Even if you’ve been eating sushi all your life, you’ll never know as much as Shiro Kashiba.
Kashiba, born in Kyoto in 1941, began apprenticing with Tokyo sushi masters when he was 19 years old. Eventually he immigrated to the United States and, in 1970, set up Seattle’s first full-service sushi bar at Maneki, one of the city’s oldest restaurants. Kashiba opened his first restaurant, Nikko, in the International District in 1972, where, for nearly two decades, he introduced scores of local diners to Japanese cuisine. For another 20 years, he stood behind the sushi bar at his Belltown restaurant, Shiro’s, which he left in 2014 after selling it to new owners.
For more than 50 years, Kashiba has fished and foraged in the waters and mountains of Puget Sound. He pioneered and popularized sushi made from local seafood such as geoduck, smelt, albacore tuna, and salmon, including its roe, which he first procured for free from fishermen on Seattle’s waterfront in the 1960s. Kashiba couldn’t stand to see the roe, which was either thrown away or used as bait, go to waste. Now the briny, squishy, coral-colored eggs, known as ikura, are prized ingredients. Kashiba became such a beloved local figure that the entire city calls him simply, affectionately, by his first name…
