In the early 1800s in Tokyo, sushi (as we would come to know it) was something you ate on the street. The first guy to hand-press pieces of fish onto nubs of vinegared rice sold it to everyday workers from a box he carried around on his back. In the society of the late Edo period, sushi was as accessible as the chum-stuffed plastic clamshells sold from the cooler at Walgreens (though probably a lot better). The rarefied omakase (roughly, “chef’s choice”), popularized by Jiro Ono of Tokyo’s world-famous Sukiyabashi Jiro and now recognized as the highest expression of Edomai-style sushi (as it was known), was a long way off.
Park came to Chicago 17 years ago, when he helped open Mirai Sushi and Japonais, later going on to launch his own Izakaya Yume in Niles, where omakase gradually became part of the attraction (the concept still exists as a food truck and a stand in the downtown H Mart on Jackson). Pipping says opening a dedicated omakase has been Park’s ambition all along, and acknowledges that the popularity of the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi is part of what’s made it finally possible in Chicago. (Yume is the Japanese word for “dream.”)
There’s time to think about the care and planning that go into these individual morsels. It’s likely that there’s a piece of kinmedai (aka golden-eye snapper) coming, a fatty deepwater fish that often needs to be aged to reduce its water content and develop its flavor. Park blanches its red skin with hot water, then holds its fleshy side over ice prior to serving. Ōra King salmon is first isolated in a Japanese whiskey box Park injects with a smoking gun that gently melts its fat, then adorned with green onion and soy. Each nigiri receives a similarly soft whisper of seasoning: a blend of dried ground kombu and bonito powder for the yellowtail, dried aonori powder and Korean sesame oil for the kanpachi, dried shrimp powder for the sweet shrimp, and a light char from a blowtorch for the squid.
These are extraordinary moments in an extraordinary experience. But Park hasn’t built a shrine around himself. His wife, Kate Kim Park, greets guests at the door and warmly attends to their needs on the opposite side of the bar. Park operates swiftly, and guests are encouraged to pop the nigiri the instant it lands on the tray. This is in service to freshness of the presentation, but it can lead to some sloppiness, as liquid from the nigiri tends to pool on the tray over time.
