Are you looking for a school to become a sushi chef? California Sushi Academy was found in September of 1998 as the first registered vocational school for sushi chefs in California. I interviewed the president of the school, Yuji Matsumoto.

Q. Why did you think about opening California Sushi Academy?

Matsumoto: "To supply the shortage of growing demand of sushi chefs in the U.S. and to teach the Japanese culture through the Japanese food."

Q. What is your background? Are you a chef?

Matsumoto: "I used to work for Nomura-shouken for ten years in Japan and here in California as an investment banker."

Q. Do you offer classes for beginners? How about one-day lessons?

Matsumoto: "We offer several classes like 3 month Basic course for beginners and up to 6 months course and one day workshop class for beginners, too."

Q. How many students do you have on average? What countries are they from?

Matsumoto: "We have about 25-30 students in each semester and we have had more than 200 graduates in the past two years. 60 % of the students are Americans and others are from Japan, Korea, Europe and South America."

Q. How about the teachers? What credentials do they have?

Matsumoto: "There are 2 full time instructors who have trained here and in Japan in the experience of more than 20 years. They must be able to speak English."

Q. How do you feel California Sushi Academy is different from other cooking schools?

Matsumoto: "We specialized only in Japanese cooking, mainly sushi."

Q. In Japan, it requires years of training to become a sushi chef. What do you think about that?

Matsumoto: "Basically the sushi chef training in Japan was their total social education, I believe. I think it was necessary to have young kids to teach discipline through out the "shugyou". But it is totally different now. We should condense and teach logically about our culture to non-Japanese people to make them understand our culture."

Q. What is your future plan on your school? Are you planning to open more sushi schools?

Matsumoto: "I wish to open more schools but need more staffs who can manage."

Q. Do you have any message for my readers who are interested in cooking sushi?

Matsumoto: "I strongly hope that people could learn through sushi the basics of food, materials and ingredients and appreciate the nature. Sushi is the "kyuukyoku teki na ryouri", I think. It is just fish on the top of the rice ball but it has more meaning than that."

Setsuko: "Thank you very much."

California Sushi Academy
1500 Main Street
Venice, CA 90291
Phone:310-581-0213 Fax:310-581-5272
Website

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