Sushi Nozawa Announces Closure after 25 Years
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Sushi Nozawa Announces Closure after 25 Years
Master Chef Nozawa to Focus on his Latest Sushi Venture
Studio City, CA – February 29, 2012 – Sushi Nozawa, the famed Los Angeles-based sushi restaurant, announces
that it will close its doors after serving traditional sushi to its many dedicated fans for 25 years. Located at 11228
Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, the restaurant, with Chef Nozawa at the helm, will serve its final customers at the
end of tonight’s service.
Chef Nozawa, the only chef ever to serve guests behind the bar at Sushi Nozawa, will close Sushi Nozawa and
turn his focus to his latest venture, SUGARFISH (www.sugarfishsushi.com). The existing Sushi Nozawa location
in Studio City will be completely remodeled and opened as a SUGARFISH later in the spring, and will feature
the “Trust Me” artwork given to Chef Nozawa over the years.
In a city whose culinary tradition is greatly defined by its obsession with sushi, the closing of Sushi Nozawa
marks the end of an era. Trent Reznor, of the Nine Inch Nails and longtime Sushi Nozawa regular commented,
“Sushi Nozawa is quite simply my very favorite place in the world to eat. Chef Nozawa is truly a great artist and
has lifted the spirits of many an evening with the simplicity and perfection of what he serves. I will miss seeing
Nozawa-san behind the bar.”
Chef Nozawa, one of Los Angeles’s sushi pioneers, is renowned for his consistently high Zagat ratings among all
Los Angeles restaurants, as well as his strict rules for dining in his restaurant. “My dream has been to teach the
American consumer the traditional ways of sushi. My many customers have learned to appreciate and love my
style, which I know is very different than the ways they are accustomed to.” Chef Nozawa has also used his pas-
sion for teaching to train other sushi masters in Los Angeles, Aspen, Austin, Denver, San Diego and more.
“Sushi Nozawa has forever been my all time favorite place to eat. My personal record is 8 meals in one week, out
of a possible 10,” said actor Jason Biggs. “It’s hard to describe what a loss it is to not be able to sit at the end of the
bar, eating the best sushi in the world opposite one of my favorite people in the world – Chef Nozawa.”
Ray Romano of Everybody Loves Raymond commented, “My first introduction to sushi in LA was a lunch at
Nozawa with the Everybody Loves Raymond writers and it spoiled me from ever having sushi anywhere else.
We went there for lunch once a week for the next nine years. I missed my show when it went off the air, but not
quite as much as I missed those lunches. I have been going there ever since. It was perfect.”
Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal, added, “His motto was ‘Trust Me’ and after one bite of his
fish 25 years ago, to me he became the Walter Cronkite of sushi. If it weren’t for Nozawa, we might all be eating
nothing but California rolls and spicy tuna.”
* * *
SUGARFISH by sushi nozawa is operated by Sushi Nozawa, LLC, a California company based in Santa Monica. Sushi Nozawa in Studio City, owned and operated by
Kazunori Nozawa, has earned the acclaim of Southern California diners and critics for more than two decades and is recognized for its premium quality and orthodox
principles of edo-style sushi preparation by Master Sushi Chef Nozawa. Sushi Nozawa has consistently received top ratings in the annual Zagat surveys and has a fer-
vently loyal fan base, founded on what the New York Times calls “the lure of the fish, the freshest from the world’s waters.” SUGARFISH by sushi nozawa with locations
in Brentwood, Downtown Los Angeles, Marina del Rey and Santa Monica serve authentic, moderately-priced sushi of the highest quality; the restaurants have been rated
as the best sushi restaurants in Los Angeles by CitySearch and numerous Los Angeles publications.
For more information contact:
Clement Mok
415 782-6055
press@sushinozawa.com
www.sushinozawa.com
www.SUGARFISHsushi.com
Bio Chef Kazunori Nozawa
Growing up in Tokyo, Kazunori Nozawa had two great loves: baseball and food.
When he was passed over in the professional baseball draft, Nozawa entered a
sushi apprenticeship in one of the city’s top restaurants.
Sushi is a three-hundred-year-old artisanship in Japan, and the life of a sushi
understudy is arduous. Apprentices work grueling 15-hour days, six days a week.
For three years, Nozawa made deliveries, washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen,
and learned how to make rice. Eventually he graduated to fish preparation, first
learning how to make rolls and eventually preparing nigiri sushi. Although it
was not part of his duties, Nozawa would accompany the master chef to the fish
market at Tsukiji to learn the essential task of seafood selection.
Nozawa showed great promise and was encouraged to visit regions outside the
capital to learn about the local seafood. He spent several months in each prov-
ince, absorbing local approaches to the regional catch. In Yamagata, he worked
with sweet shrimp and hoki clams. In Shizuoka prefecture, he learned to prepare
glass fish and made sashimi from live fish such as octopus. Nozawa had a burn-
ing curiosity and “wanted to learn about every fish in the world.”
After five years on the road, Nozawa returned to Tokyo. He joined the profes-
sional sushi chefs’ trade association that referred him to a series of restaurants
where he continued to hone his skills. Then, at the age of 30, together with his
mother and sister, Nozawa opened his own restaurant in an affluent Tokyo neigh-
borhood. The venture was a success, but just two years later, the trade association
called again and offered him a chance to work in California.
Nozawa landed at Asuka, a Westwood restaurant that still exists. He admired the
English language abilities of the staff, but was surprised by their lack of sushi-
making skills. The menu was inauthentic and light-years from his classic train-
ing. It was here that he realized his calling: to educate Americans and Japanese-
American sushi chefs on the value of traditional sushi. Over the next two years,
he worked as a consulting chef, visiting restaurants in Anchorage, Aspen, Den-
ver, Detroit, New York, Portland, and Santa Barbara and teaching the traditionalEdo- or Tokyo-style to Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and American chefs. In 1987, Nozawa learned that a location had become available in the affluent San Fernando Valley town of Studio City. He was eager to open his own restaurant where he could serve authentic, traditional sushi in a simple, no-frills setting using the highest quality seafood. Many of his Japanese friends discouraged him, insisting Americans, accustomed to California rolls and other popular variations, would not appreciate Tokyo-style sushi. In spite of their opinions, Nozawa could not be dissuaded, and Sushi Nozawa was born. Three months of empty chairs in Nozawa’s new restaurant seemed to prove friends correct. But everything changed on January 1, 1988, after a rave review, “Code Is Strict At The Sushi Academy,” written by Jonathan Gold, appeared in the Los Angeles Times. The restaurant quickly became a destination for sushi lovers as word spread about this unique, intense, and deceptively simple dining experience. Since its opening 25 years ago, Sushi Nozawa has consistently placed in the top tier of the Zagat Guide’s overall food ratings, and has also won its best Japanese and best sushi categories. He has trained many students who have opened highly successful restaurants including Sasabune, Hiko, Yotsu-Ya, and Edo Sushi. Nozawa’s reputation as the “Sushi Nazi” comes from his insistence that the dining experience in his restaurant show respect for tradition, sushi dining etiquette, his customers, and, of course, the food itself. For example, he democratically allo- cates uni when it is scarce so that many diners will be able to enjoy this unique seafood. Customers who do not order the Trust Me, or chef ’s choice menu, are invited to sit at the tables rather than the sushi bar. The overall mood in the res- taurant is calm, with food as the focus, and, in this environment, cell phones are almost sacrilegious.
October 2008
Featured in
Wa l l Street Jour nal
Click to Read Article.
© 2008-2009 sushiNozawa, LLC PK0807_v2.0 sushiNozawa, LLC 11628 Santa Monica Blvd. Suite 200 Los Angeles, CA 90025 www.sugarFISHsushi.comOctober 24, 2007 Los Angeles Journal: A Sushi Bar Brings Hollywood to Its Knees By TODD S. PURDUM Here on the eastern edge of the Pacific Rim, where power is mystic and nothing is quite so attractive as whatev- er is just out of reach, a peculiar phenomenon thrives: a restaurant in which even Hollywood’s high and mighty must take whatever they are given, including stern lectures from the chef. It is an unlikely temple, sandwiched in a storefront in a modest mini-mall in Studio City, just down Ventura Boulevard from the sound stages of Universal, Warner Brothers, Disney and NBC. But at Sushi Nozawa, the lines spill into the lot full of luxury cars, and the handful of seats at the wood-grain formica bar are almost al- ways taken by people willing to spend upwards of $50 each to be humbled. The lure is the fish, the freshest from the world’s waters: silky skipjack from Hawaii, pungent salmon eggs from Alaska, vanilla-scented blue crab from Chesapeake Bay and buttery king mackerel from Boston, briny oysters from Washington State and lightly cooked monkfish liver as rich as foie gras, along with the finest examples of sushi standbys like ahi, albacore and yellowtail. The conundrum is the chef and owner, a fierce-eyed, forbidding master named Kazunori Nozawa (pronounced no-ZAH-wuh), who for 10 years has been on a one-man mission to educate Californians in the fine art of Edo- style sushi, a crumbly concoction of warm rice and cold, raw fish first served up by Tokyo street vendors some 300 years ago. If you sit at Nozawa-san’s counter, he tells you what to eat, and how to eat it, when to dip it in soy sauce and when not to, and the rules are firm and inviolable: one piece, one bite. The sign behind the coun- ter is succinct: ‘’Today’s Special -- Trust Me.’’ ‘’I will never go there again,’’ said Gary Ross, the director and screenwriter who wrote ‘’Big’’ and ‘’Dave.’’ ‘’They wouldn’t give me lemon with my sushi. Now, if I went to the Palm and wanted too much salt, would they throw me out, too? If I wanted more butter sauce? It’s a restaurant!’’ ‘’The fish is great,’’ Mr. Ross added. ‘’It’s the subjugation that leaves something to be desired.’’ But for Mr. Nozawa’s high-powered customers, including executives from SKG Dreamworks, Steven Spiel- berg’s studio, the subjugation appears to be part of the game. ‘’They want to be dominated by someone that they think is superior,’’ said Jay Weston, the producer of films like ‘’Lady Sings the Blues’’ who also publishes a celebrated restaurant newsletter here. ‘’They want to be in.’’ Mr. Ross added: ‘’It’s like the way people embrace their trainers. If someone denies them something, they’ll go back week after week.’’ © 2008 sushiNozawa, LLC PK0807_v1.4 sushiNozawa, LLC 11628 Santa Monica Blvd. Suite 200 Los Angeles, CA 90025 www.sugarfishsushi.com
All that is fine with Nozawa-san, who slaps each wad of rice into his hand with the balletic rhythms of a base- ball pitcher on the mound, his lips pursed in severe concentration. Like the Soup Nazi character on ‘’Seinfeld,’’ which is based on the proprietor of the Soup Kitchen International restaurant in midtown Manhattan, Mr. No- zawa hews to his own rituals, and he does not welcome customers who don’t accept them. He keeps the clock above his counter set half an hour fast, the better to shoo out lingering diners; he refuses to open on weekends; the blinds are often drawn and a ‘’CLOSED’’ sign posted well before the scheduled closing time; he rejects late- comers by pronouncing himself out of rice. This is one restaurant where the boilerplate warning ‘’We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone’’ takes on real teeth. ‘’He is very bossy sometimes,’’ said Mr. Nozawa’s soft-spoken wife, Yumiko, who spoke on his behalf because he was self-conscious about his English. ‘’For some people, that is too much pressure. But if you don’t like things, you can take a table and order what you want. Just in his mind, he wants to teach customer good fish.’’ In fact, Mr. Nozawa has taught sushi-making around the country, and if diners surrender to his spell, the rewards can be delicious, and he may even allow himself a smile. His students include the proprietor of Sushi Sasabune, a restaurant with branches here and in Honolulu. There are a handful of other sushi restaurants in Los Angeles where the drill is similar, or where diners may put themselves in the chef’s hands. Perhaps the most expensive is Matsuhisa, in Beverly Hills, where the sushi and tempura are exquisite, but dinner for one can cost $100. At such places, popular Americanized items like California rolls and spicy tuna rolls are unavailable. Indeed, the Los Angeles Zagat restaurant guide warns, ‘’Just don’t ask for something mundane like a California roll -- No- zawa will throw you out!’’ (Mrs. Nozawa says there is a good reason: not only are California rolls ‘’very bor- ing,’’ but the top-quality king crab legs needed to make first-rate ones are almost unobtainable, and her husband refuses to use the ‘’fake fish’’ crab sticks favored by less serious establishments.) Still, the Nozawa experience is not for everyone. Albert Brooks, the actor, writer and director, ventured there a few years ago with his friend Sean Daniel, a producer and former studio executive, aware of the restaurant’s reputation for excellent fish and a strict approach. ‘’We frankly figured, how strict can it be, so we sat down and ordered our sake,’’ Mr. Daniel recalled. ‘’All I know is that after one round of the esteemed chef’s selection, Albert asked for one of his favorites, which was tuna sashimi, and he was told in a brusque way, to say the least, ‘No tuna sashimi.’ Since he was staring at the tuna, which was beautifully sliced in sashimi form, we sort of began to approach the ‘Five Easy Pieces’ theme, in which Albert suggested tuna sushi without the rice. ‘’It became a real, unbridgeable gap,’’ Mr. Daniel concluded. ‘’Albert wanted tuna sashimi, he was not going to be served it, and that meal came to a pretty abrupt end.’’ As Mr. Nozawa wound up a busy lunch hour this week, he paused to reflect on a day that had begun with his scouring wholesale fish markets at dawn and would end sometime after 10 P.M. There was no time for rest, El Nino had driven quality fish to northern waters. He sighed. ‘’I am training many people,’’ he said. ‘’But quality, quality is hard.’’ © 2008 sushiNozawa, LLC PK0807_v1.4 sushiNozawa, LLC 11628 Santa Monica Blvd. Suite 200 Los Angeles, CA 90025 www.sugarfishsushi.com
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