Tojo Dreams of Inside-Out Rolls
On a culinary homecoming, a celebrated Japanese-Canadian chef explores the delicate balance between innovation and tradition.
“Do you make inside-out rolls?” asks Hidekazu Tojo in a cramped sushi bar in Osaka’s retro Shinsekai district. Across the counter, the chef brushes off the question: “No. I’ve never made one.” The 74-year-old settles for sardine nigiri and washes it down with a beer. In Osaka of all places – a city known as Japan’s Kitchen for its bold, melting-pot mix of culinary styles – the pushback surprises him. It was here, more than 50 years ago, where Tojo immersed himself in the meticulous art of Japanese fine dining, mastering the delicate balance of flavours and textures as an 18-year-old apprentice chef.
Three years later, he made the leap over the Pacific to work as a chef at Maneki, one of Vancouver’s first Japanese restaurants. In the 1970s, local tastes favoured cooked dishes like tempura, teriyaki and sukiyaki, and met ingredients like nori and raw fish with skepticism. When Tojo took the role of head chef at Jinya, a four-seat sushi bar on West Broadway, facing that skepticism became a matter of survival. “If the locals didn’t eat my food, I was out of a job,” he says. So, he started to experiment, replacing raw fish with avocado and boiled crab and hiding the nori behind the rice. He eventually called his creation the Tojo Maki. Today, the inside-out roll is widely known as the California Roll.
Accompanied by a local crew, the five-member Wallop Film team spent six days shooting in Osaka, Kyoto and Saitama.
Vancouverites fell in love with raw fish and Tojo in tandem. In 1988, he opened Tojo’s, a restaurant with a Japanese-inspired and Pacific Northwest-anchored approach to sushi – one that soon caught the attention of Martha Stewart, Anthony Bourdain and a constellation of star athletes, actors, musicians and politicians, from David Beckham to Pierre Trudeau. But back in Japan, with his foreign celebrity status lost in translation, the boundary-pushing that earned him accolades abroad was misconstrued by some as breaking with tradition.
It’s this push and pull that inspires Tojo’s return to Japan, this time with a film crew in tow, including me. We’re here to film the feature documentary The Chef & the Daruma, a reflection on his heritage and career as a culinary pioneer. His journey brings us from Osaka to Kyoto, where he plans to connect with local chefs and producers who are finding new ways to innovate while upholding time-honoured practices and techniques.
With an expert hand and sharp knife, chef Hidekazu Tojo has crafted dishes at the counter of Tojo’s Restaurant in Vancouver for more than 35 years.
Photo: Matt Lawrence Dix
Our first destination in the old capital is Tamanohikari, a 350-year-old sake brewery he has been importing from for more than 10 years. Based in the Fushimi ward, where crisp groundwater is in abundance, the brewery specializes in junmai-style sake, considered “pure” because it is made with only three ingredients: rice, koji and water – no added alcohol or sugar. Inside, staff dutifully stir sake-to-be in wooden vats, handling long wooden paddles from a whole floor above. Instead of relying on machines, old and young brewers work side by side, teaching and learning from one another.
“Human craftsmanship is so important,” vice-president Yosuke Haba tells Tojo. “We sense what the sake needs – if it should be spread or moved.” Tojo nods in agreement as brewers carry heaps of steaming rice into fermentation rooms. “The sake makers see, smell and handle the rice and sake with care and reverence that elevates the final product,” he says.
On location in Kyoto at the Tamanohikari sake brewery, one of the first in Japan to popularize junmai sake.
The old ways reign at the brewery, but new interests in zero-waste production have led to the opening of Junmai Sakekasu Tamanohikari restaurant in central Kyoto. The star ingredient on the menu: sake kasu, a pulp byproduct of sake production. Tojo orders the set lunch special, a platter of small bites like sweet chestnut and buttery hamachi, creamy potage and claypot rice, served with amazake, a sweet rice drink. A familiar aroma emerges as he opens the lid: The rice inside is the same heirloom omachi variety used at the brewery. Sourced from Okayama Prefecture, omachi is one of the oldest sake rice varieties. It almost became extinct, but Tamanohikari’s sustainable efforts have helped revive it.
Known as one of Kyoto’s most secretive restaurants, our next stop, Farmoon, hides in a converted machiya (traditional wooden house) near Ginkakuji Temple. Reservations and walk-ins are not allowed. Instead, guests must be referred via an invitation-only principle known as ichigen-san okotowari. Led by chef Masayo Funakoshi, a sculptor turned chef who honed her skills in the U.S. and on cruise ships sailing the Pacific, the tea salon blends her international influences with a garden-to-table ethos. Entering the warm and rustic interior feels like entering Funakoshi’s home, with curated ceramicware, antiques and art souvenirs from her travels and wood-carved furnishings all speaking to her artistic sensibilities.
En route to Nishiki Market in Kyoto, where local delicacies include mackerel sushi and dashimaki tamago (dashi omelette roll).
When offered Funakoshi’s homemade tofu, Tojo can’t resist. “It’s a delicate taste and a new texture for me. It’s difficult to explain,” he says. Paired with an effervescent natural wine, the dishes – organic tea rice porridge and a colourful array of locally foraged pickled vegetables – put a worldly spin on traditional recipes by incorporating techniques and ingredients Funakoshi picked up from her time abroad. “I respect her style,” Tojo says. “She’s challenging approaches to cooking in a new way.”
A walk down the historic Philosopher’s Path leads us to one-group-per-night restaurant Nanzenji Harada. Chef Harada dons a bow tie and a smile as he welcomes Tojo and the crew to the machiya townhouse and four-seat bar. He starts the tasting menu by showing us a sheet of kombu (dried kelp) from Hokkaido that is longer than Tojo’s arm. “The white crystals on top aren’t salt, but umami,” Harada explains from behind the bar. He boils it in water fetched from the shrine at dawn, and serves it as is, no salt or sugar added. Tojo tests the flavour with a sip. “You’re right! It doesn’t need seasoning.”
Chef Tojo and his brother Kunikazu Tojo at the counter of the 23-seat Teppankushiyaki-sakaba Akabaneya izakaya in Osaka.
Harada reaches for a bowl filled with a mountain of shaved magurobushi (dried yellowfin tuna) and gently adds it to the same pot as the kombu. Heaps of paper-thin flakes instantly condense, transforming the kelp water into golden dashi, a cornerstone in Japanese cuisine. “I’ve tried so many in my career,” confesses Tojo, “but this one has a different aroma, colour and mouth feel.” Perhaps it’s because Harada doesn’t use typical katsuobushi (dried skipjack tuna) but opts instead for a milder cut of fish. Or maybe it’s because he smokes it with cherry-blossom branches to impart a floral aroma. It’s these variations that make Tojo light up.
Chef Hidekazu Tojo and his family wrap up a meal at Ohnoya, a traditional ryōtei restaurant in Osaka, where diners eat in private tatami rooms.
As he finishes his meal and filming wraps, we depart with a deepened appreciation for how traditions can evolve to embrace new horizons and realities. “A good tradition is one where skill and craft are honoured,” he says. In that sense, it celebrates the chef’s experience in all its forms. “There is a vast difference in taste, texture and esthetics between a carrot chopped with a food processor and one sliced by an expert hand and sharp knife,” he adds. An ocean of difference.
Roll Credits
Behind the scenes of chef Hidekazu Tojo’s culinary innovations
- Golden Roll — Still trying to please fussy customers who were intimidated by sushi, Tojo cooked eggs into a thin crepe (similar to the Japanese omelette) and used it to hide the nori, rice and seafood. Fish-hesitant eaters tried it and liked it. Who could say no to gold?
- Great B.C. Roll — The 1970s brought a wave of Japanese businesspeople who would travel overseas for work and frequent Vancouver restaurants like Maneki. Unagi (freshwater eel) was always a top request, but not yet available in Canada. Tojo combined barbecued salmon skin with teriyaki sauce, replicating the sweet and savoury flavours customers were searching for.
- Great Canadian Roll — Formerly nicknamed “The Rich and Famous Roll,” Tojo’s take on East Coast-meets-West Coast combines Atlantic lobster and Pacific smoked salmon. Tojo tried smoked salmon on Granville Island in his early days in Vancouver, and still sources ingredients from the beloved public market.
- Northern Lights Roll — Inspired by his trip to Yellowknife and contemplations on how to make English cucumbers appealing to Japanese palates, Tojo peeled the green vegetable into thin, translucent sheets to wrap the sushi. The streaks of colour are evocative of the aurora. When serving, Tojo insists customers do not use soy sauce. The wild prawn and fresh fruit inside release a taste that’s as crisp and refreshing as northern air.
- Tojo Roll — In the 1970s, at the now-closed Jinya sushi bar in Vancouver, Tojo flipped the script on seaweed-shy customers, inventing what he later called the Tojo Roll by putting rice on the outside and crab and avocado on the inside. But he’s not the only one who lays claim to the prototype for what many now call the California Roll. Others include Los Angeles-based chefs Ken Seusa and Ichiro Mashita.
