- Somehow the word artist adds
a different meaning for me.
Craftsman is, you have the skill
to make something better than most people.
You are specializing [in] that one thing.
I like to be a craftsman more than the artist.
Irasshaimase. (Welcome)
(orchestral music)
I went to the art school here in D.C.
and I did a lot of paintings, sculpting.
I like to build things with my own hands.
This is the koji that I made it last week.
It has a very sweet flavor.
Oh so good, yeah.
Right now this salmon is super salty.
It's been salted for two days.
After marinate it into koji for at least three days.
And the sweetness of the koji,
gets into this salmon and it makes
a really, really, fantastic dish.
When I went to Japan and I trained in a sushi restaurant
for three years, there was so much to learn.
At that point I didn't think it was,
there was any relation between cooking and art.
But once you start making many, or creating any dish,
that creative process is actually
exactly the same as any of the art.
The knife skill for the Japanese cook especially,
it's very much related to line drawing.
Eye and hand coordination is very important thing.
That can be only achieved through the repetition
of the sketching and the drawing lines on the paper.
You know thousands of times.
And slowly it becomes part of you.
It's exactly the same with the knife.
It's a wild bluefin tuna.
The tuna preparation that we do here
is not normal I would say.
It's more like similar process as a charcuterie.
Salt it first then air dry.
So we have a dried tomato.
This is from Italy.
It absorbs more of the tuna moisture.
And then brings out the tomato flavor into the tuna.
And I use the inside part of the dried tomato.
I would say after a month,
it starts to really develop the flavor.
We've done it more than like 60 days and it's still good.
And turn out to be this dark and not very appealing.
(laughing)
For sure.
But taste is quite awesome so.
Not just here but in Japan,
crab is always very very popular.
We use Atlantic deep sea red crab,
which is not very popularly known here.
Even though it's locally sourced.
So we started using like five, six years ago
and we just really loved the flavor, the looks of it.
You know like everything else,
we like to be unique and the red crab just fit that bill.
They have to be alive before it's cooked
because once they die,
the enzyme inside their bodies start to disintegrate.
So if you have the crab that is dead
for a day and then you steam it exactly same
as the live crab, you get the different result.
The meat is very mushy, doesn't have the flavor.
That's why we like to use the live crab.
Sushi Taro has been here for 33 years.
I still get really nervous.
I think that's a good thing for us
that we always still concentrate.
And the focus on the each customer every night.
Sashimi style of the turtle liver.
Snapping turtle soup.
This dish is koji pickled salted salmon,
and daikon radish.
This dish is red crab leg that's marinated
in jalapeño-infused soy sauce, sashimi style.
Tomato-cured dry-aged tuna with basil oil.
Little bit of salt and crushed dried tomato.
This is Japanese traditional osechi style box.
I hate to say "creating art",
because it's more like of a craft.
Atlantic deep sea red crab,
steamed meat, put back in the shell
with its own mustard sauce underneath
and topped with mitsuba leaf.
Saori, half beak, or the Japanese needlefish.
Japanese saba cured with salt and sugar
and then pickled in vinegar lightly.
Ootoro, from North Carolina.
Wild bluefin tuna.
My father always said that don't be an artist
if you are running a restaurant.
Santa Barbara, California sea urchin
topped with Hawaiian black salt and wasabi.
But you know you can always do both thing
at the same time as long as the customer accept that way.