28-03-2025
Flashback: 2022 Restaurant of the Year stood out with stellar, sustainable sushi
Originally published Feb. 11, 2022. The Free Press will reveal its 2025 Restaurant of the Year and Top 10 New Restaurants and Dining Experiences next week. In the meantime, here's a look at a past Restaurant of the Year, Sozai in Clawson. Sozai Chef Hajime Soto would go on to win the prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef in 2024.
It's 4:59 p.m. and I have arrived for my reservation at Sozai, an unassuming sushi bar in a Clawson strip mall. When I called to make the reservation a few days earlier, a friendly voice penciled me in for the first seating of the night, 5:03 p.m.
I'd imagined the three-minute oddity was just a formality. A nod to a Shinto teaching or some mystical Japanese proverb. Surely, I would arrive at 5:00 p.m. and no sooner would a server be setting down my glass of water — no ice and a slice of lemon.
Instead, the doors are locked and with tinted windows and bamboo paneling, it's hard to tell whether there is a trace of life in the space.
At 5:03 p.m. a shadow approaches the entrance. I hear the clank of the door unlocking and take that as my cue. As I cross the threshold, I'm greeted by a smiling host whose friendly voice I recognize from days before.
Turns out, the only symbolism in Sozai's opening time is its likeness to the playful and rebellious chef at the helm. 5:03 p.m. is plainly Hajime Sato's middle finger to conventional wisdom and industry standards.
Sato's defiance of the status quo is as evident in Sozai's hours of operation as it is in the restaurant's overall mission and commitment to sustainability. He challenges diners to consider why restaurant hours should begin and end in double zeros in the same way that he calls you to question how your eating habits contribute to the world's growing population of endangered aquatic species. If you enjoy delicacies at seafood-centric restaurants, there's a chance you play a role in the consumption of unethically sourced ingredients. Sato wants to talk about that.
Sato fosters a conversational dining experience even before you step foot into the restaurant. Rather than using ubiquitous, third-party, online booking services, the restaurant only accepts reservations by phone within business hours. This offers the opportunity to share dietary restrictions and aversions, and to ask questions about omakase, the tasting menu experience available at the sushi bar. The five-tier omakase menu ranges from six to 10 courses and culminates with a kappo offering, a formal, hours-long feast of sushi dishes at the complete discretion of the chef.
There is an a la carte option, a world of sushi and sashimi, nigiri and makimono. There are small plates where bright green edamame are covered in a veil of shiitake salt. And poke bowls that are so wonderfully rich and layered in texture and flavor. One mouthful of Sato's take on the Hawaiian dish teeming with hunks of mild sashimi saturated in a sweet, umami soy-ginger bath, offers a lesson in varying levels of crunch — a soft crunch from shavings of buttery macadamia nuts and crisp, chopped cucumbers; the snap of slippery slivers of seaweed; the pop of tiny sesame seeds.
Past booking your reservation by phone, the omakase sushi bar is where the conversation continues.
The 13-seat sushi bar, where the only element separating diners from Sato and sushi chef Brian Agacinski is a strip of blond wood reclaimed from local abandoned homes, is the heart of Sozai. It's the place where you'll sink your teeth into sweet, plump scallops and if you ask, it's the place you'll learn about the origin of those scallops and the sustainable fishery Sato worked diligently with to bring to your plate.
Since the 1970s, the country has seen an uptick in its appetite for seafood, a trend that is consistent across the globe. The increase in the global consumption of fish and other aquatic species has led to overfishing, what occurs when fish stocks are fished to the point of depletion. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in 2017, more than 34% of the fish stocks of the world's marine fisheries were classified as overfished. Additionally, since 1974, the percentage of fish stocks that are within biologically sustainable levels has decreased by nearly 25%.
Sushi restaurants, centered on the use of fish and various forms of seafood, risk contributing to the oceanic crisis if they don't begin to honor sustainable fishing practices. In many cases, sushi restaurants offer menu items featuring bluefin tuna, for example, a species as endangered as the giant panda.
In metro Detroit, Sato is poised to become a pioneer of the sustainable sushi movement.
Sato is inherently inquisitive. He remembers genuinely questioning why his father would yell at the television during sporting events — 'why yell if they can't hear you?' he recalls asking — and carried a curious spirit into the early years of his career. As a young apprentice of an established sushi chef in his native Japan, Sato sought after the reasoning behind Japanese cooking techniques and common kitchen practices, quickly learning that head chefs didn't take kindly to his questioning of authority. His superiors attributed most practices to matters of tradition and in profoundly abusive environments, Sato was careful not to prod further.
In his own teaching roles, though, he questioned everything. Sato's findings illuminated the ways in which traditional sushi methods contributed to the extinction of oceanic species. Bluefin tuna, unagi (freshwater eel) and Hamachi (Japanese yellowtail), are all common ingredients in sushi dishes and at the time, they were even ingredients Sato used in the kitchens where he worked. He soon learned they were also vulnerable species at risk of overfishing.
'You really have to study each fish, which is almost impossible for most people,' Sato says. 'And that's why I'm a little crazy.'
Sato has always gone against the grain. Growing up in Japan, he was the boy who was far more interested in the arts than he was in the law or engineering fields his parents had in mind for him. And when he ventured to the states as an exchange student as a teen, he didn't land in New York or Los Angeles or any one of the major cities romanticized on television and in films. Instead, he found himself in the northwest, in the Rocky Mountain state of Idaho, and eventually, the Pacific Northwest, where he opened Mashiko, Seattle's first sustainable sushi bar.
Sato looked to Casson Trenor, the environmentalist and restaurateur behind Tataki, the country's first sustainable sushi bar. At Mashiko, Sato worked tirelessly to connect with ethical and sustainable distributors, often substituting endangered fish with equally flavorful options.
Sato's efforts were noticed.
'I still remember sleeping on the floor of that restaurant,' he says, reminiscing about the late nights it wasn't worth going home only to turn back around a few hours later.
Instead, he'd prop himself under a table to catch some shuteye before getting back to work. He recalls a night he was jolted out of his sleep by a woman forcefully banging on the restaurant window in a panic.
'When I popped up, she was relieved — she thought I was dead,' he laughs.
For Sato, Mashiko became a home, and for others, an acclaimed Seattle restaurant beloved by critics and diners alike.
With Sozai, Sato brings the same level of craft and dedication to the sustainability movement to Michigan.
Little bubbles of oil skim the surface of a warm bowl of inaka miso soup. Unlike most brothy misos, this one is chock-full of charred slices of onion and pillows of tofu so delicate they melt almost as soon as they hit your tongue. Cool pieces of chopped shrimp garnish a bed of crisp chrysanthemum greens in a basin of briny liquid. The dish is herbaceous and sweet and savory at once, not unlike a chilled herbal tea.
Crisp vegetables, crushed herbs and ribbons of fresh, pungent ginger and wasabi accompany an assortment of sashimi featuring inch-thick slices of fish sourced from sustainable fisheries from Alaska to Florida to Massachusetts and Washington. A thin, citrusy lime wheel rests between a sliced scallop. Rounds of monkfish liver, in their orange tint, are like slices of sweet potatoes. If given a piece of bread, I might rip a piece and smear it with the velvety paté.
The heads of Canadian amaebi, or spot prawns, are battered and fried tempura-style for a light and airy crunch. Some will cringe at the sight of the crustacean's beady eyeballs and wispy tentacles. I am unabashed.
Sato has come a long way since his days sleeping on Mashiko's floor and washing his face in the restaurant's mop sink, but his work at Sozai is equally demanding. Sato says he begins his days texting sustainable distributors — this month, he hoped to introduce sustainable octopus, for which he'd received a tip when we spoke last month. No dice.
"That's the thing, sometimes it takes months or years to make connections to get great things that are also sustainable," he says. "I haven't given up."
Sato then goes on to work at the restaurant, which is open for dinner service Tuesday through Saturday. At home after hours, a seemingly endless stash of content on new aquaculture findings awaits him. Keeping up on articles, podcasts and documentary films on the subject fills the few gaps in his days.
Ambitious sourcing for Sozai is not limited to seafood. The restaurant serves herbal teas made by premium brands, including Sugimoto Tea, a Washington-based brand that sources its tea leaves from ethical and sustainable farms in the Shizuoka Prefecture along Japan's Pacific coast. A loose-leaf blend made with white peony blossoms is aromatic. A floral perfume fills the air as I pour the brew from a small white teapot.
A certified saké advisor, Sato also collaborates with distributors to introduce new varieties of the rice-based spirit. There are varieties that are available exclusively at Sozai in the state of Michigan, and others, which Sato says, are in the process of licensing in Michigan just for the restaurant.
'I cannot believe they're doing it for me, but I love that I will be able to give my customers the story on who's behind this saké and what kind of rice they grow. That's really exciting to me,' Sato says.
The Rihaku Dreamy Clouds Nigori is refined and lightly sweet. It pairs well with the more robust flavors in the earlier dishes of the Nami omakase experience. Agacinski offers another recommendation to pair with the next round of courses — the sashimi and assorted nigiri. Drunken Whale, light in flavor yet smooth in finish, is of course, the perfect pairing.
'We can make more money and it's easier to encourage customers to buy bottles of saké, but we actually discourage that. Especially if you're doing a course meal — do you think one saké can match with every single meal? If I say that, I'm either lying or I'm lazy,' Sato says. 'Either way, I'm not really a good chef.'
Nothing about Sozai nor its amusing leader is lazy. The multihyphenate chef moonlights as a ceramic artist, crafting the restaurant's flatware by hand. Sipping saké from the thick rim of an iridescent white guinomi made by Sato, or a traditional Japanese saké cup, enhances the mouthfeel of the room-temp elixir.
Sustainability is a holistic endeavor at Sozai, trickling into the quality of life for the restaurant employees. All workers are paid fair wages and full-time employees qualify for medical benefits, a perk that is expected in traditional industries yet largely unheard of for food service workers.
Sato's enthusiasm for his work is admirable. He's charismatic with an upbeat sensibility and a seemingly infinite supply of energy that powers him to pour into every element that is so keenly meticulous about Sozai. And he does it all well before — and after — 5:03 p.m.
How Sozai is doing its part: Fair wages, sustainability
Cuisine: Japanese with an emphasis on sushi
Price Point: Omakase $50-$120+; A la carte $5-$60
Location: 449 W. Fourteen Mile Road, Clawson.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 2022 Restaurant of the Year, Sozai, boasted sustainable sushi
