When you’re living at a Buddhist temple, you don’t have a choice what you eat. The surrounding earth dictates what you grow. And what you grow, you eat.
For Chef Junya Yamasaki, the Head Chef at Downtown Los Angeles’ YESS, Japanese cooking is about technique, philosophy and history, not ingredients. When he arrived in LA and couldn’t source fish that were dispatched using his preferred technique, called ike jime and shinkei jime, he taught local fishermen how to do it. Through his teachings, he has created a more efficient supply chain and has made better quality fish available in the region.
Zen Buddhism And Japanese Cooking
Growing up in the countryside in Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture, Chef Junya grew up fishing with his father every weekend, enjoying the fruits of their own labor. He worked in Tokyo’s film industry for a few years in his twenties before moving to Paris to study contemporary art out of a desire to create something with his own hands. His culinary career began as a cafe waiter to make some money while studying, then got the chance to work as a cook in the kitchen. From there, he got the opportunity to move to London to manage the cafe’s new location.
In London, a business partner approached him to open a Japanese noodle restaurant, Koya, which gained a cult following. He made sure to source local British ingredients there. “I grew up eating something close to you,” he says. “It’s unusual for me to cook something far away.” Opening this first restaurant is where he established these guidelines of connecting to the environment that would follow him throughout his culinary journey.
After about five years running Koya, Chef Junya went back home to Japan and spent three months at Antaiji Temple, a Zen monastery, to study Zen Buddhism–not to get more connected with the religion, but because of the relationship between its core principles and Japanese cooking. “By learning the history of Japanese food, inevitably, it goes back to the origins of Zen Buddhism,” he says.
At the temple, he would learn about the physical practice of seasonality. “You go to the supermarket, you can choose what to buy,” he explains. “But if you grow vegetables, it’s summer… you get tomatoes every day, you get eggplant every day…you have to eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner.” He would also clean and butcher meats that locals hunted so that they wouldn’t go to waste. Chef Junya’s belief that seasonality is one’s own connection to nature comes from his lived practice.
The Contrast In American Farming Practices
Chef Junya would soon after move to Los Angeles to open up a restaurant with a new business partner. One of the first things he did when he arrived was drive up and down California to familiarize himself with its landscape and agriculture and meet farmers. He could tell American farming practices were different. A later trip to Whole Foods revealed that the fish were from Alaska and Chile; nothing was local. Visits to fish suppliers were no luck either. “If that’s what they have here, then I can’t open a restaurant,” he remembers thinking. He realized local restaurants were sourcing fish from Japan because the quality was better. “One of the reasons food is great in Japan is not just because of the chef, but because of the whole industry. The supply chain is highly advanced,” he says.
It’s far different here, he noticed: “You put the fish in the ice [where it suffocates], and then come back and spend a couple of days. I don’t know when they’re gonna be displayed. It takes sometimes more than a week.”
He then began to teach local fishermen the ike jime and shinkei jime methods of dispatching fish. “I had to teach not because I wanted to teach,” he says. “But I didn’t have any choice.”
Teach A Man To Fish
Bailey Raith is a Santa Barbara-based fisherman who exclusively uses the ike jime and shinkei jime methods of dispatching fish. Since learning from Chef Junya, Raith is able to charge 30% more per catch. He has now become an expert in the method himself and passes along the teachings to other local fishermen.
“The difference between an ike jime, shinkei jime fish and just a fish that’s thrown in a fish box and maybe bled on ice is astronomical,” says Raith, who runs San Ysidro Seafood. It’s “the most humane, rapid way to dispatch a fish,” he explains. The process requires a T-shaped spike (ike jime) to pierce the brain, and a stainless steel piece of welding wire (shinkei jime) inserted through that same hole to disconnect the nervous system. Raith produces the tools himself.
“It tastes better. It smells better,” according to Raith, largely because of the lack of carbon dioxide buildup that otherwise occurs. The process also includes much cleaner handling of the fish thereafter–Chef Junya compares it to halaal. “Through sitting in the seawater, the blood doesn’t coagulate,” Raith says. The process clearly takes a lot more attention and care per catch, so Raith catches a lot less fish than he did prior to doing shinkei jime, although charges more. “[I’m] taking less resources out of the ocean. And then there’s less waste on the kitchen end because what I am bringing lasts longer and doesn’t go bad as quickly.”
One down side of sourcing locally is that it’s very weather-dependent, so many sushi restaurants will likely continue sourcing from Japan so that they can rely on a continual flow of fish coming in.
What’s more important than teaching the method, Chef Junya says, is creating the market. So before he opened YESS, he spent his time introducing fishermen like Raith to chefs who may be interested in purchasing from him, eliminating the middleman supplier in the supply chain. As Raith details, “there’s one set of human hands touching the fish from the time they’re caught to the time they’re getting to the back door of a restaurant.” One seafood restaurant that utilizes shinkei jime fish is LA’s two-Michelin-starred Providence. Co-owner and Chef Michael Cimarusti says, “If by taking better care of their catch, fishermen are able to command a higher price per pound and make more money by catching less, that is the best possible outcome.”
“It’s all part of this supply chain that Junya has really just instilled here in Southern California that hasn’t been here prior to him getting here,” says Raith. “[He] advocated greatly towards fish transparency and direct marketing from fishermen to chefs in Southern California.”
Continuing His Guidelines
The theme at Chef Junya’s YESS is connection. Through the ever-changing menu, guests are connecting to the surrounding environment due to what’s available that day. Through the very fish guests eat, they connect to the waters of Southern California, as it was in there likely just hours prior. “Seasonality is not something you choose. You’re given,” Chef Junya says. Through the open kitchen izakaya-style design at YESS, the chefs and customers face each other, enhancing transparency, a reflection of the local supply chain that he consequently transformed.
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