Original subtitles

Mic is working.

Testing, one, two, three.

So Candice, um--

Do you want Joe sit here?

No, I want him to sit where he is.

I can't believe it's been over 15 years now

that I've been making a documentary

about Candice's father, master chef, Hiroji Obayashi.

I think I'm going to have to take this off the tripod,

this is not working for me.

- Just a sec. - Yeah.

Okay.

Take care, and do you want to talk to Lynn again?

Okay, hang on one second.

The two mottoes my dad had growing up,

you know, his English isn't very good,

but the two that he held onto

is, "Never give up" and, "Go for broke."

So, you know, I feel like it's definitely stuck for me.

Does he actually say those words? - Yeah, he does.

- Really? - Yeah.

That's interesting.

"Never give up," and "Go for broke."

Yeah, I've heard him say that before.

- Yeah, never give up. - Three dollars back--

That must be my motto.

James Obayashi and Candice's husband, Joe

and I were about to share a family meal

at Hiro's house in Portland.

So this is for.

Yeah.

Do you always do that

every, every meal?

I see.

That's true.

Hiro and his wife, Yasuyo had retired

to Portland after selling their popular

West Hollywood restaurant, Hirozen Gourmet.

But you're not going to open-- Are you going to open

another restaurant, do you think?

Greater Los Angeles is filled

with a wide variety of Asian restaurants.

But back in the late '80s, Hirozen Gourmet

was the go-to Japanese restaurant for me.

My favorite mom-and-pop,

it was pioneered by Hiro and Yasuyo Obayashi.

My mom has always been, I think,

the biggest cheerleader of my dad.

I think she's the first one to say,

people should know Hiro and how great he is

and his philosophies and the care that he takes

to make food, and just how food is life.

My mom jokes about how when she married my dad,

she had no idea that he wanted to move here.

She was like, "Are you serious?

We have to move to America?

English was my worst subject, I hated taking English."

Once again my friends, the next study tour

will get started in just 10 minutes.

Not long now.

My parents moved from Japan to America

when my mom was pregnant with my big brothers,

it was 1978.

Oh, she was pregnant, wow.

Yeah, she was pregnant.

My big brother, he's so, he's so nice to me.

Really? - There's, like, recordings of him,

uh, reading to me in Japanese, like, "Are you listening?

I'm reading to you," in Japanese, and I think I'm still a baby,

'cause I don't think I respond in the tapes.

But it's really cute.

We were all born in the US.

My big brother, James, was born in '78.

I was born in '82, and then Mark,

my little brother, was born in '86.

So, we're four years apart.

There's Mark.

Oh, that's me.

I'm the only girl, middle child.

And they were poor, they were really, really poor.

My mom talks about how they had to,

on a day to day, think about,

they only had this much money,

"Should I buy diapers or should I buy food?"

Hiro got a job at the iconic

Imperial Gardens, working with the acclaimed

Japanese chef, Kawamitsu, for a decade

before deciding to go out on his own in 1989.

I was going to meet my friends across the street,

and sort of, looking around, I noticed

this new restaurant, Hirozen Gourmet.

I lived by very close in the Hirozen,

but I couldn't find it, too small, you know.

This restaurant is in, in the most mundane of places,

it's in an ugly strip mall.

It was right next to my dry cleaners,

so I could take my dry cleaning in

and then come in here and have a little sushi

and, um, then walk home.

I was living in West Hollywood

around the corner from Hirozen,

and I discovered it right after it opened.

I became a regular, and Yasuyo and Hiro

felt like family to me.

One day at the sushi counter, I asked Hiro

if anyone had ever wanted to make a film about him.

He said a few had asked, then he gave me a smile

and reached across the counter and shook my hand.

That handshake led to 15 years of filming Hiro,

his restaurant, his family and his philosophy.

The first day of our shoot, I met up

with Hiro and Philip Chang of the famous

P.F. Chang restaurants, at 5:30 a.m.

This is downtown.

I don't know the whole lot, but historically

it's always been where the produce

and the seafood market used to be.

Philip wanted to learn about

fish purveyors for his newest

restaurant venture, The Lucky Duck.

So, Hiro was taking him downtown.

For Lucky Duck, I had some dishes

that were more Japanese, you know.

And so, who better to ask than Hiro?

'Cause I dealt with mostly Chinese purveyors

that, uh, were, you know, they're very different

in terms of the kind of seafood that they use.

Everyone is here. - Oh, look, look, look. The TV.

I met the woman who was in the building,

in the right, of, of, where the first, uh, first, uh, thing happened,

and, um, just all crying, wondering if people

that they know in the building are, are okay.

Jamie, I'm in...

Okay.

We started shooting

on September 11th, 2001,

a day etched in everyone's memory

with repercussions we couldn't have imagined at the time.

So we opened the Lucky Duck in, uh,

the week of 9/11, 2001.

It was downhill from there.

We closed in 2003, early 2003, and that was it.

I went out of it, in terms of running my own restaurants.

Many restaurants in L.A. closed

the week of 9/11, but Hirozen stayed open.

That small space became an intimate sanctuary

for those of us who bonded together

as a kind of food family.

I sound like a fanatic, I'm really not.

I'm serious, we would eat here, I don't know how many times a week,

and what was-- Then it became a community unto itself,

because you could always run into somebody you knew.

I, I was notorious, I hated to eat alone

until I finally went through all my friends

and dragged them here so many times

that I was forced to come here by myself,

which is how I met you. I would come here

with my little magazine, I would sit in the corner.

And it became one of my favorite rituals, because it was, again,

a sanctuary and it was familiar and safe,

and, and, and...

and it catered to me in the way I needed to be catered too.

Thank you.

The literal translation of Hirozen is Hiro's Table.

When we went there, we almost felt

as if we were in our own home.

It had a coziness that you just didn't find

in any L.A. restaurants.

What struck me is the kind of zen approach

where everything was given the same kind of attention.

The getting the ingredients out

and then the preparing of the ingredients

and putting them together, making the dish.

And then cleaning up and wrapping up everything

and putting it away, and then starting on the next thing.

As I say, being able to do that

sometimes with one dish and sometimes

three or four things, with a rhythm

that was absolutely inflexible.

Where he never lost a beat, never seemed to get flustered.

There seemed to be this real inner kind of calm.

He was doing things that wasn't happening at the time.

I know that the open kitchen idea was, you know--

He was, I don't want to say the first,

but like, very, very early on.

Going to farmers markets, getting organic,

beautiful produce, what people call now farm-to-table.

Combining.

I guess they call it California or fusion,

but it was kind of, you know, early on in that.

Now it sounds cheesy to call it, you know,

fusion or California, whatever,

but, yeah, he was doing it.

Yes, we are back here like every day for lunch.

Well, I had the lotus roots,

but in a different way.

Hiro had an amazing ability to remember

the individual preferences of his customers.

The particular dishes and ingredients that they liked.

Yeah, they know what I like. They've been with me through both my pregnancies,

so they know when I walk in, what I want,

and when I come in here.

- These look so cute! - Mm-hmm.

The restaurant grew and grew in popularity.

Foodies, food critics, reviewers and chefs

all became regulars.

The crispy baby crabs you ordered.

Deep fried baby crabs.

This one, which one are you talking about?

Okay. - The way we would move through the menu

is we would find our five favorite items,

four or five, depending on the hunger factor,

order them every single time

until you couldn't take the Chinese broccoli

and shiitake one more time, and then you would

move onto the next subset of five,

four or five items, and eventually

you'd move through the entire menu that way.

The seaweed, the sticky rice.

And what comes inside it, and I love...

well, getting the soy sauce on it, too.

It was not unusual to see the Hollywood types,

a lot of notables, people like that,

sitting in a corner quietly enjoying

a plate of sushi, or saying the omakasemenu

where, you know, they just say, "Hiro, I'm here, feed me,"

and he would just bring out course after course after course.

Over the years, it becomes a higher art form.

Hiro was achieving celebrity status,

but he remained unfazed by it,

and the star power of the people

who sought out his restaurant.

Tonight, we were waiting for a favorite regular,

Mickey Ross, one of the original producers

of "All in the Family."

Thank you.

- That's better. - Great.

They didn't really have any friends

besides for our customers.

So we would have, you know,

barbecues at our house just for fun.

I don't either.

That's why people come to your restaurant.

And it's funny thinking about it now,

of these people, whether it's like Philip or Peter, you.

I remember my little brother making,

like, cake in a microwave with just whatever,

like, just figured it out by himself

and just put it in the microwave,

and he was super, super young.

These are all at my parents house--

- Now, Mark was kind of-- - But there's Mark.

Do you think he would have been the one

person who would have been a chef?

I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally.

He was, he was the one, I think, that would cook

for his friends, and his friends would

talk about how awesome his fried rice was.

And just anything, you know, he was just, yeah.

Cookbook.

I wanted to get into graphic design

and my dad wanted to have something to leave behind.

Thinking, at least what he told me was,

small scale of like, "Oh, I want you

when you move out of the house

to have these recipes so you can cook easily."

Have good food, healthy, delicious food

that you can make on your own.

Salt, pepper?

Hiro generously arranged an elaborate tasting

for Paul Prudhomme and his R&D team.

They were developing an Asian seasoning

for their London market.

Yeah, they're good, aren't they?

On the sesame oil, that's a mild one, it's not?

Our taste is different in sesame, uh--

- Like brown, brown. - ...brown.

Right, is the darker stronger?

- It's not stronger, it has more impact. - Or more-- Yeah.

More impact, yeah.

I read some, I read some place that, that Japanese food

is based on five... senses, or five--

Can you talk about that a little bit?

That you try to bring all the senses into it?

The smell.

- Mm. - The texture.

So you can't teach that to somebody else

in the kitchen, it's just, you have to feel it.

Excellent.

Do you think they can buy all of these

ingredients in London?

That's very kind, thank you.

Thank you.

- Thanks very much. - Very good.

I Opened the Mandarette mid '80s,

that's how I know Hiro, because I was across

the street from Hirozen.

We got very friendly because I always

sat at the counter right in front of him.

He started putting little special dishes

in front of me that wasn't on the menu.

I tell him, like, "I love this kind of thing."

He didn't know I was a restaurateur.

- He did not? - No.

And he found out, you know,

and then he came to my restaurant,

and I would serve him certain things,

you know. And, and, uh, so, so, it was an exchange.

I just show up, everyday it was different.

Every time there was something different,

you know, and it was like, "Wow!"

Hiro was coming up with spectacular dishes,

combining the freshest, in-season vegetables

and fish, which he plated with incredible artistry.

And all at a very affordable price.

To me, a Berkeley girl, Hiro was the Alice Waters

of Southern California.

- All right. - Sir?

Sure.

There's a wonderful farmer's market

in Hollywood on Sunday mornings,

and if we got there early enough,

we'd run into Hiro and Yasuyo.

Hiro would show us something like

a beautiful sliced Asian pear

with dried persimmon, two things we had never tried before.

He showed us where to get the ingredients from at the market.

That was magic.

Here we go.

The artistry, it's not just, you know, the ingredients,

whatever, it's just what he comes up with.

The creativity.

You know, it's play, it's play time for him.

He's combining the textures

and the aromas, and it's simple.

It's like, you know, when you see something

really good and simple, and you go, "Ah!

Why didn't I--" You know, it's like, that's what's really good.

Part of it is, he's so humble about it,

and that goes a long way in his artistry.

And I think being that way...

- Thank you, I see you. - ...you are bound to learn more.

You're always learning.

Little bit bore.

Yeah?

Uh, yeah, she is funny, she's very quiet

but she handles business.

I think she's kind of the backbone,

'cause she's wrangling my dad,

she's wrangling the restaurant,

she's wrangling the staff,

um, all with, like, a very quiet, calm demeanor.

One day, Hiro asked me

if I wanted to go to Japan.

He had a consulting job at a hotel in Tokyo.

When Hiro was in Bangkok studying noodles

or popping to Las Vegas helping

open a Japanese restaurant over there,

in order to fly, somebody's got to stay anchored,

so, in that sense, right?

In that sense, that's what Yasuyo does for, for Hiro.

You know, they're contemporary,

but they follow that particular tradition.

We went up, sort of, windy roads in the mountains.

That was actually my only time going there,

but that was my dad's mentor's restaurant,

and it takes a little effort to get up there.

Do you remember any of it?

I remember, I think goofing off,

you know, in front of the camera.

I was young.

I remember my mom showed up late,

I think, like, maybe her flight was delayed or something.

She was supposed to come and have food,

but somehow she missed out on the food.

Still now she gets a little bummed out

talking about how she didn't get to eat

Hiromi-san's food at that dinner.

What are you doing, Hiro?

Yeah, so he started branching out,

started getting catering jobs,

and through the catering jobs,

people started calling him to do restaurant consultation.

So, Las Vegas, Newport Beach, Beverly Hills Hotel,

Four Seasons, a bunch of other ones.

And then another one in the middle, number nine.

You don't like 'em?

You don't like any of it? - Anything.

What don't you like about it?

So, we have a new hotel with the renovation,

we have a new restaurant with a new name,

with a new concept.

Hiro and I were talking and we said,

"You know, let's figure out how we can give

some of mystaff the exposure.

With Hiro coming over, he's helped our chef

to become much more of an international executive,

broadening his horizons as well.

What we're doing here, what we call degustazione

the chef's tasting menus, it's really variation of that

omakasewhere you leave it up to the chef,

the chef really thinks it all through.

It's amazing to me because with Japanese food often times

means seven, eight, nine different courses,

but it's forethought.

You know, Hiro doesn't start one thing,

goes, "Gee, what do I serve this guy next?"

There's a certain pattern to it all, I mean, you see--

It's like a symphony, there's an opening,

there's a middle, there's an end and then more.

So, with Hiro, he knew he was going

to do this fish product on a crab cake,

but he wanted to make a black bean sauce,

and it just happened that we had a guy

from Hong Kong, and black bean sauce comes from China.

So Hiro just said, "You know,

this is what I'm making but I'm going

to leave the black bean sauce up to you."

The end was a delightful concoction

that just came out last night for the first time

that will probably end up on three

different menus around the world as a result.

I wonder if all this travel

and consulting made it harder for Hiro,

as he was still trying to keep tabs

24/7 on his restaurant.

Maybe it was taking its toll.

Yeah. Yeah.

Are those Mark's sculptures?

These, some.

I think he was, like, kind of experimenting with ceramics.

I don't know if it was, like, in high school or what, but.

Really? Oh, wow!

Yeah.

Hmm.

Candice, I want to ask you,

I know it's hard to talk about,

but I, I want to ask you about your brother, Mark.

Uh, let's see.

Mm...

This is where I get emotional.

Yeah.

Um...

I think it's hard for me to talk about,

but, uh...

I think that's, uh, what I was referring to--

Wait, I don't know if I can talk about this.

- Okay. - Sorry.

We got a phone call...

that's how I heard about Mark's death.

Um...

Candice called.

They wanted to come over and have a visit,

and I so wanted to see Candice and her mother.

James was with them, too.

And they could still feel a joy

about life that... I was stunned,

because they didn't come over

to cry on my shoulder, they came over

in a different spirit, in Mark's spirit.

When he passed away, it was an accident,

it was, you know, he had moved, actually, here

to San Francisco because he knew

being in L.A., being just in that environment

was not good for him, he was at the point

where he asked for help and said,

"Hey, I need to leave."

So, I was-- We were living here at the time,

and so, he moved up here,

and, uh, he just, he had a relapse and overdosed.

I've kind of stopped documenting after that point.

Mm.

It seemed, to me, it was too invasive.

- Mm-hmm. - And then, you know, your father also got cancer,

I don't know, it's not like cause and effect,

but that was not that long after that.

Right, it was just six months later.

That was a pretty hard year,

I think, with all of that, I think

that's when they started thinking,

uh, harder and bigger about retiring...

and leaving.

That's true.

And now, the bride.

Oh, yeah!

Candice, I was happy to be there

to film your wedding.

It was pretty funny to me that

Hiro's dressed up, and you know,

father of the bride and doing all of that.

And two minutes later, he's in the kitchen cooking.

Hi, hi.

And the wedding was in San Francisco.

Hiro brought everything up from Los Angeles,

he catered that wedding, that's incredible.

So good. - Yeah, I'm just really nervous, like.

Thank you.

That one.

They moved to Portland about a handful of years ago.

They love it.

They've got a garden in the backyard,

and basically, all they do is just eat from the garden.

They have connections to get beautiful fish, too,

you know, so they just eat at home a lot.

I know.

Jessie was a good dog.

He just died on Monday.

You just got his ashes back.

And, um, that's his, what's it called, collar.

But that's actually Mark's belt.

I wondered about that.

Yeah, it was Mark's belt.

We kind of just put it on him as a joke,

like, "Oh, it fits, and it just stuck."

You're a karaoke singer in Japan?

Um, it's like Japanese pop.

Japanese pop.

I think it's kind of interesting that they've moved from Japan to L.A.,

and now that they're retired, they've kind of moved to an area that's like Japan.

The people here are very friendly,

it's a lot more laid back.

Um, the food scene is amazing,

so if they want to go out and keep up with their culinary skills,

their experience, their perspectives,

like, this is a great place for it.

- Great, this-- - This is the menu.

I had an email from Yasuyo

and she said, "We're starting,

are you interested in coming?"

And it's a fantastic cooking class,

it's absolutely wonderful. And it's the best bargain around,

because you get to eat, you get to learn,

you go home with recipes

and delightful people in the process.

My son, Lewis accused me

of taking so long to make this movie

just to extend the time I'm around Hiro,

his family and his cooking.

Autumn in Japan, it was very difficult

to survive as it was, so never really did Japanese cooking.

Anything that we could eat was okay,

because my brother starved to death after the war,

it was that bad.

And as a result, I never learned how to do these things.

My mother had five maids, you know,

before the war, but then after my father

was killed in action, she really didn't have anything.

So by coming to a place like this,

I'm relearning everything that my mother used to do.

So it's just, it's wonderful.

Thank you very much again.

It used to be, I remember growing up, he would tell me all the time,

it used to be two, "Never give up"

and "Go for broke," so that was

kind of ingrained in me when I was younger.

But I think after all that stuff happened,

I feel like it's changed.

You know, he, he jokes about it,

but tells me now, I can tell that

his sort of philosophy on life has changed,

and it's, "Ah, don't work too hard."

Was that hard for them,

when you started getting all the tattoos?

I know they did not like it

when I started getting tattoos,

but now that they know where I work,

and that it's not just like a hoodlum shop

or something, they, they understand.

I don't think they're very happy with me

getting more and more tattoos,

so I don't really mention it when I do, but, uh.

Obviously, for me, it's hard

to step away from the Obayashi's,

but now they're situated in Portland,

it was a good time to bring the film to a close,

and I decided just to give them the camera

and let them have a few words.

What can I do?

Where I'm going to?

What is this life?

What family?

Because food is not cooking, food is,

I think, you know,

heart.

We went to L.A. a few weeks ago,

it was in between lunch and dinner time, so they weren't open.

I wanted to go and say hi, but, um, we passed by

the same mini mall, looked really fast.

"Oh, it's the same color and the same, like, font

that Hirozen was in."