Good Bye to the Best Sushi in ATL

Raw emotions over Soto

Renowned sushi chef closes 'world class' eatery

By JOHN KESSLER, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Scores of messages awaited the waiter who opened Soto Japanese Restaurant on Monday afternoon and pushed the button on the answering machine.

"I am so sorry to hear you were closing, and I was just wondering..."

"Hi, Soto, we'll take anything you have, any time you can fit us in..."

"I just can't believe it. If there's any way..."

The waiter would spend all afternoon in the tiny back office calling these regulars back to say Soto Japanese Restaurant, unfortunately for them, was fully committed for its last two dinners before closing for good.

Who got in? Former Atlantan Jared Hertz, who scored a primo spot at the sushi bar after driving down from Long Island, N.Y., for one last meal. And Carlo Musso of Jonesboro, who had already dined at Soto every night for more than a week, ever since he heard of its closing.

"Me and dozens of other Sotoholics are going to be in withdrawal for quite a while," Musso mused. "We don't have a lot of things in Atlanta that are world class. Soto was one."

Chef Sotohiro Kosugi would not give The Atlanta Journal-Constitution a reason for shuttering his award-winning restaurant after service Tuesday night. But he has privately told colleagues and customers that softening business and the high cost of fish - only the best, hand-selected for him at Tokyo's Tsukiji market - were taking their toll.

On slow nights, Kosugi was known to toss out $45-a-pound bluefin tuna because he would serve only the freshest.

It was like theater

Kosugi's intense perfectionism won him adoring food groupies, but it also might have scuttled his small business and contributed to the notorious mood swings and explosive outbursts that, in recent years, were as much a part of the dining experience at his restaurant as the celebrated food.

Kosugi - a third-generation sushi chef from the coastal Japanese city of Toyama - opened Soto in Buckhead's Piedmont-Peachtree Crossing next to the "disco Kroger" in 1995. On the surface it seemed another dumpy strip-mall Japanese joint. The AJC's dining critic at the time, Elliott Mackle, wrote a first impression based mostly on tempura and dumplings, and declared the restaurant "slightly loopy but trying hard."

But word of this sushi master, with his stunningly fresh fish and wild nightly specials, spread through Atlanta's dining community. The city's top chefs headed to Soto's bar late after work to eat tuna tartare with pine nuts, mango scallops in an orange cup and garlic-pepper tuna belly.

Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison, the chef-owners of Bacchanalia, and Guenter Seeger the chef-owner of Seeger's, brought Kosugi to the attention of editors at Food & Wine magazine. In 1997, the magazine named Kosugi one of America's best new chefs and invited him to the Aspen Food & Wine Classic in Colorado to accept the award and show off his craft. Kosugi was so concerned the rice would cook improperly at Aspen's 7,980-foot altitude that he prepared sushi with fingers of mashed potato.

Soto soon earned a rare cult status in Atlanta. Spots at the sushi bar - a theater proscenium arching into the center of the dining room - filled quickly with fanatical regulars.

How fanatical?

Well, John and Valerie Willett of Atlanta, always at bar seats No. 4 and No. 5, named their cat Shima Aji Carpaccio after Soto's dish of slivered yellowjack in truffle vinaigrette.

"It was my favorite dish," Valerie said. "I did tell Soto-san that I am going to hold him to his promise of serving me shima aji on my death bed."

Atlanta's culinarians are no less effusive in their praise.

"He's one of the greatest Japanese chefs I know," said Seeger. "He's so dedicated to his work and his art."

"When you're in the restaurant you get that sense that there's a master at work," added Richard Blais of One Midtown Kitchen. "You know you're in someone's workshop. And as good as the food is, just watching the service, watching his moods change, watching his interaction with the staff... It was like theater."

The temperamental chef

But for some in recent years, Kosugi's changing moods steered this theater a little too close in mood to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" When Kosugi was under pressure, the tension rose in his voice and in the room - and then boiled over. He yelled at his staff, which was often - and famously - scattered and inefficient. He also slammed plates and, on occasion, closed the restaurant and cast out his guests.

"We've seen him freak out many times," said Mara Davis, the Dave FM deejay, who was a regular customer with her husband. "One time, this old man at the sushi bar asked Soto for a Diet Coke, and he just went running back into the kitchen, and then all you could hear was 'RA, RA, RA, RA!!'

"We always were so delicate and careful around him because we loved him so much," Davis added. "We didn't want him to pull a 'soup Nazi' on us."

In 2003, Soto closed the restaurant for remodeling, and told the AJC that the stress had gotten to him.

He was embarrassed by the "temperamental chef" reputation he had acquired, but also despairing of the fluctuations in his business.

He threw out goldeneye snapper from Tokyo he couldn't sell, but then would be jammed with customers who had read about a great Japanese restaurant and only wanted California rolls. Guests complained about long waits for food, which only added to the stress.

After a 10-month break, he reopened. Fans returned, but then so did the long waits for food and flares of temper. Kosugi made the radical decision to serve only a multicourse omakase menu to a limited number of guests each evening. These meals often lasted five hours or longer.

"It was one of the most fantastic gustatory experiences you could ever have," recalls John Willett. "But it was too much."

Kosugi returned to his regular menu, California rolls and all, before deciding to close.

"I think he gave everything he had," Seeger said. "He didn't hold anything back. He's a sensitive person, and he takes his job so seriously."

According to Seeger and others, Kosugi plans to relocate to New York with hopes of eventually opening a 20-seat sushi bar.

Kosugi himself was reluctant to speak with a reporter on his penultimate day as Atlanta's genius sushi chef.

"I have customers to cook for," Kosugi demurred. "I have to concentrate on them because I don't want to be mad chef any more."

© 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution