5 September 2025
The trip is always the same. My parents, Susanne and Yuichi, moved to an assisted living in Brooklyn this year, with a little guestroom for your boy. Load up the overnight bag with some primo rice and a few t-shirts. Lock in or clock out.
Flying is some kind of modern punishment. The jet set. You think it’s what’s up but it is, in fact, not what’s up. Private jets, business class, and the back row of Spirit Air, they all suck. A truly rich man wanders the Valles Caldera with a song in his heart. (Piano trio in E flat). Old Siddhartha told us we suffer for our attachments. Point. But some attachments I can’t cut off.
In the words of Paulie Walnuts, “All I'm trying to do is pay my ma back for when I was a kid and got into so much trouble. She went to bat for me how many times, with the nuns, with the store owners up and down thirteenth street, and let's face it, with the cops.”
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The weekend commute. About to board. United Airlines woman grabs the mic and breaks our hearts.
“Houston, we have a problem.”
The plane was delayed. They couldn’t get their walkie talkies to work. The maintenance guy was coming to check it out but “because it’s Saturday he’s about 30 minutes away.” They can renovate the Sunport but please don’t ever change the carpet and for the love of god never schedule a weekend maintenance guy.
Listen, if it’s just the walkie talkies… Why don’t we take our chances?
“Sir, please use the app provided in the QR code to reschedule your connection.”
I felt the trip slipping through my fingers. No way I’ll make the connection. The universe is testing me. Must see Susie. It’s cool, I’ll just rebook my connection using this bullshit in-app chat. Houston, here we come. Sprinting to make the connection, I didn’t really get to savor George Bush International, but the whole placed smelled of barbecue sauce. Dipping into my seat on that connecting flight, my pocket jingling with vodka miniatures, I felt like Alexander. I finished I Regret Almost Everything and fell asleep.
LaGuardia at midnight had the vibe of a Cheesecake Factory. Botox and athleisure, like an endless line waiting for valet. I splashed a few extra dollars to be picked up in a Toyota Sienna. That’s right.
“Business or pleasure?” the driver asked me.
Neither. Let’s go.
We had a good run on the BQE for the first few minutes, up to the part where you’re cruising at 3rd story level down a corridor of apartment buildings. A thousand rear windows illuminated with light. I love that movie.
The Sienna hugged the shoulder slowly in the right lane. Drivers aren’t any good anymore. I miss the yellow cabs of old, they knew how to haul ass.
Traffic tightened. At midnight—you gotta be shitting me. Car rolled to a stop. Rear windows. Maybe I’ll see a naked woman, I thought to myself. Grace Kelly, fresh out of the shower. A slow crawl. I looked around. A hairy ass naked man walked to his open window, toweling himself off. Beautiful.
Straight to Hadramout, the 24-hour Yemeni restaurant on Atlantic that has been a sanctuary for me these past months.
“Lamb kebsa and mulukhiyeh?”
Good memory.
A complimentary broth, salty and rich, revived me.
Voicemail from my dad.
“Jeff it’s me. I need a shoyu dispenser for dining hall. Can you help me out?”
Details. He is looking for something sealable. To throw in mom’s purse and bust out… at a crucial moment. How about an empty vodka miniature? Perfect.
I slipped in to the assisted living like a thief in the night. Checked the closet, half bottle of Nikka Gin just as I left it. Tutto bene.
In a kind of torpor from the kebsa, but still wired from the thrill of it all. That two hour jet lag, laying in bed laughing about that hairy ass naked man. Grinning ear to ear.
My dad got up to go to the bathroom at 4am and heard noises from the guest room.
He opened the door. “Oh it’s you,” he said, and closed the door. It felt like 2004, sneaking back into my room after a night out. Chatting with Deniz on the phone. 10am in Berlin. Talked each other down from distant cliffs. She’s doing muay thai now. Jesus.
He popped back in on his way back to bed.
Yeah it’s me.
“Your mother will be surprised.”
Definitely.
“I weigh 113 pounds. Write that down,” he said and closed the door again.
Night.
I got out of bed at 10:30, Sunday morning, strategically too late to have to go to mass with them, having slept soundly in the oxygen-enriched air of sea-level Brooklyn.
“Oh, I know you!” My mother said with a smile.
You look familiar too.
“I was so worried, I thought you had died.”
Well you got over it pretty quickly, huh?
“No, I was upset.”
Like when the dining hall runs out of ice cream!
Precious laughter.
Shall we go have a croissant?
“Yes! I like those.”
We walked hand in hand to L'Appartement 4F and sat outside with a pain au chocolat. She told me how she accidentally went to mass in Arabic at the Maronite church across the street.
“I just…didn’t understand it.”
I was a surprise child. My mom was 42 years old, dad was nearly 50. They got careless. Great. Surprise Jeffrey. I still rely on the element of surprise.
Reviews from the chirashi of the year. Mackerel was the star. The sacred shime saba my dad would make in New Jersey has found an audience. Nice to be understood. I’ll put it on the menu a la carte.
Some relics from the old house. A picture of my dad wearing jorts at a tea ceremony, sitting seiza next to some VIPs. A real class act, as we would say in New Jersey. A couple of pocket sized sushi manuals which have come in handy with our presentation. The sacred scrolls.
Andrew and I hit Table 87 for dinner. Calamar, stuffed clams, clam pie. This was the first trip where I didn’t so much as tear up. But tasting the lemon butter and clam broth, if we weren’t pissing ourselves laughing, I certainly might have. Restaurants like these used to be up and down the coast, now they’re a kind of curio. Old New York.
Thumping along on the train headed for Howard Beach I pulled the noise-cancelling headphones on for some early Aphex Twin. Another trip to New York. You don’t have to take your shoes off anymore to go through security. I’ll give him that.
On the plane I flipped through the few pics I had taken from the weekend and sighed. My dad, who wore jorts to the tea ceremony, who crossed the pacific like it were a pond, still banging around with his walker wreaking havoc. Cats have nine lives, he has ninety. My mother, whose memory has been peeled back to the core. Adrift in the dining hall, but vividly recalling the nuns who taught her catechism, her dear Grandfather who worked for Horn & Hardart, seeing Elvis on Ed Sullivan that first time. “That’s when I realized I didn’t want to be a nun anymore…”
On the plane back I didn’t feel like drinking. I pulled up the newsletter and hammered away. Remembering the old lines,
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
Dropping that line, you’re not supposed to doze off right away. But that’s exactly what I did. A handsome corpse in the aisle seat of economy plus. If there’s anything that could be said for hard work—the naps I’m taking these days are…unbelievable.
temaki
choice of blue crab, maguro, kanpachi namerou, or ikura
sesame miso bagna fredda
local raw vegetables with an umami-rich anchovy dip
hiyashi salad
local lettuces, radish, cucumber, sesame ginger dressing
owan
rich fish stock miso soup
shime saba
Kansai-style vinegared raw mackerel sashimi
kanpachi namerou
tartare of raw kanpachi*, white miso, ginger, shiso, over rice
white anchovy salad with shiso vinaigrette
marinated white anchovies over local greens with fresh shiso dressing
scallop ceviche
raw sea scallops, sudachi, ikura, aonori
black cod saikyo yaki bento
roasted black cod marinated in miso, over Japanese rice with hiyashi salad and pickles
seared scallop bento
seared sea scallops over Japanese rice, hiyashi salad & pickles
maguro bento
raw bluefin tuna over sushi rice with hiyashi salad, pickles
chirashi
raw itoyori, saba, tuna, nodoguro, scallop, kinmedai, tai, ikura, uni over sushi rice*
basque cheesecake
yuzu coconut rice pudding
sesame miso cookie