How to Kill a Fish

A afloat week later, erstwhile I unwrapped the bonito fillets that Yamasaki had sent maine location with, I was amazed to find the tegument undiminished, the soma a rosy pink. I’d grown utilized to being disappointed by food from the supermarket, its spirit truthful often muddy oregon bitter, with the occasional bracing whiff of ammonia. The bonito smelled hardly of the ocean, cleanable and faintly salty. Following Yamasaki’s instructions, I seasoned each fillet generously earlier flash-searing it connected a ferociously blistery cast-iron pan, past sliced it into heavy chunks to dip into soy sauce. The soma was sweet, a small tart, and supple, similar a portion of ripe fruit.

Several times successful the past fewer months, erstwhile I’ve called Yamasaki connected the phone—we met past year, astatine the Hollywood Farmers’ Market—I’ve reached him successful the mediate of a agelong drive. About erstwhile a week, helium hops into his crimson 1997 Jeep and travels respective hours from Los Angeles to forage for mushrooms oregon to dive for shellfish, astatine locations that helium prefers not to disclose, accompanied by his dogs, Artichoke and Chanterelle. Chanterelle, a ample and spirited three-year-old Belgian Malinois mix, has a challenging temperament; connected the boat, Yamasaki pulled up a sound limb to uncover a big, gnarly scab wherever she’d bitten his calf. “I deliberation 1 of the reasons she’s brainsick is because, during the tuna season, I springiness her each the trimmings,” helium joked—at slightest 1 of his sportfishing buddies has gotten mercury poisoning. “I’m a zero-waste chef, you know?”

As a kid, Yamasaki, who grew up adjacent Osaka, went sportfishing with his father. It was lone erstwhile helium became a chef—a vocation helium stumbled into portion putting himself done creation school, successful Paris—that helium taught himself ike and shinkei jime, which are associated with the Akashi Strait, a celebrated fishery not acold from his location town. As the enforcement cook astatine Koya, an udon barroom successful London, Yamasaki cooked unrecorded eels, whose bodies could stay jumpy and unwieldy adjacent erstwhile their heads had been chopped off. After learning however to paralyze the spinal cord connected an eel, helium recovered handling different food to beryllium easy. “Ask a vet—it’s overmuch much hard to bash an cognition connected a Chihuahua than a Doberman,” helium told me.

In 2018, Yamasaki moved to L.A. to unfastened a Japanese restaurant, which evolved from a pandemic-era nutrient motortruck to an idiosyncratic izakaya, called Yess, successful the Arts District. (After his existent lease ends aboriginal this month, helium volition unfastened a cheekily named pop-up, Fuck Yess, portion helium looks for a caller location.) From the start, helium knew that helium wanted to service seafood, and that helium wanted to perpetrate to utilizing section ingredients, arsenic he’d done astatine Koya. Between London and L.A., helium spent a fewer months astatine a Zen temple backmost successful Japan, wherever practitioners grew their ain vegetables and rice. “They prosecute this arsenic benignant of a ngo to larn astir life,” helium told me. He was dismayed that the champion seafood helium could entree successful L.A. was imported from Japan: “It’s fresher than the fish, ironically, from Santa Barbara, which takes a mates of days, sometimes a week.” He researched taxon autochthonal to California’s waters—opaleye, calico bass, moray eel—only to observe that astir weren’t adjacent sold commercially. “And past I recovered this YouTube video of idiosyncratic spearfishing, and I said, ‘Oh, my God, this is what you person to do,’ ” helium told me.

Many of this era’s chefs assertion to beryllium obsessed with seasonality and section sourcing; for Yamasaki, it’s a beingness style, an all-encompassing pursuit. After taking swimming lessons, helium learned to spearfish, and to escaped dive, truthful that helium could stitchery fish, oversea urchin, and lobster by hand. Without a commercialized license, helium wouldn’t beryllium capable to merchantability what helium caught; helium realized that if helium wanted a dependable proviso of the champion imaginable food for Yess, he’d request immoderate section fishermen to instrumentality up ike and shinkei jime. Most of his acold e-mails and Instagram D.M.s went unanswered. Finally, Eric Hodge, an car mechanic successful Ojai who’d been sportfishing commercially for a fewer years, agreed to instrumentality him retired connected the h2o for a demonstration. Hodge was amused that Yamasaki was prone to seasickness. “I deliberation helium threw up each day,” Hodge said, of their archetypal sportfishing trip. But, aft tasting what they’d caught and butchered, helium was convinced that Yamasaki was connected to something.