13 June 2025
I got a message on LINE from the boys in Toyosu on Saturday night. “Jeffrey-san, what’s your order?” It’s nearly Monday morning for them. My week is ending, theirs is just beginning. The saga continues.
Who needs the racetrack when I’m gambling on these fish deliveries? And who needs drugs the way it makes my heart race? Between the tariffs, supply chain, tropical storms, and how cold the truck from Albuquerque is — plenty of excitement.
The apocryphal Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times.
I poured myself another gin and closed my eyes. A bouillabaisse I used to make in the Echo Park days drifted into my mind. We dragged a big bucket of it up to the Sierras with a few friends. It’s one of those dishes with a lot of baggage. It’s gotta be these specific fish, conger eel, weeverfish, pastis, rouille, saffron. The Marseillais think they know fish.
Unencumbered by being French, I did it my own way. Why call it bouillabaisse, then? Pretty name.
The oldest rule in cooking, whether you’re hosting a dinner party for your friends or catering a 150 person wedding, is — when you’re under the gun, stick to the repertoire.
And Jeff Ozawa is most certainly under the gun.
But it’s all starting to come together. Dinner no longer feels like the world’s biggest gamble. It’s not. Don’t forget Lady Godiva put everything she had on a horse. Dusting off this Japanese bouillabaisse for Friday night is proper madness, but we’ll do it anyway.
Hisa dropped off a new piece he calls Equinox. It’s a column of steel mounted with a wooden frame that nearly reaches the ceiling. A light from within illuminates the wood with the gentle glow of a distant star. It was inspired by the western sky and all the stars we see here in the evening. Are we moving or are the stars? If I stand still at the same goddamn corner unit on Lena St, order fish from New Zealand and Japan, and make chirashi and bouillabaisse, will it feel like I’ve traveled somewhere?
I suppose the scientific answer is that we’re all moving, me and the stars, but it doesn’t always feel that way.
I got a hug from David and Annamaria in the parking lot. Whispered in both ears: “You smell like fish.”
seasonal crudités with sesame miso bagna cauda
temaki
choice of blue crab, hamachi, or ikura
yukke
raw grass fed beef, sesame, shoyu, garlic, aonori, endive
scallop ceviche
raw sea scallops, sudachi, ikura, aonori
bouillabaisse
rich seafood stew in miso tomato broth with crab rouille toast
shiokoji scallop bento
seared sea scallops marinated in shiokoji over Japanese rice with hiyashi salad, pickles
vegan bento
chickpea and buckwheat patties over Japanese rice with hiyashi salad, pickles
chirashi
raw shima aji, snapper, scallop, bluefin tuna, hamachi, and ikura over sushi rice
kyuri sunomono
vinegared cucumber and seaweed salad
hiyashi salad
local lettuces, radish, cucumber, sesame ginger dressing
basque cheesecake
sesame miso cookie