Sushi in New Zealand: Uncovering its mysterious origins – New Zealand Herald

As common-place as burgers, pizzas and sandwiches, just how did sushi become so popular in New Zealand?

It was that delicate tang of vinegared rice cut with sticks of chilled cucumber, bound in black sheets of nori that got me. The first time I tried sushi I was nine years old and it was made by a Japanese exchange student hosted by my family. Sitting around spooning glutinous rice onto little squares of seaweed to eat felt like the height of avant-garde cuisine to a kid in mid-90s Whangarei. And it began, for me, a life-long obsession with sushi.

While you'll find sushi in almost every shopping mall and small town centre in the country now, it's taken almost half a century for it to get there.

The year was 1973 and the population of Japanese people in New Zealand was small. By 1976 recorded numbers were 1245. It wasn't until the 1990s that real immigration growth was seen.

But in the early 70s, Masa Sekikawa, who had not long arrived by boat via Australia, recalls walking down Queen St and realising he was a singular Asian face among the throng. "I was probably the only black-haired Asian man walking down that street. There was absolutely no Japanese food. And you couldn't even buy Japanese soy sauce."

Sekikawa was indeed a long way from home. To get back to Japan in the 70s he had to fly from Auckland to Port Moresby to the Philippines, on to Hong Kong, to Taipei, to Okinawa and finally Haneda, Tokyo's international airport.

Asked if New Zealand was initially a lonely place to be, Sekikawa says, yes, but it became "almost the opposite quite quickly".

"Because there were so few Japanese people, you'd find them quite easily and become very tight-knit. You know, meeting up every day, almost."

Walking up Auckland's main street, his back to the sparkling Waitemat harbour, Sekikawa could take a right onto K Rd and another right into the symmetrical art deco delight of St Kevin's Arcade. From here he'd meander down, down, down its wide-mouthed steps and, instead of continuing on ahead to stroll under the Phoenix palms of Myers Park, he'd tuck into a little side door for something familiar to eat.

Many will now know this space as the rough and ready dive bar, Whammy. But in the early 70s, Sekikawa was stepping into Yamato, New Zealand's first Japanese restaurant, where the first morsels of sushi were sold.

"Yamato started with Japanese food in general," recalls Sekikawa, who would go on to open his own Japanese takeaway shop on Queen St in the mid-80s before becoming the director of Sakura Television, which broadcasts Japanese content in New Zealand and Australia.

"Part of Yamato's menu was sushi I have a copy here," he tells the Herald over the phone before proceeding to read it: "Yakitori, the chicken skewer, was $1.50. Combination sashimi was $2.50. Kingfish and snapper and John Dory."

Yamato was a place where Sekikawa satisfied not just his hunger for food from his homeland but the culture and conversation of his people, too.

"I went there every day," says Sekikawa. "Every day. There was no other place you could speak Japanese."

The couple who opened Yamato, a husband-and-wife team now in their 80s, agreed to speak to the Herald provided their names were not published. For older generations who may have read about Yamato in print some years ago, they will likely recall the Kiwi man and Japanese woman who started it. But it appears none of that coverage is available online today. And so, as much as this writer can divulge about the origins of sushi in New Zealand, the names of those who should be credited with first selling it here will remain a mystery to new generations, for now.

What can be shared is that when they arrived in New Zealand and opened their restaurant, it was to the delight of fellow Japanese immigrants like Sekikawa - and the confusion of many Kiwis.

"I had a very authentic Japanese restaurant. My husband and I started it and I brought chefs from Japan. It took a year to build. Because it would be the first Japanese restaurant in New Zealand, I didn't want it to be a cheap, takeaway kind.

"I was more educating people. They didn't know the difference between Chinese and Japanese food. People used to come in and say, 'Can I have chow mein?' and I'd say, 'No, we don't serve chow mein. Chow mein is Chinese.' That's the kind of history we had."

The 100-seat restaurant became "hugely successful", its customers including international celebrities dining there during their New Zealand concert tours.

"It was a good time when the economy was going up in New Zealand. A lot of Japanese businessmen were here. These people needed Japanese food. So, I said, 'Let's start something new.' People were going overseas to export things and tasting Japanese food."

But getting that food and ingredients back in New Zealand was "very difficult."

"It took so long. But we'd lived in big cities in other countries - New York, Toronto, Montreal - they all had those things. In New Zealand, there was nowhere to get it. I started a mail-order to Japanese people living in different cities. In Napier, or wherever they were, Japanese ladies who were married to Kiwis had come here after the Korean war and they had a hard time to get Japanese food [sic].

"While we were building the restaurant I was trying to get a licence. It was very difficult. You had to sell [what you bought in], so I opened a shop on Customs Street selling Japanese food and crockery and chopsticks even."

Haru Sameshima was a 14-year-old Japanese immigrant in 1973. Now a photographer and publisher, he remembers that shop on Customs Street, Asahi Food, amid his mother's struggle to keep putting Japanese dishes on the family table. (Never mind the fact that her son, meanwhile, was thrilled to discover Big Ben pies packed with "so much meat" for just 20 cents at the school tuck shop).

"Suddenly she couldn't find anything that she was able to get in Japan," Sameshima recalls. "She was improvising. We couldn't believe the amount of land we had with our state house in Glen Innes. She cultivated a vege patch to grow daikon and things like that.

"Asahi Food was the only place you could get Japanese food supplies. The only place you could get Japanese soy sauce," he tells the Herald, adding that he also remembers Yamato as the only Japanese restaurant of the era. "Being a kid, I remember going a couple of times and you could get sushi and a whole range of dishes."

Now in their twilight years, the couple who founded those first outlets for Japanese food tell the Herald they are happy to see the influence their early efforts have had.

"I love this country and I really think I did many things good for them [sic]. Because a lot of people can make Japanese food at home now, and love Japanese cuisine. I'm very proud of that and very satisfied."

Other notable early influences include Ariake restaurant - which opened in 1980 and ran for 30 years out of its Albert St premises - Cafe Rika, Sharaku on Queen St, and Industry Zen at Auckland's Viaduct. And Queenstown's Minami Jujusei, which opened in 1986. Early food suppliers include Made in Nippon, and Mai Trading which became Tokyo Foods, now the largest wholesaler in New Zealand.

Through much of this time, one Koji Murata has been making sushi in New Zealand. Arriving in 1984 and beginning at a small Japanese restaurant in Rotorua, he went on to become an almost decade-long fixture at Ariake where fans included Sean Fitzpatrick and food writer Lauraine Jacobs. Eventually, he opened his own endeavours and now runs a private sushi catering service, Koji's Kitchen. Including 10 years in the fishing industry in Japan, Koji has been working with fish and making sushi for 45 years.

While he notes California-style rolls with salmon and avocado appear to be the most commonly enjoyed in New Zealand now, he is surprised by how popular sushi is here.

"It is so popular. You see this Japanese-named food everywhere. It's different to traditional Japanese sushi but many foods over time have changed. From Japan it's come to the UK, America, China. Each country has a different situation."

As much as the founders of Yamato were trailblazers of Japanese food in New Zealand, serving up the first sushi here, there's a name that should latterly be credited for sushi's widespread popularity in this country: Nick Katsoulis of St Pierre's sushi.

Before you turn up a purist snout at St Pierre's, let me point you to a recent post by Albert Cho: New Zealand's self-made, expletive-riddled-in-the-best-way, food critic for the people.

Cho wrote on his Instagram account, eatlitfood, earlier this year: "St Pierre's [Ponsonby] is young, it's sexy and it's lit. I've always said that the salmon that they use is actually out the gate "

Upon learning St Pierre's uses Regal King Salmon in its sushi, Cho concurs, "their fish is f***ing royal, it genuinely melts in the mouth and can you just please appreciate the f***ing colour and lines of fat? Nobody is ever too good for St. Pierre's. If you think you are, you have to take a f***ing seat."

Katsoulis shares that "New Zealand King Salmon and St Pierre's opened at virtually the same time. We had fresh salmon for sale and people had never seen it."

That was in 1984. Katsoulis and his brothers had opened an upmarket seafood delicatessen in Wellington, hoping to create "something that transformed the old New Zealand fish shop into something really sort of swanky and more upscale. A more modern version of it."

"At our opening party I had a friend who was a chef and he made vegetarian sushi. So, in 1984, you've got to think, how innovative is that?"

From there, Katsoulis remembers being approached by a fine dining restaurant in Wellington offering to supply them with sushi to sell.

"I think it was Plimmer House ... They got their seaweed from somewhere in Auckland and they used to make a simple cucumber and pickle roll. But it didn't take off.

"To be honest, we didn't even know how to serve it. We had it for about six months, I really didn't know anything about sushi in those days. We ended up giving up. It just wasn't selling."

It wasn't until the early 90s that St Pierre's would have another go.

While Katsoulis was dubious, times had moved on. By setting up small trestle tables with someone making sushi in front of stores in Newmarket, what's now Commercial Bay in downtown Auckland and in Wellington and Christchurch, "really small seeds" were being planted.

But initial reactions still weren't encouraging.

"People would just walk past and go, 'Ew, sushi. Raw fish, yuck!'"

He recalls that the quality of their ingredients "wasn't good" and "customers would complain that the seaweed was too chewy."

An invitation to Japan was an opportunity for Katsoulis to change that. He arranged meetings with trading companies and St Pierre's began importing its own sushi ingredients.

"If we hadn't done that, our business wouldn't have grown," he says of the now 65 stores across New Zealand.

Meanwhile, there was one early customer who was a fast fan: Sameshima. He met Katsoulis in Auckland and says, "Nick was always asking for my opinion. I think he saw me as Japanese but with a Kiwi side, I was like a tasting bridge.

"St Pierre's definitely revolutionised things. Really led the charge. In the way that sushi was becoming popular in Japan, he took on that trend. And it's genuine. He went to Japan and sourced the right soy sauce and nori and everything. I think being in shopping malls helped too."

That's a point Katsoulis also makes: "I guess we put sushi on the map because we exposed the product really quickly to the public because we had shops in malls anyway. Probably if we'd just opened a shop on Ponsonby or K Rd, I don't think we'd have been successful. The mall accelerated the growth because of the number of people walking around."

Like Sameshima, Katsoulis too surmises that the popularity we see now stemmed from sushi moving away from being a traditional high-end, expensive dining experience to something available to everyone. Plus, he says, "it's a very clean food. It's very tasty, it looks good - and children like it."

Asked if the Kiwi palate has changed over time, Katsoulis feels that in many ways it hasn't, but there are definitely some areas of growth when it comes to the types of sushi people want.

"Even in the old days, if you liked sashimi, you liked it," he says. "If anything's grown it's the vegetarian and vegan offerings that we do. Chicken sushi has always been popular, especially in South Island. Salmon is still the number one fish we use and a little bit of tuna and some kingfish. But most people just want salmon."

And while Cho has given St Pierre's his seal of approval, rating it "8.72/10 (and 12.52/10 on his Eat Lit Food scale), Sekikawa, who has dined at the world famous Jiro, as in the fascinating documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, has also given St Pierre's credit.

His company, Sakura TV, was appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries of Japan as a Japanese food supporters' certification company.

He awarded St Pierre's certification "because [it] uses Japanese imported nori, soy sauce, wasabi, all sorts of ingredients. I really support them. I think he's doing very good for Japanese food culture."

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Sushi in New Zealand: Uncovering its mysterious origins - New Zealand Herald