Tuesday, June 21, 2022 – THERE ARE A LOT OF STORIES BEHIND THAT ARTFUL PLATE OF SUSHI
TUESDAY, JUNE 21 2022
707th Issue
Japanese Food in NYC
Stephen Blank
Lots of sushi in New York. Sometimes seems as many sushi places as pizza or Chinese take-outs. One big difference is that Japanese restaurants in New York cover a wide price range – from sushi joints to very heavy-duty upscale restaurants (though there are probably fewer at the high end since the era of rich Japanese firms in NYC ended) – and many offer more varieties of Japanese cuisine. The influence of Japanese food has spread widely:
You Tube, New York street food tips
| Like the Chinese, Japanese restaurants have adapted. Japanese restaurants in Japan serve one type of food. You would not expect to find soba and katsu or udon and sushi in the same place. Here, menus in many Japanese restaurants cover a much broader range of dishes. And, as in Chinese restaurants, tastes tend to conform to American parameters. But food is still served plated – not family style as in Chinese restaurants and in upscale Japanese restaurants here, plating is still considered an art form. |
| But let’s start at the beginning. Americans were familiar with Japan in the late 1800’s. Interest in Japan’s art, culture and lifestyle was widespread. Japan was exotic but “clean” and, in a way, sort of European – as opposed to China which was “dirty” and weird. Americans cheered on the Japanese at war with Russia. Japanese food was not completely unknown, even raw fish. One article, “The Great Sushi Craze of 1905”, notes that “the Japanophile craze had been building for a long time. From 1898 through 1907, the social pages of American newspapers were filled with descriptions of Japanese-themed social events, while the women’s pages had instructions on how to organize your own Japanese soirees and teas. During the same period, home design magazines told you how to convert your sitting room into a Japanese tea-house (a fad of the late 1890s) and gardening journals discussed Japanese plants and landscaping.” One of the silent films’ leading heart throbs was Japanese, Sessue Hayakawa. |
https://www.theartstory.org/movement/japonism/
But none of this meant much as anti-Chinese feeling turned against Japanese.
Japanese immigration to the US began in the 1880s. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 left room for “cheap labor” and Japanese were recruited to replace Chinese laborers. Between 1886 and 1911, more than 400,000 men and women left Japan for the US – mainly to Hawaii and the West Coast. But anti-Japanese feeling heightened, and the Immigration Act of 1924 closed the door to Japanese immigrants.
https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/japanese/the-us-mainland-growth-and-resistance/
Only in 1952 did the McCarran-Walter Act allow Japanese immigrants to become naturalized US citizens. And significant Japanese immigration did not occur again until the Immigration Act of 1965 which ended 40 years of bans against immigration from Japan and other countries.
Japanese came to NYC slowly, and only a few businessmen were here before the late 1950s when Japanese connected with the UN and Japanese corporate executives began to arrive. By 1988, 50,000 Japanese businesspeople worked in Greater NYC, 77% temporary employees who planned to return to Japan. Employees of Japanese companies and their families made up over 80% of the Japanese residents of the New York City area – the others were a varied assortment of artists, students and wanderers.
The first Japanese cuisine restaurant we know of (Japanese ran American food restaurants on the West Coast, well known because of their low prices) is Maikoya in San Francisco which served Japanese dishes like sukiyaki and tempura. A 1925 guidebook, “The Restaurants of New York,” includes one Japanese restaurant, Miyako (originally at 340 West 58th Street, later 20 West 56th Street). By 1931, “Tips on Tables,” another guide, lists Daruma, Tokiwa and Yama, all in Midtown, all serving sukiyaki and tempura. Yama also had chow mein on the menu.
https://dlc.library.columbia.edu/durst/cul:zkh1893267
A word about sushi. It’s strange how Japanese food here is identified with sushi. The roots of sushi can be traced deep into Japanese history, but what we eat now – nigiri sushi – is a fairly recent creation. Sushi is not the national dish of Japan, is more regional than national, and not the standard go-to meal (good sushi is expensive in Japan), like ramen or even katsu. But here, food historians speak of the arrival of sushi as if it meant the birth of real Japanese food. And talk about adaption, look at “rolls” the other half of sushi menus. Some credit the California roll with making sushi accessible to Americans. The roll evolved in Los Angeles in the 1960s, and used local avocados paired with crab meat to replace hard-to-find fresh, fatty tuna, ingredients familiar to Americans. Another classic example, the spicy tuna roll, was also invented in Los Angeles in the early 1980s by mixing tuna scraps with chili sauce and rolling the result with seaweed and rice. Today, the tuna roll is usually sauced with sriracha, which is produced in the nearby suburb of Irwindale, California. The result is a mix of Japanese and “American” flavors.
In any case, sushi did not arrive in NYC until the late 1950’s and did not become pervasive until the early 80’s. Obviously, sushi appeared first in LA, when in 1966, Noritoshi Kanai and his partner, Harry Wolff, opened Kawafuku Restaurant in Little Tokyo – the first to offer traditional nigiri sushi. The sushi bar was successful with Japanese businessmen, who then introduced it to their American colleagues.
When Craig Claiborne reviewed two new Japanese restaurants, Nippon and Saito, in 1963 he noted that sushi “may seem a trifle too ‘far out’ for many American palates.” Nippon was owned by Nobuyoshi Kuraoka, much honored by the Japanese government for “outstanding contributions to the promotion of Japanese culture through Japanese food.” I knew him at his other restaurant, Soba Nippon, because I had lived in a sake-soba rich region in Japan, and we spoke often about our mutual love for soba.
The number of Japanese restaurants increased rapidly. A 1974 Times article said there were just 10 Japanese restaurants in NYC in 1964 but over 100 by the mid-1970’s. But they grew in many directions.
By this time, a second wave of Japanese restaurants had broken on our shores – very Japanese, very upscale, very expensive boutique restaurants largely patronized by Japanese businessmen and lucky clients. One of the first of these was Hatsuhana blessed with a 4-star review by Mimi Sheraton in April 1983. Hatsuhana’s elevation coincided with the great wave of Japanese investment in Manhattan that saw Tokyo-based companies buy Rockefeller Center and brought Japanese fashion to Madison Avenue. Some of these restaurants were associated with very Japanese clubs, which I never visited. (Do you recall the last train out to Westchester, stocked with boozey Japanese salarymen heading home?)
And another arrival, Japanese sort-of, were new restaurants which catered specifically to American tastes. Surely the most famous example is Benihana, a chain of teppanyaki restaurants which opened its first place in 1964 on West 56th Street. For many New Yorkers who would not think of raw fish or even ramen, this was “Japan.”
https://kid101.com/salivating-steakhouses-in-nyc-that-are-family-friendly/benihana/
At the other end of the “authenticity” scale, were Japanese restaurants which opened in the 1990s, driven by the explosion of interest in Japanese cuisine and a growing sophistication especially for high-end sushi and kaiseki – restaurants like Masa (the first Japanese restaurant to earn 3 Michelin stars in America) followed by Sushi Yasuda, Sushi Ko, Kurumazushi, Kanoyama and others; and Japanese-American fusion sushi at Nobu, Zuma, Sushi of Gari, Sushi Seki, and many others.
https://www.exploretock.com/masa/
Japanese restaurants took over much of the high end of New York cuisine. The 2017 Michelin guide for NYC listed one 3-star (Masa), and out of a total of 61 Michelin 1-star restaurants, fourteen are Japanese. By comparison, Michelin only lists five 1-star Italian restaurants, and just two traditional French 1-stars. The 2018 Michelin guide was the same. Out of 56 Michelin 1-star restaurants, fourteen remain Japanese.
Meanwhile, ramen restaurants popped up across the City. Packaged ramen noodles arrived with the Japanese and became a staple of low-cost dining. (The current available variety of packaged noodles dishes is amazing.)
www.raspberrykiss.co.uk
And then a wave of Japanese chains hit the city. Ippudo opened in 2008. Ootoya helped “integrate traditional home cooking” to the States and Gyu-Kaku did the same for Japanese barbecue. Udon-noodle specialists TsuruTonTan took over the spacious Union Square Café digs in 2016. At least three Japan-based ramen shops — Tonchin, Ichiran and EAK Ramen — opened in New York City in 2017. Chain restaurants come and go but the taste lingers on.
Finally, Japanese restaurants have spread widely, and sushi has become an ingredient in our local cuisine, but the funny end to the story is that most of them aren’t run by Japanese. The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture estimated that only about a tenth of Japanese restaurants in the US were run by people of Japanese descent. Most are owned by Chinese Americans or Korean Americans.
Sayonara, dear reader.
Stephen Blank
RIHS
May 17, 2022
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Sources
https://www.benihana.com/about/history/
https://mycuriousgourmet.com/intro/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/29/the-fascinating-story-behind-who-opens-sushi-restaurants-and-why/
https://eccentricculinary.com/the-great-sushi-craze-of-1905
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/92861/brief-history-sushi-united-states
https://food52.com/blog/9183-the-history-of-sushi-in-the-u-s#:~:text=It%20is%20said%20to%20have,businessmen%20and%20their%20American%20colleagues.
https://www.foodrepublic.com/2018/01/10/japanese-chains-are-taking-over-nycs-dining-scene/
https://www.heartmountain.org/history/coming-to-america/#:~:text=The%20first%20Japanese%20immigrants%20to,in%20Hawaii%20sugarcane%20fields%20
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