Chef Hiro runs Sekisui East with care and calculations
Balance. That’s the idea that Hiro Nakajima—chef and part owner of Sekisui East—continually returns to.
How will he prepare the day’s nigiri offerings? With a balance of colors, tastes, and textures.
Should he change up Sekisui’s menu? Maybe, but maybe not—he has to balance the customer’s wants with the restaurant’s needs.
Will he be discouraged by hard times and elated by good times? No, he has to balance both, taking the good and the bad in stride.
Hiro—affectionately known to his loyal customers as Hiro-San—has been cooking at Sekisui since 2006. But his roots go back to Ibaraki prefecture, northeast of Tokyo on Japan’s eastern Pacific coast. “My house was a sushi restaurant,” he says. “My father and mother both made sushi. I learned from them.”
As he was growing up, his parents were always busy running their restaurant. He didn’t work with them, but his mom had him make simple sushi dinners at home for himself. “At that time, I hated sushi because I ate it every day,” he says. “I wanted to eat something else.”
Though he tired of preparing sushi at home, his parents’ profession rubbed off on him. When Hiro was 16 years old, he left home to study kappo, a traditional Japanese style of cooking where diners are seated at a counter and watch as chefs prepare their meal, often with seasonal ingredients and with input from guests on taste preferences.
Many of the kappo principles he studied still stick with him.
First is the importance of health in running a restaurant. He’s constantly working to keep the space clean, and also checking the quality of ingredients to make sure they’re fresh. “If the customer eats something wrong, it’s a big problem for everybody,” he says.
Next is creativity. When he makes a dish, he thinks about how it looks—the textures and colors. He considers—here’s that word again—the balance of fish, vegetables, and other ingredients. “That balance—I’m always thinking about that,” he says.
The give-and-take between chef and diner in kappo-style cooking is something else that he’s brought with him all the way to Memphis. Before he prepares a second dish for a customer, he’ll observe what they ate—and didn’t eat—from the first dish. And he’ll work to adjust the next dish to their taste and appetite.
After he finished his kappo training in Japan, Hiro’s first stop in the U.S. was New York City. Like many young people, he was eager to explore the big city. But one year was enough for him, and he headed to Boston. A few years later, a friend told him about Sekisui, a sushi restaurant in Memphis that was looking for a chef. Hiro decided to give it a try, and he hasn’t looked back. Memphis even reminds him of his hometown. “Not big city, but not too country,” he says.
Transitioning from kappo chef to sushi chef wasn’t a problem for Hiro. “Japanese kappo chefs can make everything—sushi, tempura, soba, udon . . .” he says.
For his first seven years in Memphis, Hiro worked as head chef at Sekisui East’s former location on Humphreys Boulevard. But when they opened the current location, on Poplar near Kirby, Hiro took on a part ownership role with longtime Sekisui owner Jimmy Ishii. The location features a dining room with booths and tables. Customers can make reservations for tatami seating, where six to eight people sit on pillows around a low table. And diners interested in an omakase (chef’s choice) evening at the sushi bar can call about availability.
Each of Memphis’s four Sekisui locations—Sekisui East, Sekisui Midtown, Sekisui Pacific Rim, and South Main Sushi—has its own unique feel. “At Sekisui East, our style is traditional Japanese,” says Hiro. “Of course, we have special rolls, like American style, but basically we’re making and selling nigiri style.”
A hallmark of Sekisui East is their specials board, which lists the current selection of fish flown in from Japan. Most days there are around a half dozen choices. “Today, there’s Spanish mackerel. It’s very good. They have fat and flavor. Last week it was unicorn fish. It’s called that because it has a horn,” Hiro says, smiling. “It’s very different. It’s so difficult to describe, basically because people here have never eaten that flavor and texture of fish. It’s similar to the meat of the blowfish.”
While Hiro orders salmon and tuna locally, it’s non-negotiable to him to offer seasonal fish from Japan. “American people eat the same fish all year, but in Japan every season is different,” he says.
Each piece of Hiro’s nigiri is like its own little work of art. The salmon belly is marinated with ponzu. The scallop is topped with uni (sea urchin).
“With just one small piece of nigiri, I can make so many varieties of style,” he says.
The rolls are beautiful too. The Mi Mi roll is made with crab, shrimp tempura, apple, crunchies, and mayo. Each mimi bite is striped with avocado and eel sauce.
When black cod is available, Hiro sometimes tops it with a single strip of pickled burdock root. And Hiro suggests diners try bites with and without the daikon that comes on the side, to experience how the daikon alters the cod’s flavor.
The menu offers plenty of other options too, including soups, salads, tonkatsu, tempura, teriyaki, and lychee sorbet.
Though the busy restaurant often doesn’t allow time for this, Hiro’s favorite way to cook is when a customer asks him to make an off-menu item of his choosing. In that case, he comes up with a mental picture of the dish he wants to create and then he makes it happen. “First, I make the image. Then that image materializes. That is fun!” he says.
For any customer, though, Hiro is happy to make menu recommendations. He likes to know their preferences and allergies, and whether they have any religious dietary requirements. As customers come back over time, he learns their likes and dislikes and can suggest combinations just for them.
He has customers with shellfish allergies who return over and over because they trust Hiro to keep them safe. The exception he makes to that is when an Uber Eats order lists a customer allergy without details. “I’m very scared, and I cancel. I don’t want to kill people,” he says with a grin.
As part-owner of Sekisui East, he’s always making these kinds of calculations.
Like many other restaurant owners, he’s found it hard the last few years to find employees. Even Sekisui’s dishwasher is just part-time, meaning Hiro and other staff members often take dish duty. He feels stress every time an employee calls him, worrying they’re calling out sick, leaving the restaurant more short-staffed.
He’s considering streamlining the menu to make it easier to manage with a smaller staff—but he knows that any menu cut will disappoint some part of his customer base.
Every once in a while, the fish that arrives from Japan isn’t up to Hiro’s high standards and he refuses to serve it. “At those times I feel so bad that I want to close the restaurant, because people are waiting for our good fish, but I cannot sell it—so people are sad,” he says.
But then he thinks about all of his regular customers and the happiness they bring to and get from Sekisui. “That is good for us. Happiness is number one,” he says.
It’s both the good and the bad feelings that make life worth living for Hiro. “With all of that stuff, even the pressure, it feels like I’m alive,” he says.
And it all comes back to balance. “You have to include the total thing—the happy stuff, the bad stuff,” he says.
“Always people have good feelings and bad feelings. But the total, I think, is a good feeling.”
Sekisui East
6696 Poplar Avenue
Manda Gibson is copy editor at Edible Memphis. She loves the whole storytelling process—from getting to know the people she interviews, to weaving together a story, to being entrusted with editing other writers’ work.
Michael Butler, Jr., loves everything Memphis. His goal is to show the beauty in Memphis that others overlook. He’s a photographer, videographer, Memphis tee collector, foodie, lover of tacos, and mayor of South Memphis. @_one901