By history and tradition, sushi-making has always been a man’s world. Men, naturally, have come up with good reasons for keeping it that way.
“They say that women cannot make sushi because their hands are too warm and that will ruin the fish,” said Yoko Ogawa, 30, a chef at Yamaguchi in midtown Manhattan, who spoke through an interpreter. She held out her small hands, which were pleasantly cool.
Hiromi Suzuki, who was taught to make sushi by her father, Akira Suzuki, the chef and owner of Mie in the East Village, said: “This is what my father has heard–that women can’t make sushi because they wear perfume and makeup, and the smell of the perfume and makeup will ruin the food, and that women can’t become sushi chefs because behind the counter is a sacred area, and that women are all silly.”
Women, who have long since claimed their place preparing European and American cuisines, are slowly entering the once exclusively male domain of sushi-making. In New York City, at least six women, including Ogawa and Suzuki, are at work slicing tuna into perfect rosy rectangles and molding lightly vinegared rice just so. In Los Angeles, about nine women are making sushi. In Japan, figures are hard to come by.
“I think there are at least 200 women sushi chefs in Japan,” said Toshio Suzuki, the owner-chef of Sushi Zen in midtown. He has trained two women as sushi chefs, Takako Yoneyama, 52, the owner of Taka in Greenwich Village, and Miho Tanaka, 43, at Sushi A-Go-Go near Lincoln Center.
Entree becoming easier
For a woman to become a sushi chef in Japan has been easier since 1999. That year, Japan revised its Equal Employment Opportunity Law to mandate equality in hiring and promotion. Japan also lifted a ban that prohibited women from working later than 10 p.m. But laws alone weren’t keeping women from becoming sushi chefs.
“It’s time to break tradition,” said Sumio Sone, owner of Sushi Rose in midtown. Sushi Rose employs one woman, Eri Sugimoto, among its sushi chefs. “The new generation, both the new owners and the woman who wants to be a chef, no longer care about tradition. This is America.”
Toshi Sugiura, who opened Restaurant Hama in 1979, is the owner of the California Sushi Academy in Venice, Calif. The number of women in his six-month classes has increased to 50 percent this year, up from 20 percent in 1998, when the school opened. He said he had thought his students would be Asian immigrants, “but 70 percent of the students were American. So I changed my vision. Sushi is becoming a worldwide food. Why can’t black people and white people make sushi?”
Norie Yamamoto is a consultant at American Business Creation in Manhattan, which helps place workers in Japanese restaurants in the United States. Last year, she said, the company assisted 15 women who are sushi chefs from Japan in securing green cards, five more than in 2000.
The women who become sushi chefs are willing to beg to become apprentices. And although they are more motivated by artistry than salary, money is a drawing card.
“The head sushi chef makes $50,000, and the regular sushi chef makes a little less,” Ogawa of Yamaguchi said. At Sushi Rose, Sone pays $80,000 to his executive chef, Etsuji Oishi, a man, and $40,000 to $50,000 to the other chefs, including Sugimoto.
An alluring tradition
The tradition of sushi has an allure. “I have always wanted to work with raw fish because I love to eat it,” said Sugimoto, who is 27. Four years ago, she was cooking home-style foods like seaweed and pork at a restaurant in Tokyo. Sushi beckoned, although Sugimoto knew of only one sushi chef who was a woman. She asked a friend who owned a chain of sushi restaurants if she could apprentice with one of his chefs. “I had to save some money, and beg him to let me clean the restaurant,” Sugimoto said.
And so she mopped floors and waited on tables and learned to make sushi. “First, you touch the fish to get the feeling of how to slice it,” she said. “You divide the parts, and when you slice for sashimi, it has to be softer, thinner. For sushi, you cut to fit on top of the rice. You wipe off the knife after each fish, to wipe off the fish oil.”
She bought fish with her own pocket money and practiced for hours at home. “For months, I practiced shaping the rice until it became so hard I couldn’t work with it,” she said. Each time she shaped the rice, she put a piece of fish on it. It took her a year to make rice with the correct flavor and consistency.
She learned to make 50 kinds of sushi, starting with the easiest. She wrapped seaweed around rice, and topped it with caviar. Next, she learned to position a shrimp atop the rice. These two sushi don’t require cutting. “Then flounder, because it’s cheap, and you can make a mistake,” she said. “Mackerel, you have to leave a little bit of skin on, and squid doesn’t follow the shape of the rice. Abalone is still moving around. It’s alive!”
At last, she graduated to slicing toro, the rich, tender belly of the tuna. “It’s the most expensive,” she said. “It’s $25 a pound.”
It was two years before she was permitted to serve her sushi to customers. In 2000, she arrived in Sushi Rose in Manhattan. “I want to have a place that is all female sushi chefs,” Sone said. “It’s nice to see beautiful ladies.”
Oishi, his executive chef, raised no objection. “When I was first asked if Eri could work here, I said nothing,” Oishi said. “Men and women–there’s no difference. My mother was the chef of a restaurant. I knew women could cook.”
At Mie, Hiromi Suzuki, 24, is training with her father. She knows that to prepare the giant clam, she has to drop it into hot water for a second, and then into ice water, in order to slip off the skin.
“I love being a sushi chef,” said Suzuki, who in her junior year dropped out of Brearley, the private girls’ school on the East Side, and began lazing about the house. Two years later, her father asked her to help him at Mie. “My parents spent all that money,” she said, sighing. “I am such a bad daughter.”
Although she is now a part-time student at Hunter College, she thinks of herself as a sushi chef. “I still need to learn consistency,” she said. “Will it stand up straight? Is it too big, or is it too small?”
Appeal among non-Japanese
Female sushi chefs are not, of course, always Japanese. Maria Roman was 13 when she first sampled sushi; her family had just moved to Manhattan from the Dominican Republic. “I ate a tuna roll and a California roll,” she said. “And in my mind, I thought it was good.” When she was 16, she started making sushi at Daikichi on Lower Broadway. But she was taught only to cook rice, and to make rolls with a machine.
In 1995, she went to Kurumazushi, where she was hired by Toshihiro Uezu, the chef-owner, whose friend recommended her. Roman, 27, works alongside Tatsuya Nagata, 36, who has made sushi for 19 years, first in Tokyo, and then in Manhattan.
When asked if she can do everything that Nagata does, Roman said yes.
“Almost,” Nagata said. Then he laughed.
