Dinner and a Showstopper
All the culinary world’s a stage at the ambitious new omakase restaurant Okesutora. After honing his skills at the celebrated sushi chain Nobu, chef Hieu Phan returns to his native Sacramento to deliver sea-worthy flavors with a dash of storytelling and a splash of spectacle in midtown.
Arriving for our dinner in late October at the new omakase restaurant Okesutora, I and about a dozen other diners materialize on the corner of 18th and L streets in midtown, drifting together silently in the autumn twilight like silvery ghosts and gathering in front of a locked door precisely at 10 minutes to showtime.
When we file into the space, which resembles a black box theater with a blond wood sushi bar for a stage, we are invited to sit, one row at the sushi bar and a second row at two-tops by the floor-to-ceiling curtained windows. We’re quickly slipped a single, diminutive Kusshi oyster from the shores of British Columbia, as an amuse-bouche. It is at once acutely memorable and fleeting, like a first kiss.
A quartet of chefs stand behind the bar to greet us for tonight’s omakase service—a tasting menu that traditionally includes an array of courses, ranging from raw to cooked. Omakase, which translates to “I leave it up to you,” is always extravagant, a virtuoso performance by a notable sushi chef, often ordered off-menu by sushi savants. Okesutora’s executive chef Hieu Phan certainly fits the notable-chef bill: He sharpened his knife work rising through the ranks at Nobu, the celebrated sushi empire owned by namesake chef Nobu Matsuhisa, Robert De Niro and film producer Meir Teper. His venture at Okesutora—which means “orchestra” in Japanese—takes an ambitious, adventurous gamble on an elevated concept: all omakase, all the time.
Our senses stirred by the demure oyster, the chefs deliver the traditional santen mori appetizer trio, which arrives on a dramatically swooping lacquered tray. Chef Phan instructs us to eat them in order, left to right. The first bite is a roll of shima aji, or striped jack mackerel. The fish encircles a shiso leaf, which is touched with garlic and whorled around a delicately crunchy stalk of burdock root. But it’s the sushi wrapper that’s the star here—a pickled white kombu seaweed that’s thin as rice paper and tart, fleshy and yielding. Bite two is a dollhouse-scale endive leaf stuffed with truffled halibut. Bite three—my favorite—is muki hotate, a thin-sliced, lightly salted scallop that’s never seen a freezer. It’s so tender, I feel as if I’m experiencing a new elemental state, something neither solid nor liquid, a texture that makes me think, “Ah, this is what it would be like to bite down on a summer breeze.”
The santen mori features a changing array of three appetizers presented on a sculptural tray. Pictured here, from left to right, are the striped jack mackerel kelp roll, truffled halibut on an endive boat, and sweet shrimp with a yuzu-lemon sauce.
For the next course, one of the chefs bows and places a small spherical lidded bowl that looks carved from lava rock on the bar in front of me. I open it, and a whiff of smoke escapes, wafting up from two fleshy red tranches of katsuo, a lean fish that reminds me a bit of venison.
Next up, the nigiri, which are served from lean to fatty, citrus to umami. Our promised seven nigiri stretch to eight, nine—had we died and gone to sushi heaven? There is, for instance, aki sake (autumn salmon) brushed with yuzu-infused olive oil; kasugodai (young sea bream) lightly cured with salt and vinegar and glazed with grated ginger and chives; and sweet shrimp drizzled with Peruvian aji amarillo (or yellow chili) sauce. The influence of Peruvian flavors is a holdover from Phan’s time at Nobu, where he was introduced to Matsuhisa’s signature fusion of Peruvian-Japanese flavors.
A River City native, Phan grew up in South Sacramento and Arden-Arcade with Vietnamese parents and first found his calling in 2008 when he walked into the now-closed Tamaya Sushi, which was located just a handful of blocks from where Okesutora is now. “The head chef looked like a godly figure in his white coat,” Phan tells me a few days after my meal, over a morning pot of genmaicha while he accepts deliveries of wine and sake. “He knew how to converse and read the room. He turned my day upside down. I forgot about anything negative. I felt like what he did for me, I could [do for others]—cook, create art, read the room, show intuition.”
Phan immediately got himself hired at Tamaya, where the training was unusual, to say the least. One lesson involved Phan rolling a towel that had been dipped in boiling water, to teach him speed. “I may not have fingerprints anymore,” he jokes, “but I can roll sushi really fast.”
An amuse-bouche of Kusshi oyster made a memorable first impression.
Wanting to challenge himself beyond his hometown, Phan moved to Las Vegas in 2015 and soon became head chef at Sushi House Goyemon, an all-you-can-eat establishment where off-duty chefs from nearby Nobu were his customers. Thanks to Phan’s well-developed people skills, they became his friends too, and Phan was recruited to work for Nobu as a sushi chef in 2018 at the then-Hard Rock Hotel (now Virgin Hotels Las Vegas), where he says his Vietnamese heritage meshed with the restaurant group’s Peruvian-influenced sushi. “We’re from the Hue province,” he says of his family, “where we really enjoy spicy citrus and herbs, so it just made sense to me.”
While at Hard Rock, Phan was selected to join Nobu’s “task force,” flying around the world among the global company’s many locations to help train personnel. During his off time, Phan liked to sample omakase services in the cities he visited and host omakase nights at home for his Las Vegas friends. Eventually, he was promoted to executive chef at Nobu’s Palo Alto location.
Shortly after Phan relocated to Sacramento last March to be closer to family, he reconnected with husband-wife restaurateurs Jimmy Voong and Mymy Nguyen, whom he knew from his Tamaya days. They sought a new dining concept for the L Street space that formerly housed their Make Fish poke shop—they also own Saigon Alley two doors down from Okesutora—and when Phan pitched them an all-omakase idea, they thought it’d be a great fit for the small venue and also meet a need in the local fine dining scene for more Asian destination restaurants.
Okesutora’s executive chef Hieu Phan—previously of Nobu in Las Vegas and Palo Alto—got his start at Tamaya Sushi in midtown Sacramento.
“Hieu-san just fell into our laps,” Nguyen says. “We were just waiting for the right opportunity, the right people.” She added that she knew Phan’s concept—offering an omakase-only experience at $195 per person—was a risk. But the risk seems to be paying off, as weekend seatings at Okesutora—which opened in late October and has an ever-changing menu—are already booked out weeks in advance. “People are coming in to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays,” Nguyen adds. “It’s intimate for a couple, but I would love to go by myself! Then I could not talk to anybody and just focus on the food and watch how they prepare it.”
Nguyen is right: I went by myself and can attest that, like those ramen shops in Japan where diners eat in solo booths (the better to relish slurping with abandon), Phan’s performance demands so much rapt attention to detail that Okesutora is the perfect place to dine alone.
For instance, as Phan holds up a 6-inch-long wasabi root obtained on a team field trip to a farm in Half Moon Bay, he says, “Something like this might take 10 years to grow,” and demonstrates the exact speed with which to swipe the tuber over a grater. “Do it too fast, and it will make a bitter taste,” he adds, before explaining that fresh wasabi should be consumed within minutes—and we do.
The otsukuri course with katsuo (skipjack tuna) sashimi
After the nigiri—an hour and a half has flown by at this point—the next three courses put our appetites to bed, tuck them in and kiss them goodnight: yakimono, represented by pan-seared ocean trout in candy-sweet sauce; nimono, featuring a rice bowl topped with tiny tongues of sea urchin; and owan, with a pair of clams in broth made from the trimmings of all the fish in the sea. We conclude with bowls of matcha green tea ice cream decorated with strawberry slices, a single blueberry, and what looks like half of a green grape but is actually Japanese baby peach. Post-meal, Phan signs menus like a rock star while diners buzz and mingle before dispersing into the night. What was your favorite dish? Mine too! We’ve got to come back with so-and-so.
I didn’t eat again for 24 hours, and when I finally picked up a fork to dig into a favorite salad, that first bite fell a bit flat. I wondered if all regular food would seem as bland as elevator music, now that I’ve had a taste of the orchestral.
Okesutora. 1801 L St. 916-701-5670. okesutora.com
Learn About More Great Places to Eat
Mother of Reinvention – Mother 2.0
