5 sushi chefs??

Been a week since my last post. Crazy past one with the time change, full moon,world series,UT game, and lots of special events including one for the March of Dimes the past Sunday. Lots of good people out to support a great cause; it's my 6th year of participation. At the site i started thinking back on our first year when we made food on site for the event at the Four Seasons hotel. I went all out. We made 5 dishes, of various types and kinds...even had a couple of our waitstaff dressed in kimonos! It was a fine showing for a new resto trying to make it on the scene. Since then if i sampled what we made each year over the past 6, it would be a good barometer of where Uchi was standing in it's maturation process i'm sure. From popsicles the first year, to rabbit terrine and canary melon gazpacho with lobster the last! We've come a long way.

It also got me thinking of our sushi chefs. When we put the idea together of opening Uchi in 2002, it was just that.."an idea". Lots of details and work to put it all in motion, but probably the hardest hurdle to overcome in the beginning was how to find a staff of at least 5 sushi chefs to open the place. What a challenge! To start, i had one friend i had worked with before that was working in NYC at a place called Bond St....but was currently at Jewel Bako. I made him an offer to move back down to help me get Uchi open. His name is Michael Briones. He was sushi chef #1.

The next chef i found was a Japanese guy working here in town at Sushi Sake named Taka. I had worked with Taka in the past at Musashino.....and Japanese guys were very hard to find...so i made him an offer too....he took it and became sushi chef #2.

The third chef was another Japanese guy who was a friend of Taka's...but still living in Japan. He said he was ready to come over and work, but had zero sushi experience. I didn't care..i could train him. I got him a student visa to come over, which later became a work visa, and he has been with us ever since. His name is Saio Masazumi.

The 4th chef would come from a reference from a friend. A Korean kid with lots of heart, ready to learn, but also with no sushi experience. His name was Jonah Kim.

The 5th chef was a guy i had met locally working at Benihana making sushi name Jay Huang...i talked to him and made an offer, and he completed the team.

Needless to say, that first 18 months was hell. All of the chef's and i were working almost every day, 6 days a week, just trying to figure it all out. I was teaching,training,cleaning,cooking,cutting all of the fish, picking up all of the fish at the airport in my 88 suburban 3 times a week....and lived at the restaurant from 9am till midnight for a year. It was what had to be done, and i loved it. Never in a million years back then would i of dreamed Uchi would become what it is today, and for that sometimes i'm just speechless.

Thanks to everyone in Austin for making it all possible.