LOS ANGELES – Jist Cafe in LA’s historic Little Tokyo has been a popular favorite for the past seven years, and like many businesses here, it has deep roots in the Japanese American community. Although dining-in stopped due to COVID-19, chef Glen Ishii has been preparing hundreds of orders of “chashu shumai.”
“It’s an old family recipe,” said Ishii. “My grandmother, my mother and my father did it. I didn't want to do it for a long time because I wanted to make a name for myself, do something different for myself, but the reason why we started is because a lot of the seniors and the senior living [in the community] used to be customers of my mom and dad, or if they are still alive, then my grandmother as well. I wanted to make them happy because right now it's troubled time for everybody.”
The beloved dish, consisting of week-long marinated pork served with shumai dumplings, was missed by many when Ishii’s grandmother, who served it at her restaurant, The Tokyo Gardens, retired in 2013, but its return now has been a spirit-lifter.
“It's very labor intensive,” said Ishii. “It's a lot of care. That's what's going into this.”
The dish is so popular, in fact, that Jist Cafe has been selling out of it.
Mariko Lochridge, who works at the Little Tokyo Service Center, is a new convert to chashu shumai.
“The hype on this dish was kind of insane,” Lochridge said. “But I was a little bit worried that it might not live up to that. But then, from like the very first bite, that the soy sauce mustard, I was like, 'This is great!'”
Chashu shumai is comfort food for a trying time. But more than that, it is a symbol of the strength and resilience of the Little Tokyo Japanese-American community that has had to weather many challenges over its history.
“Those lessons have been successfully passed down to younger generations and they've really worked,” said Lochridge. “[The community] is really working together, I think, pretty successfully right now to figure out how to support not just the small businesses but the residents, the seniors and kind of pull that all together.”
When the pandemic hit, community organizations like the Little Tokyo Service Center rallied forces to help those in need and every week volunteers have been delivering meals to homebound seniors.
Glen Ishii knows how comforting food can be during times of crisis and said, “For us as chefs or cooks, that's something that we strive for trying to make that dish that's going to have an emotional connection with somebody.”