Nebraska’s Revered Sushi Legend

His background and the genesis of Yoshitomo

I spent 12 years as the corporate chef for a mid size sushi restaurant group and when it was time to part ways, Yoshitomo was an idea born of desparation. I needed to support my family and I knew I could no longer work for someone. At some point you must decide whether to grow your dream or help someone else grow theirs.(TSL note: truer words never spoken)

I found an old subway sandwich shop in a cheap bohemian part of town near where I live and opened the restaurant on five credit cards in three months.

When I opened the restaurant we carved out a tiny space for an extra counter and the omakase had a new home. In the beginning there was no chance of a standalone omakase room working unless I built the clientele slowly over the years and now 5 years later we have finally enough success that we recently completed construction of our new space Ota, a dedicated omakase counter.

On why he chose to stay and build in Omaha

Its pretty simple really, the cost of living here is quite low and thus I can offer guests a much better value for their money. For example one piece of maguro nigiri in NYC or LA is $7-$8. Here you get two pieces for that price.

More importantly, Chicago and New York don’t need anymore good restaurants, they have plenty. My city needs more good restaurants. Someone’s gotta stay.

His loyal clientele in a non-traditional sushi market

We purposefully aimed to open a different kind of sushiya here. We are quite small and don’t have most of the trappings that you would come to expect in a sushi bar. No california rolls, no soy sauce or fake wasabi here. As such guests are forced out of their comfort zone and have to engage with our staff and the menu. Its helped filter out guests who don’t get what we do leaving more room for a more personal experience that guests feel connected to and has been the secret to our success.

Omaha actually punches a lot higher than the a city of our size should. Or food scene is amazing and we’ve had much better quality sushi here for longer than virtually every city in the midwest.

While the guests here have become more demanding of better quality sushi in the last few years, the exposure to edomae style is still quite limited so savviness there has improved little. The midwest just makes a different style of sushi. Call it Mid-westmae?

The importance of places like Yoshitomo existing outside bigger cities

I think it’s pretty important to help change the perception that only in a huge city live the best experiences. And that goes both ways, even guests locally have a hard time changing that mindset. We will rarely compare what we have as on the same level as that in a big city. Guests here will often say “This is definetely the best sushi in Omaha” Like by our very nature we couldn’t possibly be better than anything in LA or Chicago…

Is there an advantage to opening in a smaller city?

Somewhat, theres certainly less competition, so it’s much easier to make a name and standout. That being said sourcing is a completely different ballgame than the big cities. The supply chain for getting fish is largely already been built and you just have to tap into it. Outside of those cities you have to have the connections and build the sourcing yourself.

Additionally the clientele largely doesnt have the experience for high end sushi that you see in the big city so that also must be kept in mind. Simply bringing in expensive fish doesn’t matter if the guests don’t have the capacity to truly appreciate it

On expansion outside of Omaha

Tokyo is such a challenging market that everyone has left to conquer New York but I’m not sure how many more the city can hold until they start to look elsewhere for opportunity.

Like the Chicago Michelin star. That thing was just low hanging fruit and the sushi game there was not like it is in other cities of equal size. It was just a matter of time before some itamae went to pick it. We are already seeing counters with wildly varying levels of waza popup in mid size markets for the last few years and that will definetely continue. Why fight for attention in NYC when you can own Denver all by yourself?

Yoshitomo has no current plans on more locations or relocating but I always have irons in the fire 😉

Yoshitomo’s website can be found here. David can be found on Instagram @davidyoshitomo. His new omakase-only counter, Ota, recently opened (www.omakaseota.com, @omakase_ota on IG).