The sugarFISH Team
It takes a big town with a passion for sushi.
Kazunori Nozawa, President
Jerry A. Greenberg, CEO
Tom Nozawa
Cameron Broumand
Emanuele Massimini
Clement Mok
Kazunori Nozawa
Growing up in Tokyo, Kazunori Nozawa had two great loves: baseball and food. When he was passed over in the professional baseball draft, Nozawa entered a sushi apprenticeship in one of the city’s top restaurants.
Sushi is a three-hundred-year-old artisanship in Japan, and the life of a sushi understudy is arduous. Apprentices work grueling 15-hour days, six days a week. For three years, Nozawa made deliveries, washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and learned how to make rice. Eventually he graduated to fish preparation, first learning how to make rolls and eventually preparing nigiri sushi. Although it was not part of his duties, Nozawa would accompany the master chef to the fish market at Tsukiji to learn the essential task of seafood selection.
Nozawa showed great promise and was encouraged to visit regions outside the capital to learn about the local seafood. He spent several months in each province, absorbing local approaches to the regional catch. In Yamagata, he worked with sweet shrimp and hoki clams. In Shizuoka prefecture, he learned to prepare glass fish and made sashimi from live fish such as octopus. Nozawa had a burning curiosity and “wanted to learn about every fish in the world.”
After five years on the road, Nozawa returned to Tokyo. He joined the professional sushi chefs’ trade association that referred him to a series of restaurants where he continued to hone his skills. Then, at the age of 30, together with his mother and sister, Nozawa opened his own restaurant in an affluent Tokyo neighborhood. The venture was a success, but just two years later, the trade association called again and offered him a chance to work in California.
Nozawa landed at Asuka, a Westwood restaurant that still exists. He admired the English language abilities of the staff, but was surprised by their lack of sushi-making skills. The menu was inauthentic and light-years from his classic training. It was here that he realized his calling: to educate Americans and Japanese-American sushi chefs on the value of traditional sushi. Over the next two years, he worked as a consulting chef, visiting restaurants in Anchorage, Aspen, Denver, Detroit, New York, Portland, and Santa Barbara and teaching the traditional Edo- or Tokyo-style to Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and American chefs.
In 1987, Nozawa learned that a location had become available in the affluent San Fernando Valley town of Studio City. He was eager to open his own restaurant where he could serve authentic, traditional sushi in a simple, no-frills setting using the highest quality seafood. Many of his Japanese friends discouraged him, insisting Americans, accustomed to California rolls and other popular variations, would not appreciate Tokyo-style sushi. In spite of their opinions, Nozawa could not be dissuaded, and Sushi Nozawa was born.
Three months of empty chairs in Nozawa’s new restaurant seemed to prove friends correct. But everything changed on January 1, 1988, after a rave review, “Code Is Strict At The Sushi Academy,” written by Jonathan Gold, appeared in the Los Angeles Times. The restaurant quickly became a destination for sushi lovers as word spread about this unique, intense, and deceptively simple dining experience.
Since its opening 21 years ago, Sushi Nozawa has consistently placed in the top tier of the Zagat Guide’s overall food ratings, and has also won its best Japanese and best sushi categories. He has trained many students who have opened highly successful restaurants including Sasabune, Hiko, Yotsu-Ya, and Edo Sushi.
Nozawa’s reputation as the “Sushi Nazi” comes from his insistence that the dining experience in his restaurant show respect for tradition, sushi dining etiquette, his customers, and, of course, the food itself. For example, he democratically allocates uni when it is scarce so that many diners will be able to enjoy this unique seafood. Customers who do not order the Trust Me, or chef’s choice menu, are invited to sit at the tables rather than the sushi bar. The overall mood in the restaurant is calm, with food as the focus, and, in this environment, cell phones are almost sacrilegious.
As President of sugarFISH, Nozawa’s passion and focus remain the same: “Quality is the key to classic sushi; simple is always the best.”
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Jerry A. Greenberg
Jerry is a self-described foodie, avid home cook, and sushi fanatic who has enjoyed a successful career in business. After graduating from Harvard University in 1987, he co-founded Sapient, an interactive marketing, business, and technology consulting company. With an original investment of $40,000, Sapient has grown to more than 6000 employees working in 6 countries. The company is traded on the NASDAQ, and annual revenues exceeded $675MM in 2008.
Jerry met Chef Nozawa at his Studio City restaurant 14 years ago, and was immediately taken with Nozawa’s mouth-watering sushi and dedication to authenticity. Jerry and his wife became devoted fans of Sushi Nozawa, and as a surprise for Jerry’s birthday, Jerry’s wife asked Nozawa to cater a private dinner party in their home. The party was a sushi lover’s dream come true, and from that evening, a friendship between Jerry, Nozawa, and their wives blossomed.
Jerry and Nozawa found that they both share a passion for food, a love for The Apple Pan, a classic burger joint in Los Angeles, and a belief that high-quality, affordable sushi could become the focus for an exciting new restaurant brand. Ready to embark on a new business venture and with a proven ability to build a successful enterprise from inception, Jerry decided to collaborate with Nozawa in the creation of sugarFISH, a group of restaurants that would embody the unique philosophy to make great sushi accessible to everyone.
Tom Nozawa
Tom Nozawa began his culinary career at Sushi Nozawa, cutting fish in the morning according to his father’s exacting standards, then working alongside the sushi master, preparing sauces and condiments. He spent another eight years working in French and Japanese restaurants in both Los Angeles and Japan before returning to California to co-found sugarFISH with his father.
Tom is responsible for all kitchen operations at sugarFISH, including the essential task of procuring all of the fish and ingredients in coordination with his father. He also manages and trains the experienced team of sushi chefs who work in sugarFISH’s kitchens.
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Cameron Broumand
Cameron is the head of real estate and expansion for sugarFISH. He was responsible for supervising the build-out of the Marina del Rey and Brentwood locations and is actively pursuing future sites for new sugarFISH locations.
Cameron is a Los Angeles native and a graduate of USC. He played professional golf briefly, and decided to enter the family commercial real estate business in 1997. Broman Development, the company he owns with his father and brother, manages Plaza West, a retail complex in West Los Angeles, and self-storage centers in Van Nuys and in downtown Los Angeles.
Emanuele Massimini
Lele has been involved with sugarFISH since its inception, and he is responsible for restaurant management.
Lele has worked in the restaurant business for twenty years, starting in Italy at the age of 14, and he has held every position from the back to the front of the house. He came to the United States in 2000, and worked briefly in San Francisco before relocating to Los Angeles. He first worked at Giorgio Baldi and then was hired in 2005 as General Manager at La Botte, one of only 3 Italian restaurants between Los Angeles and Las Vegas to be awarded a Michelin star in 2007, the first year that Michelin came to Los Angeles.
Clement Mok
Clement Mok is sugarFISH’s brand designer and head of marketing. Clement is a designer, digital pioneer, software publisher and developer, author, and design patent holder. Clement, a former creative director at Apple, founded multiple successful design-related businesses: Studio Archetype, CMCD, and NetObjects. He was the Chief Creative Officer of Sapient, and has served as president of AIGA. Currently, he consults for Sapient and other Fortune 500 companies on a variety of design planning and user experience projects.
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