes and, finally, to whatever crossed our minds. Once we started eating the curry, however, the only sounds were our collective “mmms,” “wows” and slurps. We finished the meal so satisfied that we decided to start a biweekly dinner series, which has since become a cornerstone of my time in the Bay. These home-cooked meals provide the stability and comfort I longed for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13929177,arts_13920714,arts_13929836']\u003c/span>The dinners have also introduced me to a host of new foods and people. It turned out that the miso Daniel had forgotten to bring was from \u003ca href=\"https://www.aedansf.com/koji-kitchen\">Aedan Koji Kitchen\u003c/a>, a specialty shop in the Mission that makes and sells Japanese fermented foods. He claimed that it was the best miso he had ever eaten. Later that week I purchased a tub of their country miso, fermented with barley. Dumping a spoonful into a new batch of curry gave it a hint of seaweed taste. I thought to myself, \u003ci>yeah, Daniel was right\u003c/i>. It really was the best miso I’d ever had.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, I took Koji Kitchen’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.aedansf.com/classes\">miso-making course\u003c/a>, taught by the store’s friendly, theatrical owner, Mariko Grady. As participants in the class pressed freshly fermented soybeans into mason jars, Grady exclaimed that the blend of bacteria on our hands would render each person’s miso unique, gesturing her hands in a claw-like motion to impersonate our hand germs. She instructed us only to make miso when we are happy because vibes — along with the germs — wind up getting imparted into the miso.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934480\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934480\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person with a headband and glasses speaks in front of a group of people seated at a table in an indoor setting.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mariko Grady (center), owner of Aedan Koji Kitchen, explains the basics of making miso to the class. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Later, I learned that Grady had in fact co-founded a Japanese theater troupe with her college friends, and that she had acted with the troupe for 30 years before settling down in SF with her family. She never considered miso to be a big part of her life until she sold homemade miso to raise money for victims of the 2011 earthquake in Japan. The demand was so high that she embraced miso-making as a new career. She founded Aedan Fermented Foods as a farmers market stand in 2012 and opened her physical store in 2022. She’s now arguably the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/San-Francisco-is-getting-a-new-store-devoted-to-17076201.php\">most widely\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehook.com/article/food-drink-san-francisco/mariko-grady-aedan-miso\">acclaimed\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.foodandwine.com/seasonings/aedan-miso-san-francisco-koji\">miso maker\u003c/a> in the Bay. For Grady, making miso has never been a predictable or solitary journey; her actions unexpectedly changed her and those around her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has been my experience with miso as well: More than anything, my interest in miso has provided me with a hobby to anchor myself in this strange and new city. It has emboldened me to cook whatever intrigues me, to embrace change more generally and to invite friends to accompany me along the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934481\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934481\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person with a goatee smiles while holding a plastic container filled with a dark paste.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The author holds a container of miso during a class at Aedan Koji Kitchen. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Just the other week, Jason and I took BART to Berkeley’s Tokyo Fish Market, determined to recreate a smoked toro, or tuna belly, that we had tried at a friend’s house. Back at my apartment, as the tendrils of smoke rose from the slices of blowtorched fish, Jason remarked that a day like this would have surprised him a year ago. I couldn’t have agreed more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It had been over a year since I had Ubered to Shake Shack, and calling friends back East was no longer my default weekend activity. Because of miso, San Francisco has become a lot less lonely and a lot more tasty. And I am excited for whatever changes come next.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934485\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934485\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person sits on the hood of a car parked on the side of a street.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68729__RPT2423-Enhanced-NR-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kofi Ansong grabs a seat in front of Aedan Koji Kitchen, the fermented foods shop that helped him cultivate his newfound passion for miso. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp> knew nothing about miso when I moved to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the whole first year, I felt out of place meandering the city’s foggy hills and longed to feel at home — or, short of that, to at least recreate the life I had back in New England. Instead of reaching out to new acquaintances, I socialized primarily through FaceTime calls with friends back East. Instead of exploring the city’s food scene, I frequently Ubered to familiar chain restaurants like Shake Shack. And when I cooked for myself, it was exclusively a spaghetti recipe I’d learned in high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was back in 2021, and as I grappled with my own displacement, I was also becoming aware of the displacement around me. My new neighbors in the Mission consisted of well-to-do transplants and the houseless people that I passed by every day, splayed out along the sidewalks. The worst thing about it was my sense that I was becoming numb to these sights of human suffering. Was I doing anything to make San Francisco a better place? If not, I felt leaving the Bay was the only contribution I could make.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amidst these tormented thoughts, one day I noticed my neighbor was reselling the Japanese chef’s Maori Murota’s book \u003ci>Japanese Home Cooking\u003c/i>. Honestly, I had no intention of breaking our tacit vow to only ever nod silently at one another. But the book’s cover had a drawing of a bowl of ramen — the preferred meal of my favorite childhood manga character, Naruto. Immediately, I wanted nothing more but to forget my present worries, binge-watch the Chunin Exams arc and scarf down a big bowl of noodles. I finally introduced myself to the neighbor, an interior designer named Seth, and bought the book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13935911\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13935911\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi.jpg\" alt=\"The cover of a cookbook titled 'Japanese Home Cooking' by Maori Murota. The cover illustration depicts a pair of chopsticks lifting half a soft-boiled egg from a bowl of ramen noodles.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"2400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/japanese-cookbook-cover_kofi-1638x2048.jpg 1638w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The book that launched Ansong’s yearlong exploration of miso. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kofi Ansong)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One obstacle remained: Murota’s instructions for preparing the broth, which called for hours of simmering and many different pots, intimidated novice-cook me. In contrast, Murota’s brown miso vegetable soup seemed more approachable, with a simple dashi base made by soaking shiitake mushrooms and kombu in water overnight. I was relieved that my local grocery store carried the soup’s key ingredient: brown miso paste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Growing up in the suburbs of Connecticut didn’t lend itself to exposure to Japanese cuisine. My mother cooked foods from our Ghanaian heritage like banku, a ball of corn dough served in rich stew, and I understood it was the fermenting of the corn’s starches that gave the banku its bittersweetness. This thick, salty paste, made from fermented soybeans, was something different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turned out, the vegetables I’d selected for the soup emerged transformed and delicious after being steeped in the miso broth. The radishes had mellowed and were now earthy rather than spicy. Tender potatoes made the soup creamy. The broth itself was excellent, each sip full of savory umami yet still refreshing. In short, I was hooked on miso.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934483\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934483\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A collection of mason jars of beans and preserves.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68712__RPT2207-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Miso ingredients and products at San Francisco’s Aedan Koji Kitchen. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I soon began exploring more dishes I could make with the seasoning paste. Murota’s book contains a recipe for Japanese curry, and I found that adding miso deepened the sweetness from the apple and brought out the stew’s mouth-watering aromas. On another occasion, when I was recovering from a cold, I soothed myself with a cup of steaming hot water mixed with miso. I liked the nutty concoction so much that I now alternate between it and tea for breakfast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miso’s brilliance comes from both its versatility and complexity. It has an intricate flavor, and it’s also easy and rewarding to use. And my success with these new recipes encouraged me to embrace changes that extended beyond cooking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, I wanted to share my newfound interest with others — and FaceTiming my friends on the East Coast was no longer cutting it. Two classmates I vaguely knew from college had also moved to San Francisco, and I decided to invite them to my first dinner party. I prepared a pot of my miso curry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before I knew it, Jason and I were discussing the merits of our respective approaches to chopping onions. As I squeezed a packet of miso into the stew, Daniel lamented that he forgot to bring the miso he had been cooking with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934484\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934484\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"People stick toothpicks into balls of rice covered in toppings.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68722__RPT2326-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rice balls topped with miso and other ingredients at Aedan Koji Kitchen. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Once we realized we were all aspiring cooks, any initial awkwardness melted away. The conversation rapidly bounced around from miso to cooking more generally to cooking memes and, finally, to whatever crossed our minds. Once we started eating the curry, however, the only sounds were our collective “mmms,” “wows” and slurps. We finished the meal so satisfied that we decided to start a biweekly dinner series, which has since become a cornerstone of my time in the Bay. These home-cooked meals provide the stability and comfort I longed for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>The dinners have also introduced me to a host of new foods and people. It turned out that the miso Daniel had forgotten to bring was from \u003ca href=\"https://www.aedansf.com/koji-kitchen\">Aedan Koji Kitchen\u003c/a>, a specialty shop in the Mission that makes and sells Japanese fermented foods. He claimed that it was the best miso he had ever eaten. Later that week I purchased a tub of their country miso, fermented with barley. Dumping a spoonful into a new batch of curry gave it a hint of seaweed taste. I thought to myself, \u003ci>yeah, Daniel was right\u003c/i>. It really was the best miso I’d ever had.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, I took Koji Kitchen’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.aedansf.com/classes\">miso-making course\u003c/a>, taught by the store’s friendly, theatrical owner, Mariko Grady. As participants in the class pressed freshly fermented soybeans into mason jars, Grady exclaimed that the blend of bacteria on our hands would render each person’s miso unique, gesturing her hands in a claw-like motion to impersonate our hand germs. She instructed us only to make miso when we are happy because vibes — along with the germs — wind up getting imparted into the miso.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934480\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934480\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person with a headband and glasses speaks in front of a group of people seated at a table in an indoor setting.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68689__RPT1565-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mariko Grady (center), owner of Aedan Koji Kitchen, explains the basics of making miso to the class. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Later, I learned that Grady had in fact co-founded a Japanese theater troupe with her college friends, and that she had acted with the troupe for 30 years before settling down in SF with her family. She never considered miso to be a big part of her life until she sold homemade miso to raise money for victims of the 2011 earthquake in Japan. The demand was so high that she embraced miso-making as a new career. She founded Aedan Fermented Foods as a farmers market stand in 2012 and opened her physical store in 2022. She’s now arguably the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/San-Francisco-is-getting-a-new-store-devoted-to-17076201.php\">most widely\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehook.com/article/food-drink-san-francisco/mariko-grady-aedan-miso\">acclaimed\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.foodandwine.com/seasonings/aedan-miso-san-francisco-koji\">miso maker\u003c/a> in the Bay. For Grady, making miso has never been a predictable or solitary journey; her actions unexpectedly changed her and those around her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has been my experience with miso as well: More than anything, my interest in miso has provided me with a hobby to anchor myself in this strange and new city. It has emboldened me to cook whatever intrigues me, to embrace change more generally and to invite friends to accompany me along the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934481\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934481\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A person with a goatee smiles while holding a plastic container filled with a dark paste.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/RS68695__RPT1719-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The author holds a container of miso during a class at Aedan Koji Kitchen. \u003ccite>(Raphael Timmons/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Just the other week, Jason and I took BART to Berkeley’s Tokyo Fish Market, determined to recreate a smoked toro, or tuna belly, that we had tried at a friend’s house. Back at my apartment, as the tendrils of smoke rose from the slices of blowtorched fish, Jason remarked that a day like this would have surprised him a year ago. I couldn’t have agreed more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It had been over a year since I had Ubered to Shake Shack, and calling friends back East was no longer my default weekend activity. Because of miso, San Francisco has become a lot less lonely and a lot more tasty. And I am excited for whatever changes come next.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "8-over-80-lena-turner",
"title": "How Lena Turner, a 93-Year-Old Japantown Legend, Brought Ramen to San Francisco",
"publishDate": 1695132020,
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"headTitle": "How Lena Turner, a 93-Year-Old Japantown Legend, Brought Ramen to San Francisco | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934930\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934930\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older woman in a white shawl smiles while seated in front of a stack of old photos.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lena Turner, 93, sits inside her now-closed restaurant, Chika & Sake. Turner has been a restauranteur in San Francisco’s Japantown for almost five decades. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This story is part of the series \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/8over80\">8 Over 80\u003c/a>, celebrating artists and cultural figures over the age of 80 who continue to shape the greater Bay Area.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]O[/dropcap]f all the ways to sum up the remarkable life of legendary San Francisco Japantown restaurateur Lena Turner, perhaps the simplest one is this: She was born to do business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still spry and active at the age of 93, Turner has been a Japantown fixture for nearly 50 years. She’s best known for opening Sapporo-ya, almost certainly San Francisco’s first ramen shop, in 1976. At the time, it was one of just a handful of restaurants in the U.S. specializing in what was, for most Americans, an obscure noodle dish. Sapporo-ya was also the first restaurant to open in Japantown’s shiny new Japan Center mall, helping lay the foundation for the neighborhood’s vibrant Japanese food scene of today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the decades since, Turner has opened and closed at least a half a dozen other restaurants, mostly in Japantown — the last one, \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2022/11/10/23451369/new-sake-koryori-bar-san-francisco-japantown-chika\">Chika & Sake\u003c/a>, closed earlier this year. Even well into her 90s, she’d show up for work every day, taste the food, make small talk with the regulars. Anyone who’s done business in Japantown for more than a minute knows her by name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over lunch at Sanraku, a quiet sushi restaurant on the edge of Union Square, Turner worries over me like I’m her own kin. The tonkatsu is quite good, she tells me — and, after we both order it, insists on trading to give me the larger portion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like business,” Turner says. “I don’t like depending on someone else’s money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even when she was a young girl growing up in World War II–era Japan, she was already showing signs of that entrepreneurial, can-do spirit: As American fire bombs rained down on Tokyo, Turner was the one who, at just 13 or 14 years old, dodged strafing bullets, scoured the black market and bartered with local farmers — all to secure food for her family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934865\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934865\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older woman looks off into the distance while standing in the doorway of a restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turner opened and closed at least a half a dozen restaurants over the course of her career, the most famous of which was Sapporo-ya, likely San Francisco’s first ramen shop. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Outside of Japantown, not very many people know Turner’s name. But it’s for good reason that so many within the community look to her as a role model and an inspiration — and it isn’t \u003ci>just \u003c/i>because of her sharp business sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As her son, Eric Turner, told me again and again when asked to describe his mother: “She was fearless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The smell of war\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Born in 1930, Turner (birth name Kamata Aoba) was the youngest daughter of a wealthy family in Tokyo’s Kojimachi district. Turner’s father, a professor, died when she was quite young, so by the time Japan entered World War II, her mother was teaching flower arrangement classes to support her three children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around that time, Hideki Tojo, Japan’s ultranationalist military leader (and, later, convicted war criminal) visited Turner’s junior high school, which his daughter also attended. His message to the teachers there? No more English was to be spoken or taught. And so, Turner says, “I could smell the war starting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside tag='8over80' label='More 8 Over 80']Before long, the American firebombing raids in Tokyo started in earnest. “Planes would come,” Turner recalls. “The sky is all red — everything burning, burning.” Soon, the family was forced to evacuate to an uncle’s house in the countryside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those two years Turner spent on the outskirts of Tokyo were a precursor to her long and distinguished career. Her brother had been drafted into the military, and her older sister, Midori, was very shy. But the family needed food to survive, so Turner — barely a teenager at the time — volunteered to travel back into the city to procure kimonos and other valuables from their home, jumping off the train before it reached the station so she could reuse the same ticket. These were dangerous excursions: Sometimes she’d dive onto the ground to avoid machine gun fire from war planes flying overhead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the countryside, Turner began to hone her business acumen, trading her cargo with local farmers in exchange for food and other necessities. It made sense, then, that after the war ended, Turner also became the family emissary to the black markets that many Japanese depended on for survival during those lean post-war years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About a decade later, in 1956, Turner parlayed those early connections to buy up a large supply of mahjong dice and other trinkets and transported them to Brazil, where her brother had opened a Japanese souvenir shop — her first time dabbling in a big business venture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934868\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934868\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Inside an album of old photos, a black-and-white photo of an Asian woman with tousled curls and hoop earrings.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of a young, glamorous Lena Turner, from when she worked as a model in her 20s. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>A legacy of love\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It would be another 20 years before she started her restaurant career in San Francisco — and in that time Turner lived a whole other life. In Tokyo in her 20s, she was a striking beauty who took on modeling jobs and went out dancing all the time. In photos from back then, she looks like a movie star — big, flashy hoop earrings, hair done up in stylishly tousled curls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naturally, all of the men in her life were in love with her. And so when Turner talks about those years now, she talks about a series of grand romances. There was the Russian, Alex, who would later go on to work for the KGB, and whom she credits for helping her to escape from her first, ill-fated marriage to an abusive Japanese man. She turned down Alex’s own proposal; a marriage would have included a move to the Soviet Union. (“I cannot stay in that cold place,” she remembers telling him.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was the handsome American Air Force pilot she met at a nightclub, whom she still talks about as her “best boyfriend,” with a dreamy look in her eye. And then there was Martin — poor Martin — the young Dutchman she fell in love with on the way to Brazil. He was working as an engineer on the boat, and by the end of the 42-day voyage, the two had gotten engaged. (“Every day I snuck into his room.”) Turner went back to Japan to wait for him, but right before he was supposed to visit, she got word that he had died in a tragic accident — hit by a car in Rotterdam. He was only 21.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s no wonder, then, that when I ask Turner what she hopes her lasting legacy will be, she doesn’t say anything about her restaurant empire or the various businesses that she has opened and closed. “Love,” she says instead. “And joy. That’s the best life I had. I’ve met very nice people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932218\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13932218\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A photo of a young woman wearing a dress and a swimsuit in a photo album.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">By the time she opened her first restaurant in San Francisco, Turner had lived a whole other life that was full of romance. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The accidental restaurateur\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It was love, finally, that brought Turner to the Bay Area in the early ’60s. She met her last husband, Jack Turner, an English jazz drummer, while she was helping her brother-in-law run a nightclub in Tokyo. The couple bounced around Oakland, Santa Monica and San José for a few years before Turner decided she would try to apply her business savvy in San Francisco’s Japantown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t have any money because musicians don’t make money,” she says. “My husband — you know, he’s an artist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='large']“I’m very good at sales. Anything I sell, everybody buys from me.”[/pullquote]It largely fell on Turner, then, to support her family. In Japantown, her first job was as a salesgirl selling reclining massage chairs, and she immediately found that all those years she’d spent negotiating with vendors on Tokyo’s black market had served her well. “I’m very good at sales,” she says. “Anything I sell, everybody buys from me. I sold \u003ci>a lot \u003c/i>of massage chairs.” For each one sold, she would get a $100 cash commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encouraged by that success, Turner opened the first business of her own in 1969 — Kamata Pearls, a pearl oyster shop on Fisherman’s Wharf. Tourists would pay a couple bucks for an oyster from the tanks to see how many pearls were inside. Then, Turner would work her sales magic, convincing customers to turn their treasure into custom pendants or rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The business was so lucrative that copycats sprung up all along the Wharf and Pier 39, so, after a few years, Turner started looking for other opportunities. One of her jewelry contacts recommended her to Gido Shibata, the founder of the original Sapporo-ya in Los Angeles, likely the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sgvtribune.com/2016/07/25/where-restaurants-and-la-history-meet-at-delicious-little-tokyo/\">first ramen restaurant in America\u003c/a>. He was looking to expand to San Francisco and wanted Turner to partner with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a risky proposition. “I had never been a waitress,” Turner recalls. “I didn’t know anything about the restaurant business.” And ramen, specifically, was still an unknown quantity to American customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934871\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934871\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older woman, seated, gestures with her hands as she tells a story. In front of her on the table is a stack of old photographs.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">With a stack of old photos in front of her, Turner reminisces about her early years in Japan. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Turner, forever undaunted, decided to give it a go. In the still-nascent Japan Center mall, she found a space that had previously been a training center for the Kikkoman soy sauce company. She brought in a ramen machine from Japan and set it up right next to the front window so passersby could see the noodles being made fresh every morning. Shibata sent a talented, hard-working chef, Yoshiaki, who got along with Turner so well that he wound up staying at the restaurant until she sold it in 2014. (“Forty years and we never got in a fight!” she exclaims.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, there are at least six ramen shops within a one-block radius of the Japantown Peace Plaza. But when Sapporo-ya opened in 1976, it was the only one — and, as Turner recalls, the restaurant quickly became something of a sensation, with customers lining up outside before it opened each morning. At Sapporo-ya, the \u003ci>San Francisco Examiner \u003c/i>food critic Patricia Unterman wrote in her \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/460907356/\">1983 review\u003c/a> of the restaurant, “the Japanese version of noodles and soup reaches new heights.” The dining room stayed busy late into the night — until 2 a.m. in those early years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant’s success also helped mark a turning point for Japantown as a whole, on the heels of a \u003ca href=\"https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/dr26xz18v\">contentious redevelopment project\u003c/a>. When it first opened, the Japan Center mall had a decidedly corporate vibe, with much of its square footage dedicated to showrooms for big Japanese conglomerates like Hitachi and Mitsubishi. But with the advent of restaurants like Sapporo-ya and other small retail stores in the mid-’70s, the mall gradually shifted its focus to what we see today: mostly small local businesses rooted in Japanese and Japanese American cultural products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934896\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934896\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants.jpg\" alt=\"Color photograph of long two-story white building with dark trim and cars parked along curb\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1359\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-800x544.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-1020x693.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-160x109.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-768x522.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-1536x1044.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-1920x1305.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The view southwest from Post and Webster Streets circa 1978. A sign for Fuku-Sushi and Sopporo-ya hangs near the entrance to the Japan Center mall. \u003ccite>(\u003ca href=\"https://digitalsf.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A202581?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=8729f00417c1be1bd5b7&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=9&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=6\">San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Turner, the ramen shop was just the beginning. Within a couple of years, she’d opened a sushi restaurant called Fuku-Sushi in the same building, and then a bar and restaurant called Momiji. (By this point, the \u003ci>Examiner \u003c/i>was calling her “Japantown’s queen of sushi bars.”) For a while, she also had a fur coat business in the Japan Center, an outpost of her pearl shop in Redondo Beach, in Southern California, and another sushi restaurant, Nobuyuki, in the Outer Richmond. The Turner restaurant that recent Japantown visitors are probably most familiar with is \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/10/23/21530789/takara-japantown-nari-japanese-comfort-food-outdoor-seating\">Takara\u003c/a>, a longtime Japan Center favorite for lunch bentos, which she bought a couple of years before the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The glory years, though, were when Sapporo-ya and Fuku-Sushi were at the peak of their popularity, in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Fuku, in particular, was a magnet for celebrities: Robin Williams, Keanu Reeves, Tony Curtis and Francis Ford Coppola all ate there. But while Turner collected their autographed photos to display, she was never especially starstruck. One time, she recalls, she came back to close the restaurant after having gone out dancing at the Tonga Room and her staff told her that Yoko Ono had stopped by — she’d requested a tatami room and walked into the restaurant barefoot. The time Keanu visited, Turner remembers one of her servers was so happy she burst into tears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t care,” Turner says. “I talked about the menu. I took his order.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934949\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1707px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934949\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A black-and-white photo in an old photo album shows a young chef in a headband straining noodles over a big pot.\" width=\"1707\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-1365x2048.jpg 1365w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1707px) 100vw, 1707px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of Yoshiaki, the ramen chef at Lena Turner’s restaurant Sapporo-ya, straining a batch of noodles during the restaurant’s early days. He and Turner worked together for nearly 40 years. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mostly, Turner is just happy that she was able to provide a good life for her two children. She says it as though that were an easy thing. But her son, Eric, a real estate agent in San Francisco, remembers his mother being a superhero-like figure. He was about 11 years old when she opened Sapporo-ya, and the family was living in San Rafael at the time. Turner would get up early in the morning to fry fresh chicken for sandwiches — to, as Eric puts it, “send us off to school with the best meal she could give us.” Then she would drive back and forth between San Rafael and the city, often twice a day, so that she could spend time with the kids when they got home from school before heading back to the restaurant at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She never complained,” Eric recalls. “There was no hesitation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mostly, Eric says, he’s inspired by how strong his mother has always been. Even starting in a new industry that she’d never had any experience with, she moved forward with complete confidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I look back on her legacy as someone who had no fear,” Eric says. “She was all of five foot tall, 100 pounds — no worries. She was all guts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932219\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13932219\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Bottles and posters sit on shelves along a wall.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bottles of sake decorate the interior of the now-closed Chika & Sake, Turner’s final restaurant — at least for now. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The next chapter\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In recent years, the difficulties of the pandemic have soured Turner on the restaurant industry. At the height of lockdown, she and the other tenants of Japan Center West were entangled in \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/21524071/japantown-japan-center-restaurants-sf-rent-negotiations-takara-kui-shin-bo\">prolonged dispute with their landlord\u003c/a>, a Beverly Hills–based developer that refused to give tenants any discount on back rent or maintenance fees, demanding the full amount — close to $20,000 a month for Takara — even when businesses in the mall weren’t allowed to open. The situation was so grim that when I spoke to Turner at the time, she essentially pronounced the neighborhood dead. “\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/21524071/japantown-japan-center-restaurants-sf-rent-negotiations-takara-kui-shin-bo\">I think Japantown is no more\u003c/a>,” she told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, she wound up \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/1/29/22254711/takara-sf-japantown-permanent-closure-japan-center-kiss-seafood\">closing Takara\u003c/a>. She opened a new restaurant, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13906456/aoba-japantown-japanese-restaurant-lena-turner-takara\">Sushi Aoba\u003c/a>, a few blocks away on Laguna Street, then later rebranded it as \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2022/11/10/23451369/new-sake-koryori-bar-san-francisco-japantown-chika\">Chika & Sake\u003c/a>, partnering with a local sake expert. But neither project worked out the way that Turner had hoped, and by this past spring she’d shuttered the space altogether.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, even at 93, Turner shows no signs of wanting to retire. Over the course of the many weeks we communicated for this story, she spoke constantly about wanting to find some new project. She says she’s sworn off restaurants for good — that there’s no way to make any money doing it. The young people she sees crowding into Japantown every weekend? “They have ice cream — they don’t eat food, young people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eric, her son, wouldn’t rule anything out. Who’s to say she won’t get the itch a few months from now to bring San Francisco some new dish the city has never seen? Or that she won’t dive head-first into a completely different business?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always want to do different things,” she says. “Nobody was doing ramen. Nobody was doing jewelry shops. So I want to do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932215\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13932215\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An older person sits at counter indoors with posters hung on the wall behind them.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turner sits for a portrait in her now-closed Japantown restaurant, Chika and Sake. Even at 93, she’s still contemplating her next business move. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mostly, she says, she feels gratitude for the amazing life that she has led — for all the people who have loved her, for this country that she now calls home. “When I hear the American national anthem, I am like this,” Turner says, clenching her fist on her chest. “This country raised me, not Japan.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she talks, it’s easy to see the young girl who bravely dodged bullets and jumped off moving trains to provide for her family — who never turned down an adventure. That willingness to try new things has made her a bedrock of the neighborhood. Turner still walks down to the Japan Center every day from her home on Van Ness. Every day, she’ll run into someone she knows — someone who’ll call out, “Lena! Lena!” and have a piece of gossip to share. Every day, she has a new story to tell.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "How Lena Turner Brought Ramen to San Francisco | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934930\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934930\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older woman in a white shawl smiles while seated in front of a stack of old photos.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-26-JY-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lena Turner, 93, sits inside her now-closed restaurant, Chika & Sake. Turner has been a restauranteur in San Francisco’s Japantown for almost five decades. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This story is part of the series \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/8over80\">8 Over 80\u003c/a>, celebrating artists and cultural figures over the age of 80 who continue to shape the greater Bay Area.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">O\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>f all the ways to sum up the remarkable life of legendary San Francisco Japantown restaurateur Lena Turner, perhaps the simplest one is this: She was born to do business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still spry and active at the age of 93, Turner has been a Japantown fixture for nearly 50 years. She’s best known for opening Sapporo-ya, almost certainly San Francisco’s first ramen shop, in 1976. At the time, it was one of just a handful of restaurants in the U.S. specializing in what was, for most Americans, an obscure noodle dish. Sapporo-ya was also the first restaurant to open in Japantown’s shiny new Japan Center mall, helping lay the foundation for the neighborhood’s vibrant Japanese food scene of today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the decades since, Turner has opened and closed at least a half a dozen other restaurants, mostly in Japantown — the last one, \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2022/11/10/23451369/new-sake-koryori-bar-san-francisco-japantown-chika\">Chika & Sake\u003c/a>, closed earlier this year. Even well into her 90s, she’d show up for work every day, taste the food, make small talk with the regulars. Anyone who’s done business in Japantown for more than a minute knows her by name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over lunch at Sanraku, a quiet sushi restaurant on the edge of Union Square, Turner worries over me like I’m her own kin. The tonkatsu is quite good, she tells me — and, after we both order it, insists on trading to give me the larger portion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like business,” Turner says. “I don’t like depending on someone else’s money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even when she was a young girl growing up in World War II–era Japan, she was already showing signs of that entrepreneurial, can-do spirit: As American fire bombs rained down on Tokyo, Turner was the one who, at just 13 or 14 years old, dodged strafing bullets, scoured the black market and bartered with local farmers — all to secure food for her family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934865\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934865\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older woman looks off into the distance while standing in the doorway of a restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-14-JY-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turner opened and closed at least a half a dozen restaurants over the course of her career, the most famous of which was Sapporo-ya, likely San Francisco’s first ramen shop. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Outside of Japantown, not very many people know Turner’s name. But it’s for good reason that so many within the community look to her as a role model and an inspiration — and it isn’t \u003ci>just \u003c/i>because of her sharp business sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As her son, Eric Turner, told me again and again when asked to describe his mother: “She was fearless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The smell of war\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Born in 1930, Turner (birth name Kamata Aoba) was the youngest daughter of a wealthy family in Tokyo’s Kojimachi district. Turner’s father, a professor, died when she was quite young, so by the time Japan entered World War II, her mother was teaching flower arrangement classes to support her three children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around that time, Hideki Tojo, Japan’s ultranationalist military leader (and, later, convicted war criminal) visited Turner’s junior high school, which his daughter also attended. His message to the teachers there? No more English was to be spoken or taught. And so, Turner says, “I could smell the war starting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Before long, the American firebombing raids in Tokyo started in earnest. “Planes would come,” Turner recalls. “The sky is all red — everything burning, burning.” Soon, the family was forced to evacuate to an uncle’s house in the countryside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those two years Turner spent on the outskirts of Tokyo were a precursor to her long and distinguished career. Her brother had been drafted into the military, and her older sister, Midori, was very shy. But the family needed food to survive, so Turner — barely a teenager at the time — volunteered to travel back into the city to procure kimonos and other valuables from their home, jumping off the train before it reached the station so she could reuse the same ticket. These were dangerous excursions: Sometimes she’d dive onto the ground to avoid machine gun fire from war planes flying overhead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the countryside, Turner began to hone her business acumen, trading her cargo with local farmers in exchange for food and other necessities. It made sense, then, that after the war ended, Turner also became the family emissary to the black markets that many Japanese depended on for survival during those lean post-war years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About a decade later, in 1956, Turner parlayed those early connections to buy up a large supply of mahjong dice and other trinkets and transported them to Brazil, where her brother had opened a Japanese souvenir shop — her first time dabbling in a big business venture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934868\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934868\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Inside an album of old photos, a black-and-white photo of an Asian woman with tousled curls and hoop earrings.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-29-JY-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of a young, glamorous Lena Turner, from when she worked as a model in her 20s. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>A legacy of love\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It would be another 20 years before she started her restaurant career in San Francisco — and in that time Turner lived a whole other life. In Tokyo in her 20s, she was a striking beauty who took on modeling jobs and went out dancing all the time. In photos from back then, she looks like a movie star — big, flashy hoop earrings, hair done up in stylishly tousled curls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naturally, all of the men in her life were in love with her. And so when Turner talks about those years now, she talks about a series of grand romances. There was the Russian, Alex, who would later go on to work for the KGB, and whom she credits for helping her to escape from her first, ill-fated marriage to an abusive Japanese man. She turned down Alex’s own proposal; a marriage would have included a move to the Soviet Union. (“I cannot stay in that cold place,” she remembers telling him.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was the handsome American Air Force pilot she met at a nightclub, whom she still talks about as her “best boyfriend,” with a dreamy look in her eye. And then there was Martin — poor Martin — the young Dutchman she fell in love with on the way to Brazil. He was working as an engineer on the boat, and by the end of the 42-day voyage, the two had gotten engaged. (“Every day I snuck into his room.”) Turner went back to Japan to wait for him, but right before he was supposed to visit, she got word that he had died in a tragic accident — hit by a car in Rotterdam. He was only 21.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s no wonder, then, that when I ask Turner what she hopes her lasting legacy will be, she doesn’t say anything about her restaurant empire or the various businesses that she has opened and closed. “Love,” she says instead. “And joy. That’s the best life I had. I’ve met very nice people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932218\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13932218\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A photo of a young woman wearing a dress and a swimsuit in a photo album.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67321_20230727-LenaTurner-18-JY-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">By the time she opened her first restaurant in San Francisco, Turner had lived a whole other life that was full of romance. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The accidental restaurateur\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It was love, finally, that brought Turner to the Bay Area in the early ’60s. She met her last husband, Jack Turner, an English jazz drummer, while she was helping her brother-in-law run a nightclub in Tokyo. The couple bounced around Oakland, Santa Monica and San José for a few years before Turner decided she would try to apply her business savvy in San Francisco’s Japantown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t have any money because musicians don’t make money,” she says. “My husband — you know, he’s an artist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>It largely fell on Turner, then, to support her family. In Japantown, her first job was as a salesgirl selling reclining massage chairs, and she immediately found that all those years she’d spent negotiating with vendors on Tokyo’s black market had served her well. “I’m very good at sales,” she says. “Anything I sell, everybody buys from me. I sold \u003ci>a lot \u003c/i>of massage chairs.” For each one sold, she would get a $100 cash commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encouraged by that success, Turner opened the first business of her own in 1969 — Kamata Pearls, a pearl oyster shop on Fisherman’s Wharf. Tourists would pay a couple bucks for an oyster from the tanks to see how many pearls were inside. Then, Turner would work her sales magic, convincing customers to turn their treasure into custom pendants or rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The business was so lucrative that copycats sprung up all along the Wharf and Pier 39, so, after a few years, Turner started looking for other opportunities. One of her jewelry contacts recommended her to Gido Shibata, the founder of the original Sapporo-ya in Los Angeles, likely the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sgvtribune.com/2016/07/25/where-restaurants-and-la-history-meet-at-delicious-little-tokyo/\">first ramen restaurant in America\u003c/a>. He was looking to expand to San Francisco and wanted Turner to partner with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a risky proposition. “I had never been a waitress,” Turner recalls. “I didn’t know anything about the restaurant business.” And ramen, specifically, was still an unknown quantity to American customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934871\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934871\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older woman, seated, gestures with her hands as she tells a story. In front of her on the table is a stack of old photographs.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-25-JY-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">With a stack of old photos in front of her, Turner reminisces about her early years in Japan. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Turner, forever undaunted, decided to give it a go. In the still-nascent Japan Center mall, she found a space that had previously been a training center for the Kikkoman soy sauce company. She brought in a ramen machine from Japan and set it up right next to the front window so passersby could see the noodles being made fresh every morning. Shibata sent a talented, hard-working chef, Yoshiaki, who got along with Turner so well that he wound up staying at the restaurant until she sold it in 2014. (“Forty years and we never got in a fight!” she exclaims.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, there are at least six ramen shops within a one-block radius of the Japantown Peace Plaza. But when Sapporo-ya opened in 1976, it was the only one — and, as Turner recalls, the restaurant quickly became something of a sensation, with customers lining up outside before it opened each morning. At Sapporo-ya, the \u003ci>San Francisco Examiner \u003c/i>food critic Patricia Unterman wrote in her \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/image/460907356/\">1983 review\u003c/a> of the restaurant, “the Japanese version of noodles and soup reaches new heights.” The dining room stayed busy late into the night — until 2 a.m. in those early years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant’s success also helped mark a turning point for Japantown as a whole, on the heels of a \u003ca href=\"https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/dr26xz18v\">contentious redevelopment project\u003c/a>. When it first opened, the Japan Center mall had a decidedly corporate vibe, with much of its square footage dedicated to showrooms for big Japanese conglomerates like Hitachi and Mitsubishi. But with the advent of restaurants like Sapporo-ya and other small retail stores in the mid-’70s, the mall gradually shifted its focus to what we see today: mostly small local businesses rooted in Japanese and Japanese American cultural products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934896\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934896\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants.jpg\" alt=\"Color photograph of long two-story white building with dark trim and cars parked along curb\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1359\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-800x544.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-1020x693.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-160x109.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-768x522.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-1536x1044.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/PostWebster_Restaurants-1920x1305.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The view southwest from Post and Webster Streets circa 1978. A sign for Fuku-Sushi and Sopporo-ya hangs near the entrance to the Japan Center mall. \u003ccite>(\u003ca href=\"https://digitalsf.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A202581?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=8729f00417c1be1bd5b7&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=9&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=6\">San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Turner, the ramen shop was just the beginning. Within a couple of years, she’d opened a sushi restaurant called Fuku-Sushi in the same building, and then a bar and restaurant called Momiji. (By this point, the \u003ci>Examiner \u003c/i>was calling her “Japantown’s queen of sushi bars.”) For a while, she also had a fur coat business in the Japan Center, an outpost of her pearl shop in Redondo Beach, in Southern California, and another sushi restaurant, Nobuyuki, in the Outer Richmond. The Turner restaurant that recent Japantown visitors are probably most familiar with is \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/10/23/21530789/takara-japantown-nari-japanese-comfort-food-outdoor-seating\">Takara\u003c/a>, a longtime Japan Center favorite for lunch bentos, which she bought a couple of years before the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The glory years, though, were when Sapporo-ya and Fuku-Sushi were at the peak of their popularity, in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Fuku, in particular, was a magnet for celebrities: Robin Williams, Keanu Reeves, Tony Curtis and Francis Ford Coppola all ate there. But while Turner collected their autographed photos to display, she was never especially starstruck. One time, she recalls, she came back to close the restaurant after having gone out dancing at the Tonga Room and her staff told her that Yoko Ono had stopped by — she’d requested a tatami room and walked into the restaurant barefoot. The time Keanu visited, Turner remembers one of her servers was so happy she burst into tears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t care,” Turner says. “I talked about the menu. I took his order.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934949\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1707px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934949\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A black-and-white photo in an old photo album shows a young chef in a headband straining noodles over a big pot.\" width=\"1707\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/20230727-LenaTurner-49-JY-qut-1365x2048.jpg 1365w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1707px) 100vw, 1707px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of Yoshiaki, the ramen chef at Lena Turner’s restaurant Sapporo-ya, straining a batch of noodles during the restaurant’s early days. He and Turner worked together for nearly 40 years. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mostly, Turner is just happy that she was able to provide a good life for her two children. She says it as though that were an easy thing. But her son, Eric, a real estate agent in San Francisco, remembers his mother being a superhero-like figure. He was about 11 years old when she opened Sapporo-ya, and the family was living in San Rafael at the time. Turner would get up early in the morning to fry fresh chicken for sandwiches — to, as Eric puts it, “send us off to school with the best meal she could give us.” Then she would drive back and forth between San Rafael and the city, often twice a day, so that she could spend time with the kids when they got home from school before heading back to the restaurant at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She never complained,” Eric recalls. “There was no hesitation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mostly, Eric says, he’s inspired by how strong his mother has always been. Even starting in a new industry that she’d never had any experience with, she moved forward with complete confidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I look back on her legacy as someone who had no fear,” Eric says. “She was all of five foot tall, 100 pounds — no worries. She was all guts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932219\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13932219\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Bottles and posters sit on shelves along a wall.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67327_20230727-LenaTurner-23-JY-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bottles of sake decorate the interior of the now-closed Chika & Sake, Turner’s final restaurant — at least for now. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The next chapter\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In recent years, the difficulties of the pandemic have soured Turner on the restaurant industry. At the height of lockdown, she and the other tenants of Japan Center West were entangled in \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/21524071/japantown-japan-center-restaurants-sf-rent-negotiations-takara-kui-shin-bo\">prolonged dispute with their landlord\u003c/a>, a Beverly Hills–based developer that refused to give tenants any discount on back rent or maintenance fees, demanding the full amount — close to $20,000 a month for Takara — even when businesses in the mall weren’t allowed to open. The situation was so grim that when I spoke to Turner at the time, she essentially pronounced the neighborhood dead. “\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/21524071/japantown-japan-center-restaurants-sf-rent-negotiations-takara-kui-shin-bo\">I think Japantown is no more\u003c/a>,” she told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, she wound up \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/1/29/22254711/takara-sf-japantown-permanent-closure-japan-center-kiss-seafood\">closing Takara\u003c/a>. She opened a new restaurant, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13906456/aoba-japantown-japanese-restaurant-lena-turner-takara\">Sushi Aoba\u003c/a>, a few blocks away on Laguna Street, then later rebranded it as \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2022/11/10/23451369/new-sake-koryori-bar-san-francisco-japantown-chika\">Chika & Sake\u003c/a>, partnering with a local sake expert. But neither project worked out the way that Turner had hoped, and by this past spring she’d shuttered the space altogether.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, even at 93, Turner shows no signs of wanting to retire. Over the course of the many weeks we communicated for this story, she spoke constantly about wanting to find some new project. She says she’s sworn off restaurants for good — that there’s no way to make any money doing it. The young people she sees crowding into Japantown every weekend? “They have ice cream — they don’t eat food, young people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eric, her son, wouldn’t rule anything out. Who’s to say she won’t get the itch a few months from now to bring San Francisco some new dish the city has never seen? Or that she won’t dive head-first into a completely different business?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always want to do different things,” she says. “Nobody was doing ramen. Nobody was doing jewelry shops. So I want to do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932215\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13932215\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An older person sits at counter indoors with posters hung on the wall behind them.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/RS67307_20230727-LenaTurner-05-JY-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turner sits for a portrait in her now-closed Japantown restaurant, Chika and Sake. Even at 93, she’s still contemplating her next business move. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mostly, she says, she feels gratitude for the amazing life that she has led — for all the people who have loved her, for this country that she now calls home. “When I hear the American national anthem, I am like this,” Turner says, clenching her fist on her chest. “This country raised me, not Japan.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she talks, it’s easy to see the young girl who bravely dodged bullets and jumped off moving trains to provide for her family — who never turned down an adventure. That willingness to try new things has made her a bedrock of the neighborhood. Turner still walks down to the Japan Center every day from her home on Van Ness. Every day, she’ll run into someone she knows — someone who’ll call out, “Lena! Lena!” and have a piece of gossip to share. Every day, she has a new story to tell.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
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"meta": {
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},
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
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},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
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"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
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