Content area
Full text
For more than 30 years, Sushi Den has been a culinary landmark in Denver, winning national praise for its sushi - a feat for a restaurant in a landlocked city that was not known for exceptional cuisine until recently.
Brothers Yasu and Toshi Kizaki operate Sushi Den and two other restaurants in the city - Izakaya Den and Ototo - with a total staff of 225 people. The Kizakis have taken extraordinary measures to bring fresh fish to a city 1,000 miles from the nearest seaport.
The Kizakis grew up in a small farming village in Kumamoto prefecture, on Japan's southern island of Kyushu.
"People there are known to be very independent and adventurous and stubborn and rebellious," said Yasu Kizaki, left, who had already hatched plans to get out of town by the time he turned 15.
He and his brothers learned to cook at home from a young age.
"By the time we hit high school, we could cook pretty well," he said.
Yasu and Toshi eventually got jobs cooking in Tokyo. Yasu parlayed his job to a position at Hana, a Japanese restaurant in London. Toshi went to Los Angeles, first as a student and then as an employee at sushi bars.
Toshi, left, felt homesick and considered returning to Japan, but he found that he couldn't save money in Los Angeles because he was eating out at sushi bars, according to Yasu.
Toshi soon moved to Denver, where the cost of living was lower and, in the early 1980s, opportunities to spend money on sushi were virtually nonexistent.