Japanese food has been changing, so to universal food cultures. Sushi is now an international food you can eat in many countries in the world. “We witnessed a big change” said Mr. Hara: the oldest member at Katagiri who started working at the store in the early 80’s. Mr. Hara is a fishmonger. He has been introducing the fish and raw fish culture through providing the fish at the store. “Not many people liked or bought raw fish in the store
back then. So we tried to sell whole fish for both grilling and cooking.” Now we sell sashimi grade fish mostly at the store. But the fundamentals of Japanese food never changed in our store. We celebrate the season with the food. Japan has four distinct seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. We cele- brate each season with seasonal food. Simple but the fun and cheerful seasonal traditions are still passing on. In Spring, we have cherry blossom tea and cookies or Japanese sweets for the festival or the cherry blossom viewing at the park. In Sum- mer, we have cold noodles to beat the hot weather. We have dango mochi Japanese sweets for moon watching in Autumn
harvest moon season. And hot pot and Sukiyaki,Shabushabu or the hot ramen noodle soup in the winter. Also we have special new year dishes for the New year celebration in January. We bring seasonal products at the store to let New Yorkers feel the joy of seasons. Pandemic made it clear that we bring joy to the table, since we couldn’t travel much with restriction. Many customers told us they enjoyed the food and they felt like they traveled to Japan. That’s the feeling we would love to offer. The love for Japanese food, small happiness on the table. I hope we
pass on the joy to many New Yorkers for many more years to come! Written by Masami Inoue Store manager at Katagiri 59th street store
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