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Traditional Twist
By Audrey Shiomi
Monday, December 29, 2008
Susumu Tsuchihashi has fulfilled his childhood dream by opening an imagawa-yaki shop.
Photos by: MARIOG. REYES/Rafu Shimpo
The pastry shop Fulfilled in Beverly Hills serves up unique pancake-like pastries known as imagawa-yaki that stray from tradition and can be both sweet and savory. The red pastries above are filled with strawberries, cream cheese and Ghirardelli chocolate. The green are created with spinach, feta cheese, and sundried tomatoes.
Tsuchihashi concentrates as he uses a tool to flip freshly grilled imagawa-yaki. The 28-year-old is meticulous with his craft and patrons can taste that work in his finished product.
By his mid-20s, Susumu Tsuchihashi had almost everything he’d aimed for: a high-paying job in business consulting, a well-appointed condo on Wilshire’s Golden Mile, and enough spare change to lavish in Los Angeles’ haute dining scene. The only thing left on his to-do list was to run a food business.
Friends know him as the guy with an incurable case of epicurean wanderlust. As a kid, he spent more time in the kitchen than the playground, tweaking recipes from a Mrs. Fields cookbook. And while studying at a university in Tokyo, he simultaneously trained at a private culinary academy in Japanese and French cuisine.
Financial ambitions set him on a different path out of college. But even as he worked his way from Arthur Andersen intern to consultant for one of the largest firms in the world, he had a hard time letting go of his dream.
So earlier this year, Tsuchihashi, 28, decided it was either now or never; he was going to quit his job to become his own boss. He pinned his aspirations on a traditional pastry called imagawa-yaki – something he grew up eating whenever he visited relatives in Japan. He liked the idea of introducing something that didn’t include raw fish.
Weeks later, he was in Tokyo spending each day researching imagawa-yaki at shops scattered throughout the city. Some sat along Tokyo’s old Shitamachi district. Some stood at eki-mae (front of the train station). One hid in a maze of boutiques sidelined by Omotesando, the city’s high-fashion boulevard.
By definition, an imagawa-yaki is a sweet griddle-cake filled with warm, azuki (red bean) paste. Its covering is moist, slightly dense (in comparison to a pancake), and slightly springy, explains Tsuchihashi. Though as he discovered, even traditional shops stray from tradition, whether by grilling a thinner, crispier shell, adding honey, or creating a soft, fluffy consistency. “It was their way to stand out from each other,” he says.
Shopkeepers sat with Tsuchihashi, bestowing in few short hours a lifetime’s account of trial and error. Their experience outweighed his own. But for these culinary artisans, overlooked in an era of fancier pastries, they were just happy to see someone so excited to grill imagawa-yaki, much less outside Japan.
Back in Los Angeles, Tsuchihashi held tasting parties where he experimented with a variety of ingredients. He loved azuki but also wanted to create other flavors to entice LA’s multicultural palate.
Among his menu: banana and Nutella, chocolate, toffee, crunchy peanut butter; strawberry, cream cheese, white chocolate; chicken apple sausage, pepper jack cheese, chili and cilantro. Traditionalists would gasp at the thought of anything other than red bean, but as Tsuchihashi explains, the reinvented dessert is simply a reflection of his own bi-cultural upbringing; someone with Japanese roots, born and raised in the U.S. Of course, azuki is on the menu, too.
His means of drawing capital proved a labor of love. Tsuchihashi sold his plush condo, moved in with his parents, then cashed out his 401(k) plan. He rented out a space in Beverly Hills and underwent all the steps needed to open a business: signing the lease, applying for permits, hiring a designer, creating a logo, marketing, dealing with construction issues, applying for more permits. He kept his day job through the end of summer until he could no longer juggle both.
Tsuchihashi named the shop Fulfilled and opened for business in November. He garnered buzz on a local foodie website, Eaterla, as the ‘new kid on the block,’ being auspiciously located down the street from both Sprinkles Cupcakes and Pinkberry.
Now with his shop in full swing, he greets a range of customers, engaging them in conversation about what he’s come to nickname “ima.” To the uninitiated, he explains it’s akin to a cupcake, a comfort food-like sweet you ate as a child. “It’s a nostalgic pastry,” he says. To the Asian food aficionado, he conveys his good intentions, and if that doesn’t help he points to the red bean option on the menu board.
Recent economic times have put a strain on most business operations in town. But boom or bust, he’s glad he took the plunge.
“Lots of my friends always complain about their jobs. They hate what they do. They know what they want to do, but no one wants to take the risk. And in my mind, Iknow they’ll always wonder about it,” he says. “I didn’t want to live the rest of my life with that ‘what-if’ factor.”
Tsuchihashi recently found an old yearbook from when he attended Asahi Gakuen, a Japanese language school in West Los Angeles. Turning the pages, he discovered the ominous words of his second-grade self: “When I grow up, I’m going to be a pastry chef.”
Financial setbacks aside, for him there’s no regrets.
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Fulfilled is located at 9405 S. Santa Monica Blvd., in Beverly Hills. (310) 860-0776. Mention you are a Rafu reader and get 20% off your entire purchase. Offer is good through the end of January. Audrey Shiomi is a freelance writer, audreyshiomi@gmail.com |
