other ingredi-ents on top)being sold fromrefr igera teddisplay casesthat I did notsee five yearsearlier in 1996. Back then, therewere sushi rollsand inari-zushi(pockets of deep-fried tofu filledwith sushi rice),but none withraw fish.A "por kilo"shop called Nandemoya that had just opened on myearlier visit had changed its name to Manchinkoku-Shokudo, as the ownership had changed fromJapanese to Chinese. "Por kilo" means "per kilo," and at these restaurantsyou can select food from a buffet and pay by weight.Unlike all-you-can-eat restaurants, they are eco-nomical and discourage waste. The shop offered salad, gyouza dumplings, teriyaki,tempura, fried rice and other dishes commonly seenin Japan. The menu also featured new sushi andsashimi dishes, which were not among the selectionfive years earlier.

A Little about theHistory of Sushi inSão Paulo?I interviewed Dr.Koichi Mori, aresearcher at theCenter for Japanese-Brazilian Studies,located at the end ofLiberdade’s ma ins t r ee t . Dr. Morialso authored "TheFood Situation inBrazil" f ive yearsago. He told me thatthe f irst Japaneserestaurant in SãoPaulo was the Uechi

Inn, established in 1914, and that they served inari-zushi rather than nigiri-zushi. It was after the war

This is a follow-up to previous contributions toFood Culture, The World's Thriving SushiBusiness in Nos. 12–14 (2006-2007) and TheInternationalization of Sushi in No.15 (2007).I spent the first half of the year 2000 travelingthroughout North, Central and South America,Asia, Oceania, Europe, the Middle and NearEast, and Africa to collect materials andresearch for reports. More recently, I haveplaced my focus on the emerging BRICnations (Brazil, Russia, India and China). I visit-ed all four countries, including Brazil, which Ihad already visited during a previous researchtrip. These countries will be covered in twoseparate issues.

Asian District, São Paulo, Brazil, 2001The Asian district of Liberdade is lined withJapanese food stores. This was my second visit toSão Paulo, and I noticed packs of nigiri-zushi(hand-formed blocks of sushi rice with raw fish or

13 FOOD CULTURE

Sushi and sashimi are sold by weight.

Restaurant Hinode, the oldest amongthose started by Japanese descents

The World'sThriving Sushi

Business

The World'sThriving Sushi

Business

Text and photos by

Hirotaka Matsumoto

The Popularity of Sushi OverseasThe BRICs Part 1

(Brazil)

The Asian District Where Sushi Culture Has Prospered

The Asian District Where Sushi Culture Has Prospered

Kokeshi, Enomoto also entered the picture. I gath-ered from this that the trailblazing sushi restaurantsin São Paulo were Okina-Zushi and Hama-Zushi.I asked Mr. Yahata which sushi rice he was usingwhen he got started in the business. Though import-ed California rice, or japonica varieties harvested inthe world's largest rice growing region straddlingBrazil, Argentina and Uruguay (Food Culture No.15) are all easily available now, Mr. Yahata told methese varieties were not easy to come by when hestarted. Instead, he used Catete rice, a variety creat-ed by the IRGA Rice Cultivation Laboratory around1930 in Rio Grande do Sul (the southernmost statein Brazil and a part of the just mentioned rice grow-ing region). It was made by crossbreeding the con-ventional indica variety and unhulled rice broughtfrom Japan by immigrants. When cooked in theusual fashion, it was not sticky at all, which is char-acteristic of the indica variety, but the stickinesspeculiar to Japanese rice came out when the cook-ing method was altered. That cooking method wasapparently arrived at after an arduous series of trialand error.

In the 1970s, the Suntory Restaurant from Japanopened in São Paulo. Their first overseas shop inMexico (described in Food Culture No. 12) was ahuge success, and Brazil was chosen as the site of

the second shop because the social and businessenvironment was thought to be similar to that ofMexico. All owners of Japanese restaurants untilthat time had been immigrants from Japan, andalmost all customers had been Japanese. Targetingupper class Brazilians, Suntory opened an elegant

14FOOD CULTURE

(around 1945) when a restaurant near the LapaDistrict Market, the predecessor of the giganticCEAGESP wholesale market, began to serve nigiri-zushi to Japanese brokers.I visited the Livraria Takano Bookstore and pickedup a tourist map of the city. Since that map con-tained an advertisement promoting a restaurant

called Hinode as "the oldestJapanese restaurant" in town, Idecided to visit. I found it hadopened 35 years earlier.Hinode’s owner explained to

me, "We were preceded by theKokeshi and Enomoto Japaneserestaurants, but they have sinceclosed, leaving ours as the old-est in town."Kokeshi had just closed down

the previous year. Luckily, I was still able to meet itsowner, the 81-year old Hachiro Yahata. Born inKure in Hiroshima prefecture in 1920, his familymoved to Brazil when he was just one year old. Hestudied at a businessschool in Noroeste,and worked in theprinting departmentof the Noroeste andPaulista newspapers.In 1965, he quit hisjob at the newspaperand opened Kokeshi.By that time, therewere already threeJapanese restaurantsthat went by the namesof Okina-Zushi, Hama-Zushi, and Tokiwa.After the arrival of

Daughter Opens a SushiRestaurant

Daughter Opens a SushiRestaurant

Suntory Restaurant started the sushi boom in São Paulo.

Mr. Yahata, who used torun Kokeshi Restaurant

Hirotaka MatsumotoBorn in Tokyo in 1942, he graduated from the University of Tokyo's Departmentof Agriculture and worked at Sapporo Breweries Ltd. until 1969, when he movedto New York. After working in the purchasing department of the restaurantNippon and gaining experience in the wholesale fish business, he openedTakezushi, the first sushi bar in New York, in 1975. Mr. Matsumoto is currently

the owner of the Takezushi sushi bar inBelgium, and travels around the worlddoing research as a food culture expert.Mr. Matsumoto's published worksinclude Osushi Chikyu o Mawaru(Kobunsha), Oishii Amerika Mitsuketa(Chikuma Shobo), New York TakezushiMonogatari (Asahi Shimbunsha), andSamurai Shisetsudan Yoroppa oShokusu (Gendai Shokan).

At a morning market, nigiri-zushi ismade under a canopy.

The Popularity of Sushi Overseas The BRICs Part 1

had been a sushi chef at the previous restaurantsince its opening. As he was a good chef, Kuroshiothrived. The shopping center was open year round,and Kenji could not handle it alone, so he wasjoined by his wife, Mami. At f irst, Mami wasagainst the idea of opening a sushi restaurant, forshe had seen firsthand the hardships her father wentthrough in Paraguay. However, now that Kuroshio isthriving, she enjoys working there. Kuroshio buys fish from a Japanese dealer who pur-chases it from the CEAGESP market. The marketfeatures yellowtail, sea bream, sea bass, olive floun-der and horse mackerel caught in the nearby sea, aswell as salmon from Chile. The tuna varietiesinclude bigeye and yellowfin, which f ishermencatch during their 20-day fishing trips, sailing out ofSantos and Rio de Janeiro. As the best quality tunais exported to the U.S. and Japan, procuring goodtuna locally is a hard job, said Kenji. His restau-rant's sales peaked around three years ago, mainlybecause many who had migrated to Japan andreturned with some money decided to open sushirestaurants en masse. They all assumed the sushibusiness would be lucrative. According to Kenji'sestimate, as of 2001, the number of restaurants serv-ing sushi in São Paulo would exceed 600, including350 Japanese restaurants and "por kilo" shops.

When I got to Warsaw in Poland, I actually wanted togo farther up to Moscow. But I gave up on it becauseobtaining a visa to Russia was an overly involvedprocess. Still, I really had wanted to see Moscow'ssushi boom with my own eyes. I couldn’t get thatthought out of my head, and I finally came up withthe idea to go to Ukraine instead. Ukraine is rightnext to Russia, and was a part of the Soviet Unionuntil 1991. The flourishing sushi restaurant chains inMoscow triggered a sushi boom in Ukraine as well,and sightseeing in Ukraine didn't require a visa. Ithought that if I went to Ukraine, I could also learnsomething of the sushi situation of Moscow. Then,serendipity struck.The Kikkoman Institute for International FoodCulture offered to introduce Mr. Junichi Sawano ofKikkoman Trading Europe GmbH, who was in

restaurant near Paulista Avenue, one of the mostprominent streets in São Paulo. The location wasideal, as Japanese business people would use therestaurant to entertain their Brazilian counterparts.Brazilians who first visited the restaurant with theirJapanese associates started to come with their fel-low Brazilians as well. This was the beginning ofthe Japanese food boom. However, at that time,sukiyaki and tempura were the preferred dishes.Although there was a sushi bar, sushi was not verypopular.The sushi boom in Brazil began in the late 1980s.The American interest in healthy eating was intro-duced to Brazil, and the image of sushi as a healthfood became widespread. Next to the Tietê long-dis-tance bus depot, there is a large shopping centercalled Shopping D, with a food court on the secondfloor. I went there to visit the Kuroshio Restaurant.Iwao Takimoto, owner of the New Tokyo restaurantin Paraguay (introduced in Food Culture No. 12)had urged me to visit his daughter's restaurant,Kuroshio, in São Paulo when I went there again.His daughter, Mami, was born in Colonia Fram, andmarried Kenji Sakamoto, who was working as acomputer engineer in São Paulo. Finding his workunchallenging, Kenji decided to quit his job. Hetalked with a fellow engineer who shared the samefeelings, and together they decided to open a sushirestaurant. As they were at the leading edge of aburgeoning interest in Japanese food, the timing waspropitious.

They wanted to try something innovative, anddecided to open their restaurant in a shopping cen-ter, which was still unprecedented in Brazil in 1994.The restaurant took off and the business thrived.Kenji, however, left the restaurant to open Kuroshio.He brought along a Brazilian named Manuel, who

15 FOOD CULTURE

Ukraine Instead ofRussia

Ukraine Instead ofRussia

At KUROSHIO, Mr. Takimoto's daughter, Mami, and Manuel, the chef

(Russia)

become a family restaurant, I tried to investigatefurther. As the sign was in Cyrillic, I could notmake out what it said, and I had a hard time tryingto f ind anyone who could understand English.Finally, a young person came and told me that therestaurant was in fact Sushiya.Timidly, I opened the door and was welcomed by achorus of voices calling out "irasshaimase (wel-come)!" Every time a customer enters, the youngwaitresses all join in this rousing greeting. The inte-rior design was exactly that of a family restaurant.

The only difference was thatthe sushi counter was situatedone step higher so that cus-tomers could see how sushiwas prepared. The Ukrainiansushi chefs were makingsushi, but there were no seatsin front of the sushi counter.The sushi counter was elevat-ed a bit to provide a show.The menu had lovely photosof sushi with Cyrillic andEnglish lettering. If the out-side sign had been in Englishas well, it could have savedme some trouble.The offered variety of nigiri-zushi was modest, including

mainly tuna, salmon, shrimp, sea bream, scallop,and salmon roe. The reason might be that theseingredients freeze well. The sushi rolls, though,offered plenty of variety, with tuna rolls, cucumberrolls, and many kinds of original rolls such asCalifornia roll, Philadelphia roll, Alaska roll,Dragon roll, and deep-fried shrimp roll. The priceswere 13 hryvni (one USD = approx. 8 hryvni) forone piece of tuna, 8 hryvni for salmon, and 15hryvni for salmon roe, which were a bit high. Butthe prices of rolls were reasonable, ranging from a13-hryvnia tuna roll to a 75-hryvnia dragon roll. Forcomparison, a Filet-O-Fish set menu at McDonald'swas 40 hryvni at the time. In the restaurant, most ofthe customers were eating sushi rolls, and nonewere eating nigiri-zushi. They were all locals, withno tourists in sight. It was early evening, andwomen were enjoying dinner after a day's work. Thebusiness appeared to be quite successful.The Kievtourist magazine at the hotel said that there werea combined seven Sushiya shops in the city.

charge of Russia. Since he frequently traveledbetween Düsseldorf and Moscow, he would be thebest person to describe the sushi situation in Moscow.So, I flew to Brussels at the end of September 2010and called him from Takezushi to obtain informationabout Ukraine, which was also his territory.He told me that the restaurants Yakitori, PlanetaSushi, Tanuki, and others had opened chain stores inUkraine. The biggest local chain store was Sushiya.Having decided to obtain information aboutMoscow's sushi situation later after returning fromUkraine, I flew from Brussels to Kiev via Warsaw. Ionce spent 18 hours on the train traveling fromBrussels to Warsaw (Food Culture No. 14), but thistime I got there quickly. I stayed at a hotel near Khreschatic Street, in thebusiest part in Kiev, and tried to f ind a nearbySushiya restaurant based on directions I received atthe hotel. I couldn’t f ind anything resembling asushi restaurant, although there was one familyrestaurant. Thinking the sushi restaurant might have

16FOOD CULTURE

At Sushiya's sushi counter, Ukrainian chefs prepare sushi on an elevated stage.

Sushiya in Ukraine. It looks like a family restaurant rather than a sushirestaurant.

The Popularity of Sushi Overseas The BRICs Part 1

order salmon roe rather than flying fish roe. Though“ikura” means salmon roe in Japanese, it simplymeans fish roe in Russian. If they were going tobring me the wrong roe, I wish it had been caviar.)Each dish was a proper nigiri-zushi. The cost of thefour servings was 50 hryvni, almost the same as atSushiya. The guidebook showed 7 Murakamis, butthere were already more than 10, according to the

restaurant manager. Hetold me that Murakami isthe most popular sushichain in Kiev, even aheadof Sushiya. The Premier Palace Hotelwill always have the dis-tinction of being the firsthotel in Ukraine to beawarded 5 stars. The hotelis home to an authenticJapanese restaurant calledSumosan, and this one hasseats in front of the sushicounter. The sushi chefwas not Japanese, but a

Moscow-born Korean-Russian named Mr. Kim.According to Mr. Kim, there are two other Sumosanrestaurants in London and Moscow, both of whichare owned (along with the Kiev Sumosan) by aGerman. They are also located in prominent hotels. Mr.Kim worked in theMoscow restaurant forfive years before com-ing to Kiev five yearsago. Two Japanesechefs at the Londonrestaurant take turnsteaching Japaneseculinary skills to thechefs of the Moscowand Kiev restaurants.As might well beexpected, the pricesare high. A singleserving (one piece)of tuna or salmon is88 hryvni, and aserving of fatty tuna127 hryvni. They serve proper caviar for 267hryvni.The Moscow restaurant imports Mediterranean or

Four outlets of Moscow’s Planeta Sushi chain wereintroduced in the tourist guidebook. I visited the oneon Khreschatic Street, and found no customersthere, even though it was lunch time. The menu waspriced at 21 hryvni for a piece of tuna, 15 for

salmon, and 19 forsalmon roe, whichwere higher pricesthan those atSushiya. Could it bebecause their sushiingredients werebrought to the chainoutlets in Kiev allthe way from Moscow?With this kind ofprice range, peoplewould naturally headto the nearby Sushiyainstead.Murakami was rightnext to Planeta Sushi,in the basement.

The sign outside the restaurant displayed sushi pho-tos with the restaurant name in Japanese lettering,so it was easy to find. The interior was stylish, andsimilar to that of a nightclub with subdued lighting.Behind the sushi counter, which had no seats, therewere 4 to 5 chefs, all Ukrainian.I ordered one serving each of tuna, salmon, seabream and flying fish roe. (Actually, I had meant to

17 FOOD CULTURE

Mr. Kim, sushi chef at Sumosan

Sushi bar at Murakami

Murakami’s charismatic manager

The Sushi Invasion fromMoscow

The Sushi Invasion fromMoscow

Japanese or sushirestaurants. On top ofthis, Yakitoria andPlaneta have 50 shopsrespectively, Tanukihas 20, and shopssimilar to them arefound everywhere. In Saint Petersburg,Eurasia has 50 chainshops. Also, someItalian and Chineserestaurants servesushi. So, with thesetypes of restaurantsincluded, the figureof 1,000 may not bean exaggeration."One of the authenticJapanese restaurantsis Misato, which is run by the Russian PresidentialPalace. The head chef, Mr. Munechika Ban, is thefirst Japanese chef approved to join the NationalChefs Guild, which allows only the most elite chefsto become members. Mr. Sawano told me that Mr.Ban had worked for Seiji prior to Misato. Seiji wasopened in 2001, and is the most renowned restau-rant in Moscow. They import fish directly from the Tsukiji fish mar-ket in Tokyo. Amazingly enough, at Seiji, there areno fewer than 150 regular customers who customar-ily spend the equivalent of $1,000 USD a night.However, the sushi restaurant market seems to havereached a saturation point. Mr. Sawano said,"Kikkoman and the Embassy of Japan have beenhosting cooking seminars for Russian chefs. Butthese days many say that they have had enough ofsushi and want to learn about other Japanese dish-es." Now, udon and ramen shops are emerging andaimed at securing a post-sushi position. This does not mean that the sushi boom has sub-sided, but that ramen shops are increasing in num-bers along with sushi restaurants. This is a goodthing for Kikkoman because it means more cus-tomers for their soy sauce.

Boston tuna, some of which is sent to Kiev. Youngyellowtail is shipped from Korea to Moscow andKiev. When the shipping costs of these fish areadded to the high cost of the prime hotel location,higher sushi prices are inevitable. Sumosan restau-rants stay in business because of the demand forsushi from business customers and foreign tourists,with little dependence on the locals.

After returning from Kiev to Brussels, I met upwith Mr. Sawano at Takezushi. He had come all theway from Düsseldorf, and the trip had taken fourhours rather than the usual two, due to heavy traffic.I felt a bit sorry for taking up his day like that. Butthen again, Takezushi in Belgium uses Kikkomansoy sauce and is a valued customer.I had obtained some information from newspapersand magazines regarding the sushi boom inMoscow. I read about Russian Prime MinisterPutin's particular liking for sushi, revealed byactions such as flying in his private jet to Japan,reserving a whole sushi restaurant in Ginza, enjoy-ing sushi, and then returning to Russia within thesame day (and bringing with him a sushi chef forhis party in Moscow). It is understandable thatmedia reports focus on such ostentation, but I want-ed to know how sushi was seen by the averageMuscovite. First, I thought I should learn a bit of the Cyrillicalphabet, and luckily Mr. Sawano had majored inthe Russian language at university. Sushi is writtenin Cyrillic as "СУШИ" where "С" is an S sound,"У" is pronounced as U, "Ш" represents SH, and "И"is read as I. The Sushiya sign had an "Я" which ispronounced “ya,” at the end. “ëìòàü” meansSushiya. And here I thought they had intentionallyreversed R to imitate the logo of the TOYSRUS toystore!What I really wanted to ask Mr. Sawano waswhether the 1,000 sushi restaurants in Moscow citedby newspaper articles and other media were repre-sentative of the true figure. Some articles more con-servatively said there were only 500 restaurants.While 500 might be possible, 1,000 was way too biga number for me to take seriously.Mr. Sawano replied, "There are only 10 or so authentic

18FOOD CULTURE

1,000 Sushi Restaurantsin Moscow

1,000 Sushi Restaurantsin Moscow

Mr. Sawano of Kikkoman. The soysauce bottles with the Cyrillic label aredestined for Russia.

The BRIC countries of India and China willbe covered in the next issue of Food Cultureas Part 2 of this article.

The Popularity of Sushi Overseas The BRICs Part 1