Sushi in East L.A.? Sí (Boyle Heights)
A Japanese restaurant in Boyle Heights is a holdover from the area's past. For years, after he had moved back to the old neighborhood, Roy Yoshioka jogged past a slender little restaurant on 1st Street in Boyle Heights. He couldn't imagine it was still open, the place his uncle and aunt had opened more than half a century ago. The place where he watched his mother make sushi for thousands of bento lunch boxes. Then, a few months ago, an old friend invited him to lunch there -- at the last Japanese restaurant in Boyle Heights. The bar-like wooden counter was still there, and so were the stools. The three booths still had the same cushioned red backrests. "It was like stepping into history, like stepping back into the 1950s," said Yoshioka, 65. "It was the first time I had come back here since the '60s. I thought it would have been gone a long time ago. I was amazed everything was pretty much the same." Outside, much had changed. For much of its history, Boyle Heights was a place diverse waves of immigrants called home. Russians, Armenians, Greeks and Italians all settled in this neighborhood just east of downtown Los Angeles. Cesar Chavez Avenue was then Brooklyn Avenue, home of the original Canter's deli and the hub of the largest Jewish community west of Chicago. Today, Boyle Heights is predominantly Latino. Most of the other ethnic groups that once settled in the neighborhood have disappeared. But not the Japanese. They arrived in the 1920s. Most are gone; the 2000 U.S. Census counted about 600 Japanese Americans there. But the Japanese have left markers. There are the prominent Tenrikyo Temple, Nanka Printing and Hayashi Realty on 1st Street. A little farther east, also on 1st Street, is Haru Florist, still favored by Japanese Americans from as far away as Victorville who stop to visit their loved ones at Evergreen Cemetery. And the little Japanese restaurant, which remains much as it was. Once evidence of 1st Street's role as a Little Tokyo East, the restaurant now serves a mostly Mexican clientele. On a recent day, Henry and Dolores Padilla, 82 and 80, walked into the restaurant. More after the jump: |
