Chef offers up traditions at Kotobuki

It was fortunate for Hisao Abe’s adventurous spirit that he was the last child in the family. With five brothers and sisters ahead of him, when he told his parents he wanted to see the world, his mother said, “Go wherever you like.”

But if he gets back to Tokyo more than once in a decade, he's lucky. And his mother doesn’t like to fly. So they e-mail; they talk. “If something happens, I can go back,” Abe says. He seems to accept it.

What’s kept him away are the demands of his restaurant, Kotobuki. For fans of sushi, this modest 20-seat Japanese establishment is a closely guarded secret. After all, how easy is it to find the freshest maguro tuna and eel nigiri for a dollar a piece? Even its location has an air of mystery. You’ll find it tucked away above the unrelated, rather more expensive and elegant Japanese restaurant Makoto on a tree-lined stretch of MacArthur Boulevard close to the Georgetown Reservoir.

Nigiri sushi (fish on top of rice), maki sushi (fish wrapped in a sheet of pressed and dried seaweed) and sashimi isn’t all that Abe serves. He’d like more people to know about kamameshi. It’s a traditional hot-pot dish of chicken or eel or vegetables served over delicately flavored rice in a wooden-lidded iron kettle slipped inside a wooden base.

In Japan, people may tell you they’re taking a trip to Nagano to see its seventh-century Buddhist temple. But it’s just as likely they’re traveling for the exceptional kamameshi “ekiben,” or station lunch, sold at Nagano’s railway stations.

Renowned throughout the country, it comes with three small cups of side dishes, sashimi and a bowl of miso soup. Abe wanted to add kamameshi to his menu because “all Japanese people eat this one.” In his sometimes-patchy English, he says, “American people learn this is good or not.”

His restaurant’s seating may be limited. But with everything made to order, the work is intensive. Perhaps the endless background murmur of Beatles songs keeps Abe’s head clear.

Abe learned his craft like all Japanese sushi chefs: “Watch. Nose, eye, tongue.” He points to each. “We learn from there.” It takes years of observing, sniffing and tasting before sushi chefs are allowed near a knife. A Westerner might think that once the aspiring chefs can prepare every fish in each of its different fashions and present vegetables according to season, they are trained enough to be let loose on the discerning Japanese public. But they still have years toiling in the background ahead of them. And if they want to tackle the potentially life-threatening fish fugu, they then must apply to the health department for a license and follow it with a further five years of practice.

Eating good sushi and sashimi made from a broad range of fish can be expensive in Japan — “$100 for a lunchbox, all handmade,” says Abe. “We don’t think about money, how much it can be. We think, I want to learn from that.”

His mother had a friend with a restaurant in the United States. One day, she told her son this friend was looking for help. “‘You want to go, you can go,’” Abe recalls her saying. So in 1984, he arrived in Washington and spent the next 10 years in a sushi restaurant that has since shut. He returned to Tokyo planning to settle back in with his family, learn some more, catch up with developments over there. From 1993 to 1998 he worked at the Sofitel Hotel in Tokyo, now closed, and studied Chinese and French cuisine. But he felt homesick for the States. “Tokyo isn’t comfortable. Everybody pushing in train.”

Abe was offered work in different countries, but he chose to return to Washington. “The seasons are close to Japan seasons.” He opened his own restaurant in McLean, Va. Four years ago, he moved Kotobuki and his cat to the Palisades to escape the burden of Virginia taxes.

Working with fish that will be eaten raw means his ingredients must be at the peak of freshness. “My teacher teaches me: very important — food put in here.” He points into his open mouth. “Parasite is poison. You must be very careful. You can’t see bacteria. My mother is also expert” in choosing perfect fish. He orders his fish every day from New Jersey and sometimes a small amount from Baltimore. And locally, he can’t resist intervening with Washingtonians he encounters buying not-so-fresh fish for sushi.

“It’s sometimes good, sometimes not. I see someone want to buy, who say, ‘nice belly tuna.’ ‘No, no,’ I say, ‘don’t try it! Not very fresh.’” He pokes his neck with his finger. “If gills, from the color I can tell. Difficult to buy fish for sashimi in Washington. For cooking, it’s OK.” He acknowledges the situation is far better than when he first arrived, when all fish in Japanese restaurants was frozen. But he despairs of anyone being able to assess freshness from already cut fillets.

When he chooses to eat other chefs’ sushi, he goes downstairs to Makoto, to Sushi-Ko in Glover Park or to Tako Grill in Bethesda. But with a small business to run, he says he is always working. He has trained his helpers himself — not for quite as long as a restaurant in Japan would, but he makes them watch for six months before he lets them loose with a little of the preparation work. Only six months after that will he let them assist alongside him.

His cat is the only family he has here, “and she scratch me this morning!” he exclaims indignantly. But it means that if he does find any free time, he can spend it doing what he loves best. “I am Japanese!” he says, laughing enthusiastically. “I play golf!”

Kotobuki , 202 281 6679, is located at 4822 MacArthur Blvd NW, on the second floor.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.

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