toshi sato – C-VILLE Weekly

By Will Ham

Just 10 days after opening Now & Zen in 2011, chef/owner Toshi Sato’s hometown on the east coast of Japan was struck by a devastating tsunami. The disaster in Kesennuma was dubbed the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the seismic activity destroyed large parts of the region, spilling fuel from the town’s fishing fleet, which caught fire and burned for four straight days.

“It was such a chaotic moment,” says Toshi, “I couldn’t reach anybody for multiple weeks, and, as the restaurant had just opened, I was having to work day and night. Fortunately, all my family and friends were okay and they still live there in Kesennuma.”

It was a difficult and uncertain time for Sato, but he persevered by focusing on his new restaurant and connecting with the community by creating food that he loved. A decade later, Now & Zen is a successful, beloved Charlottesville restaurant, and Sato finds himself once more calling on his resilience during another disaster—the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite unexpected challenges, Sato considers himself fortunate to have realized a lifelong dream of bringing his culinary creativity to his own restaurant. The chef was in graduate school studying constitutional law when he realized that wasn’t his true calling, so he transferred to a Japanese cooking school. After a few years apprenticing in Tokyo restaurants, he emigrated to Charlottesville in 1987 and, through a mutual friend, was introduced to Ken Mori of Eastern Standard Catering. Together they opened Tokyo Rose, where Toshi spent seven years refining his skills. Sato then joined the kitchen staff at Keswick Hall, where he stayed for 17 years before striking out on his own to open Now & Zen.

Sato says that in Charlottesville he’s found an encouraging and vibrant culinary community that helped him foster his talent and passion for traditional Japanese cooking. “I love my job and living near nature,” he says. “I didn’t even think about moving to another place.”

And foodies keep coming back to Sato’s place for his adventurous signature dishes, such as the tuna carpaccio, a green salad topped with thinly sliced tuna, and a citrus-wasabi vinaigrette, and the aburi salmon, a sweet and spicy seared salmon nigiri prepared with maple-soy glaze, cracked black pepper, and fresh jalapeños.

“Our menu is so different compared to other Japanese restaurants,” says Sato. “I hope I can keep creating interesting and original dishes.”

Employee Brian Moon, says it’s Sato’s life experience that makes him, “the best boss I’ve ever had, a great person. …From coming to Charlottesville from Japan decades ago, working in various restaurants, to eventually starting a successful establishment, I think his story is wonderful.”

And clearly, Sato is on a roll.

Sick leave: At least 25 get ill from pop-up dinner

A crucial part of learning to be a sushi chef is food safety. So imagine Now & Zen owner/chef Toshi Sato’s horror when he learned that people who attended a special pop-up ramen dinner February 16 at his restaurant got sick.

“All my good customers,” he says. “I was terrorized. I didn’t know what caused it. It’s a scary thing.”

Comments started appearing the next day on the restaurant’s Facebook page. “There was something wrong with the ramen last night,” says one. “Four out of five people in my dinner party got sick. I had to skip classes today because I was feeling so terrible and haven’t been able to keep anything more than half a bottle of water down.”

“My wife and I both got sick after eating these ramen last night,” says another.

Reports of “gastro-intestinal complaints” started coming into the local Virginia Department of Health office as well, says Thomas Jefferson Health District epidemiologist Kerry Morrison. No one went to the hospital, and although she can’t provide specific numbers, she says, “We believe at least 25 people became sick.”

So far, the health department doesn’t know what caused the outbreak, and it can take several weeks to investigate, says Morrison. She calls it a “single, isolated event.”

She also says it’s health department policy to not identify the business unless it’s an immediate threat to public health.

Sato has his own theory. “I think it was the vegetables,” he says, naming the bean sprouts or spinach.

He emphasizes that the dinner was a special event and sushi was not served that evening.

Morrison contacted people who became ill to understand their symptoms, when they began, what they ate and whether they’d had other contacts that could have made them sick, for example, with an unwell animal.

“The owner sent an online survey to customers,” she says, noting he was “very cooperative.”

She also collected food samples from the restaurant and requested stool samples from the stricken.

Such foodborne illness outbreaks are relatively rare in the area. The Thomas Jefferson Health District had one last year and two in 2014 that were caused by norovirus and salmonella, says Morrison.

Eric Myers is the environmental health supervisor with the department of health, and he, too, investigates outbreaks within 24 hours to make sure best practices are followed in the kitchen of a restaurant, school or anywhere else food is being served to the public.

He says risk factors include personal hygiene of food preparers, improper holding of hot and cold foods or not cooking at proper temperatures. He also checks employees’ health to make sure no one has been ill in the past week and that contaminated equipment has been properly sanitized.

And with the popularity of pop-up dining and food trucks, Myers says, “Anytime food is served to the public, it’s required a permit be posted.”

Myers says, “The owner has been very cooperative. We feel good about the control measures put in place.”

Sato canceled a second ramen pop-up on February 17, and a week after the outbreak, he still sounds shaken. He doesn’t see any more ramen nights in Now & Zen’s future. “Mentally,” he says, “I don’t think I can take it.”