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Chef at Sushi Masuda receives Michelin star and young chef awards
The Vancouver-born and raised chef was smitten with sushi on family trips to Japan, mesmerized by the chefs at work.
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Sushi Masuda
Where: 1066 West Hastings St., Vancouver
When: Dinner service, Wednesday to Sunday
Info: 604-816-3312. sushimasuda.com
Yoji Masuda, sparing of words but brimming with passion, is something of a shooting star.
The 33-year-old opened his first restaurant, the tiny, hard-to-find Sushi Masuda, in March and before the year played out, he’s a Michelin-star chef as well as a Michelin young chef.
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The Vancouver-born and raised chef was smitten with sushi on family trips to Japan, mesmerized by the chefs at work. After high school, he went to work in sushi restaurants in Hokkaido, then secured an apprenticeship at Sushi Yoshitake in Tokyo with three Michelin stars at the time (current status: two stars).
“I love sushi,” he says. “It’s still my favourite food. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.” Not that he does. “I do love burgers, french fries, pizza and fried chicken, too.”
He reveals his sushi devotion when asked about the rigours of working in a three-Michelin star restaurant.
“It’s strict and you work long hours but you are training to dedicate your life to sushi.” His life!
Curiously, Sushi Masuda is tucked in a previously unused corner of another Japanese restaurant (Kamei Royale). “A friend told me about it,” says Masuda, who had been working as a private chef and catering at the time, not quite ready to open his own restaurant.
“We were offered the space and an opportunity was given to us,” he says.
That includes his wife Akari, who assists him behind the sushi counter but also works elsewhere as a barista and sells her gluten-free baking. They opened with a grand total of five counter seats but added one more seat since then. Ad that’s how it will stay, just like the serious sushi restaurants in Japan. Never mind the clamour for reservations since the Michelin announcement.
Sunrise
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It’s tiny but mighty.
“I won’t be adding and we don’t do table service because I like to serve sushi right in front of guests and control the temperature of rice. It’s totally different from taking it to a table where the temperature cools. I want people to eat it as soon as possible,” he says.
Sushi rice is ideally served at body temperature. “Maybe a tad bit warmer,” he says, adding that he monitors fish temperature just as closely. “I don’t like it to be too cold otherwise, there’s no taste.”
Dinner is an 18- to 20-course sushi omakase, originally priced at $230 per person but raised to $260 on Nov. 1. It was coincidental to the Michelin win in October, he says.
“We wanted to raise the price a few months ago but were hesitant,” he says. “Now, we have more confidence.” The cost reflects the quality of his food and the 12-guest limit per evening. Monthly reservations quickly fill up.
When I dined there recently, I was impressed. The seafood is impeccable and the quality of rice and seaweed, noted. He blends special A-grade rice from Miyagi, the gold standard in Japanese rankings, with another type from Fukui.
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“Together, it’s really good,” he says. For the vinegared sushi rice (meshi, or shari) he blends three aged red vinegars with different taste profiles. “We believe the most important part of sushi is the shari,” Masuda says. “It starts with the rice. You just simple can’t make good sushi without good shari.”
The nori is from Maruyama Nori shop in Tokyo, which has been operating for 170 years. The soy sauce has been aged in a wooden barrel for four years — only one per cent of production is done this way. The wasabi is from Shizuoka, known for growing a premium product. “The minerals and water from the mountains run through them,” explains Masuda.
The seafood is outstanding. About three-quarters of it is curated for him by a contact at the famous Toyosu Fish Market in Tokyo and 25 per cent is local. Orders from Japan arrive the next day.
“Usually, I have a menu in my mind and order what I need. If my contact at Toyosu says it’s not good enough, I’ll pick something else. He knows more than me. He sees it every day,” says Masuda.
He breaks down whole fish and employs different methods to maximize flavour and texture, aging some fish, like tuna, to develop complex flavours, whereas for other species he might use a salt or vinegar wash, or curing in vinegar, to concentrate flavour.
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The glory of sushi lies in getting the best ingredients, understanding them, and coaxing out their natural beauty. My sushi omakase, not in the order dishes were served, included female snow crab from Hokkaido, including its eggs which were boiled and kissed with vinegar. Then Hokkaido salmon roe, lightly marinated in a sake and soy mix, was served over a small mound of rice with yuzu zest.
A parade of nigiri sushi included glisteningly fresh seafood. Hokkaido amberjack, soaked in soy sauce, was lightly poached. Saba, which was salted, washed, and placed in a vinegar bath. Local geoduck tasted clean and fresh. Kumamoto tiger prawn (exquisite) was heated in salt water and brushed on the inside with shrimp paste.
The Japanese bluefin tuna was gorgeous. I was served both akami tuna (the lean, reddish flesh) and the very desirable, fattier chutoro. Blackthroat sea perch, or nodoguro, a luxury fish as catches are small, was served atop a rice porridge.
Kuromutsu or gnomefish, a deep-sea fish from Ciba, was salted and wrapped in special paper to wick some of the moisture while retaining umami.
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“It’s Japanese technology,” he says. The best season for kuromutsu is fall and winter when the scales are larger and easier to remove and the skin is thicker. Masuda seared it with slender hot-iron rods — so hot, it smoked — before putting it atop the rice.
Horse mackerel was lightly pickled and served as a maki sushi with housemade Japanese pickles to counter its assertive oiliness. Delicate Hokkaido uni was served gunkan style with a brush of maple syrup “for a Canadian touch.”
Masuda, as you’ve noticed, is partial to Hokkaido seafood. That’s not only because the area produces some of the best, but because his wife and grandmother are from there and it’s where he first worked in Japan.
Chawanmushi with Dungeness crab was jiggly, silky and lovely. This was followed by tamagoyaki. Like the French omelette, it’s the test dish of a good chef. In the hit documentary film Jiro Dreams of Sushi, an apprentice tries to make tamagoyaki 200 times. When master chef Jiro Ono finally gives the thumbs up, the apprentice breaks down and cries.
“Yes, it is quite difficult,” says Masuda. He makes his tamago seafood base with wild snapper paste rather than the traditional shrimp. “You have to have the traditional copper tamagoyaki pan and cook it slowly for over an hour at the right temperature. And you have to keep your eye on it. I like to make mine so it’s like a sponge cake.”
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In the home stretch, miso soup, with dashi, kelp, and sake gets a boost from gnomefish bones. And finally, a simple, but exotic dessert — a slice of Japanese muskmelon from Kochi, where growers nurture them like precious babies. The yield is limited to one melon per tree to produce a very sweet and juicy finish to a meal such as this. One melon costs about $100.
The beverage list is short and dominated by various sakes. There are several available by the bottle, most of them junmai daiginjo, the best quality.
You can also order umeshu — the sweet and sour plum-based liqueur— by the glass or bottle. Champagne, white wine and bottled beer round out the list.
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Source: vancouversun.com