Hiro's Table (2018) - full transcript

Mic is working.

Testing, one, two, three.

So Candice, um--

Do you want
Joe sit here?

No, I want him
to sit where he is.

I can't believe
it's been over 15 years now

that I've been
making a documentary

about Candice's father,
master chef, Hiroji Obayashi.

I think I'm going to have
to take this off the tripod,

this is not working for me.

- Just a sec.
- Yeah.



Okay.

Take care, and do you
want to talk to Lynn again?

Okay, hang on one second.

The two mottoes my
dad had growing up,

you know, his English
isn't very good,

but the two that he held onto

is, "Never give up"
and, "Go for broke."

So, you know, I feel like
it's definitely stuck for me.

Does he actually say those words?
- Yeah, he does.

- Really?
- Yeah.

That's interesting.

"Never give up,"
and "Go for broke."

Yeah,
I've heard him say that before.

- Yeah, never give up.
- Three dollars back--



That must be my motto.

James Obayashi
and Candice's husband, Joe

and I were about to
share a family meal

at Hiro's house in Portland.

So this is for.

Yeah.

Do you always do that

every, every meal?

I see.

That's true.

Hiro and his wife,
Yasuyo had retired

to Portland after
selling their popular

West Hollywood
restaurant, Hirozen Gourmet.

But you're not going to
open-- Are you going to open

another restaurant,
do you think?

Greater
Los Angeles is filled

with a wide variety
of Asian restaurants.

But back in the late '80s,
Hirozen Gourmet

was the go-to Japanese
restaurant for me.

My favorite mom-and-pop,

it was pioneered by
Hiro and Yasuyo Obayashi.

My mom has
always been, I think,

the biggest
cheerleader of my dad.

I think she's
the first one to say,

people should know
Hiro and how great he is

and his philosophies
and the care that he takes

to make food, and just
how food is life.

My mom jokes about
how when she married my dad,

she had no idea that
he wanted to move here.

She was like, "Are you serious?

We have to move to America?

English was my worst subject,
I hated taking English."

Once again my
friends, the next study tour

will get started
in just 10 minutes.

Not long now.

My parents
moved from Japan to America

when my mom was
pregnant with my big brothers,

it was 1978.

Oh,
she was pregnant, wow.

Yeah,
she was pregnant.

My big brother, he's so,
he's so nice to me.

Really?
- There's, like, recordings of him,

uh, reading to me in Japanese,
like, "Are you listening?

I'm reading to you," in Japanese,
and I think I'm still a baby,

'cause I don't think
I respond in the tapes.

But it's really cute.

We were
all born in the US.

My big brother, James,
was born in '78.

I was born in '82,
and then Mark,

my little brother,
was born in '86.

So, we're four years apart.

There's Mark.

Oh, that's me.

I'm the only girl,
middle child.

And they were poor,
they were really, really poor.

My mom talks about
how they had to,

on a day to day, think about,

they only had this much money,

"Should I buy diapers
or should I buy food?"

Hiro got
a job at the iconic

Imperial Gardens,
working with the acclaimed

Japanese chef,
Kawamitsu, for a decade

before deciding to go
out on his own in 1989.

I was going to meet
my friends across the street,

and sort of, looking
around, I noticed

this new restaurant,
Hirozen Gourmet.

I lived by very close
in the Hirozen,

but I couldn't find it,
too small, you know.

This restaurant is in, in
the most mundane of places,

it's in an ugly strip mall.

It was right next
to my dry cleaners,

so I could take my
dry cleaning in

and then come in here
and have a little sushi

and, um, then walk home.

I was living
in West Hollywood

around the corner from Hirozen,

and I discovered it
right after it opened.

I became a regular,
and Yasuyo and Hiro

felt like family to me.

One day at the sushi
counter, I asked Hiro

if anyone had ever wanted to make a film about him.

He said a few had asked,
then he gave me a smile

and reached across
the counter and shook my hand.

That handshake led to
15 years of filming Hiro,

his restaurant,
his family and his philosophy.

The first day of
our shoot, I met up

with Hiro and Philip Chang
of the famous

P.F. Chang restaurants,
at 5:30 a.m.

This is downtown.

I don't know the whole lot,
but historically

it's always been
where the produce

and the seafood
market used to be.

Philip wanted
to learn about

fish purveyors for his newest

restaurant venture,
The Lucky Duck.

So, Hiro was
taking him downtown.

For Lucky Duck,
I had some dishes

that were more
Japanese, you know.

And so, who better
to ask than Hiro?

'Cause I dealt with
mostly Chinese purveyors

that, uh, were, you know,
they're very different

in terms of the kind
of seafood that they use.

Everyone is here.
- Oh, look, look, look. The TV.

I met the
woman who was in the building,

in the right, of, of,
where the first, uh, first, uh, thing happened,

and, um, just all crying,
wondering if people

that they know in
the building are, are okay.

Jamie, I'm in...

Okay.

We started shooting

on September 11th, 2001,

a day etched in
everyone's memory

with repercussions we couldn't
have imagined at the time.

So we opened
the Lucky Duck in, uh,

the week of 9/11, 2001.

It was downhill from there.

We closed in 2003,
early 2003, and that was it.

I went out of it, in terms
of running my own restaurants.

Many restaurants
in L.A. closed

the week of 9/11,
but Hirozen stayed open.

That small space
became an intimate sanctuary

for those of us
who bonded together

as a kind of food family.

I sound like a fanatic,
I'm really not.

I'm serious, we would eat here,
I don't know how many times a week,

and what was-- Then it became
a community unto itself,

because you could always
run into somebody you knew.

I, I was notorious,
I hated to eat alone

until I finally went
through all my friends

and dragged them
here so many times

that I was forced to
come here by myself,

which is how I met you.
I would come here

with my little magazine,
I would sit in the corner.

And it became one of my favorite
rituals, because it was, again,

a sanctuary and it
was familiar and safe,

and, and, and...

and it catered to me in the way
I needed to be catered too.

Thank you.

The literal translation
of Hirozen is Hiro's Table.

When we went there,
we almost felt

as if we were in our own home.

It had a coziness
that you just didn't find

in any L.A. restaurants.

What struck me is
the kind of zen approach

where everything was given
the same kind of attention.

The getting the ingredients out

and then the preparing
of the ingredients

and putting them together,
making the dish.

And then cleaning up
and wrapping up everything

and putting it away, and then
starting on the next thing.

As I say, being able to do that

sometimes with one dish
and sometimes

three or four things,
with a rhythm

that was absolutely inflexible.

Where he never lost a beat,
never seemed to get flustered.

There seemed to be
this real inner kind of calm.

He was doing things that
wasn't happening at the time.

I know that the open
kitchen idea was, you know--

He was, I don't want
to say the first,

but like, very, very early on.

Going to farmers markets,
getting organic,

beautiful produce, what
people call now farm-to-table.

Combining.

I guess they
call it California or fusion,

but it was kind of,
you know, early on in that.

Now it sounds cheesy
to call it, you know,

fusion or California, whatever,

but, yeah, he was doing it.

Yes, we are back here
like every day for lunch.

Well, I had the lotus roots,

but in a different
way.

Hiro had an amazing
ability to remember

the individual
preferences of his customers.

The particular dishes and
ingredients that they liked.

Yeah, they know what I like.
They've been with me through both my pregnancies,

so they know when
I walk in, what I want,

and when I come in here.

- These look so cute!
- Mm-hmm.

The restaurant grew
and grew in popularity.

Foodies, food critics,
reviewers and chefs

all became regulars.

The crispy baby
crabs you ordered.

Deep fried baby crabs.

This one, which one
are you talking about?

Okay.
- The way we would move through the menu

is we would find our
five favorite items,

four or five,
depending on the hunger factor,

order them every single time

until you couldn't
take the Chinese broccoli

and shiitake one more time,
and then you would

move onto the next
subset of five,

four or five items,
and eventually

you'd move through
the entire menu that way.

The seaweed, the sticky rice.

And what comes inside it,
and I love...

well, getting
the soy sauce on it, too.

It was not unusual to
see the Hollywood types,

a lot of notables,
people like that,

sitting in a corner
quietly enjoying

a plate of sushi,
or saying the omakasemenu

where, you know, they just say,
"Hiro, I'm here, feed me,"

and he would just bring out course after course after course.

Over the years,
it becomes a higher art form.

Hiro was
achieving celebrity status,

but he remained unfazed by it,

and the star power of the people

who sought out his restaurant.

Tonight, we were waiting for a favorite regular,

Mickey Ross, one of
the original producers

of "All in the Family."

Thank you.

- That's better.
- Great.

They didn't really
have any friends

besides for our customers.

So we would have, you know,

barbecues at our
house just for fun.

I don't either.

That's why people come
to your restaurant.

And it's funny
thinking about it now,

of these people, whether
it's like Philip or Peter, you.

I remember my little
brother making,

like, cake in a microwave
with just whatever,

like, just figured
it out by himself

and just put it
in the microwave,

and he was super, super young.

These are all at
my parents house--

- Now, Mark was kind of--
- But there's Mark.

Do you think he would
have been the one

person who
would have been a chef?

I think so. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally.

He was, he was the one,
I think, that would cook

for his friends,
and his friends would

talk about how awesome
his fried rice was.

And just anything,
you know, he was just, yeah.

Cookbook.

I wanted to get
into graphic design

and my dad wanted to
have something to leave behind.

Thinking, at least
what he told me was,

small scale of
like, "Oh, I want you

when you move out of the house

to have these recipes
so you can cook easily."

Have good food,
healthy, delicious food

that you can make on your own.

Salt, pepper?

Hiro generously
arranged an elaborate tasting

for Paul Prudhomme
and his R&D team.

They were developing
an Asian seasoning

for their London market.

Yeah, they're good,
aren't they?

On the sesame oil,
that's a mild one, it's not?

Our taste is
different in sesame, uh--

- Like brown, brown.
- ...brown.

Right, is
the darker stronger?

- It's not stronger, it has more impact.
- Or more-- Yeah.

More impact, yeah.

I read some, I read some place
that, that Japanese food

is based on five...
senses, or five--

Can you talk about
that a little bit?

That you try to bring
all the senses into it?

The smell.

- Mm.
- The texture.

So you can't teach
that to somebody else

in the kitchen,
it's just, you have to feel it.

Excellent.

Do you think they
can buy all of these

ingredients in London?

That's very
kind, thank you.

Thank you.

- Thanks very much.
- Very good.

I Opened
the Mandarette mid '80s,

that's how I know Hiro,
because I was across

the street from Hirozen.

We got very friendly
because I always

sat at the counter
right in front of him.

He started putting
little special dishes

in front of me
that wasn't on the menu.

I tell him, like,
"I love this kind of thing."

He didn't know
I was a restaurateur.

- He did not?
- No.

And he found out, you know,

and then he came
to my restaurant,

and I would serve
him certain things,

you know. And, and, uh,
so, so, it was an exchange.

I just show up,
everyday it was different.

Every time there was
something different,

you know, and it
was like, "Wow!"

Hiro was coming up
with spectacular dishes,

combining the freshest,
in-season vegetables

and fish, which he plated
with incredible artistry.

And all at a very
affordable price.

To me, a Berkeley girl,
Hiro was the Alice Waters

of Southern California.

- All right.
- Sir?

Sure.

There's a wonderful
farmer's market

in Hollywood on Sunday mornings,

and if we got
there early enough,

we'd run into Hiro and Yasuyo.

Hiro would show us
something like

a beautiful sliced Asian pear

with dried persimmon, two things
we had never tried before.

He showed us where to get the ingredients from at the market.

That was magic.

Here we go.

The artistry, it's not just,
you know, the ingredients,

whatever, it's just
what he comes up with.

The creativity.

You know, it's play,
it's play time for him.

He's combining the textures

and the aromas, and it's simple.

It's like, you know,
when you see something

really good and simple,
and you go, "Ah!

Why didn't I--" You know, it's
like, that's what's really good.

Part of it is,
he's so humble about it,

and that goes a long
way in his artistry.

And I think being that way...

- Thank you, I see you.
- ...you are bound to learn more.

You're always learning.

Little bit bore.

Yeah?

Uh, yeah, she is funny,
she's very quiet

but she handles business.

I think she's kind
of the backbone,

'cause she's wrangling my dad,

she's wrangling the restaurant,

she's wrangling the staff,

um, all with, like,
a very quiet, calm demeanor.

One day, Hiro asked me

if I wanted to go to Japan.

He had a consulting job
at a hotel in Tokyo.

When Hiro was
in Bangkok studying noodles

or popping to Las Vegas helping

open a Japanese
restaurant over there,

in order to fly,
somebody's got to stay anchored,

so, in that sense, right?

In that sense, that's
what Yasuyo does for, for Hiro.

You know, they're contemporary,

but they follow that
particular tradition.

We went up, sort of,
windy roads in the mountains.

That was actually
my only time going there,

but that was my dad's
mentor's restaurant,

and it takes a little
effort to get up there.

Do you
remember any of it?

I remember, I think goofing off,

you know,
in front of the camera.

I was young.

I remember my mom
showed up late,

I think, like, maybe her
flight was delayed or something.

She was supposed to
come and have food,

but somehow she missed
out on the food.

Still now she gets
a little bummed out

talking about how
she didn't get to eat

Hiromi-san's food
at that dinner.

What are you doing, Hiro?

Yeah, so he
started branching out,

started getting catering jobs,

and through the catering jobs,

people started calling him
to do restaurant consultation.

So, Las Vegas, Newport Beach,
Beverly Hills Hotel,

Four Seasons,
a bunch of other ones.

And then another one
in the middle, number nine.

You don't like 'em?

You don't like any of it?
- Anything.

What don't
you like about it?

So, we have a new
hotel with the renovation,

we have a new restaurant
with a new name,

with a new concept.

Hiro and I were
talking and we said,

"You know, let's figure out
how we can give

some of mystaff the exposure.

With Hiro coming over,
he's helped our chef

to become much more of
an international executive,

broadening his horizons as well.

What we're doing here,
what we call degustazione

the chef's tasting menus,
it's really variation of that

omakasewhere you leave
it up to the chef,

the chef really thinks
it all through.

It's amazing to me because with
Japanese food often times

means seven, eight,
nine different courses,

but it's forethought.

You know, Hiro doesn't
start one thing,

goes, "Gee, what do
I serve this guy next?"

There's a certain pattern
to it all, I mean, you see--

It's like a symphony,
there's an opening,

there's a middle,
there's an end and then more.

So, with Hiro,
he knew he was going

to do this fish product
on a crab cake,

but he wanted to make
a black bean sauce,

and it just happened
that we had a guy

from Hong Kong, and black
bean sauce comes from China.

So Hiro just said, "You know,

this is what
I'm making but I'm going

to leave the black bean
sauce up to you."

The end was
a delightful concoction

that just came out
last night for the first time

that will probably
end up on three

different menus
around the world as a result.

I wonder if
all this travel

and consulting made it
harder for Hiro,

as he was still
trying to keep tabs

24/7 on his restaurant.

Maybe it was taking its toll.

Yeah. Yeah.

Are those
Mark's sculptures?

These, some.

I think he was, like, kind of
experimenting with ceramics.

I don't know if it was, like,
in high school or what, but.

Really? Oh, wow!

Yeah.

Hmm.

Candice,
I want to ask you,

I know it's hard to talk about,

but I, I want to ask you
about your brother, Mark.

Uh, let's see.

Mm...

This is where
I get emotional.

Yeah.

Um...

I think it's hard for me
to talk about,

but, uh...

I think that's, uh,
what I was referring to--

Wait, I don't know
if I can talk about this.

- Okay.
- Sorry.

We got
a phone call...

that's how I heard
about Mark's death.

Um...

Candice called.

They wanted to come
over and have a visit,

and I so wanted to
see Candice and her mother.

James was with them, too.

And they could still feel a joy

about life that...
I was stunned,

because they didn't come over

to cry on my shoulder,
they came over

in a different spirit,
in Mark's spirit.

When he passed away,
it was an accident,

it was, you know,
he had moved, actually, here

to San Francisco because he knew

being in L.A.,
being just in that environment

was not good for him,
he was at the point

where he asked for
help and said,

"Hey, I need to leave."

So, I was-- We were living
here at the time,

and so, he moved up here,

and, uh, he just, he had
a relapse and overdosed.

I've kind of stopped
documenting after that point.

Mm.

It seemed, to me,
it was too invasive.

- Mm-hmm.
- And then, you know, your father also got cancer,

I don't know,
it's not like cause and effect,

but that was not that
long after that.

Right, it was just
six months later.

That was
a pretty hard year,

I think, with all
of that, I think

that's when they
started thinking,

uh, harder and bigger
about retiring...

and leaving.

That's true.

And now, the bride.

Oh, yeah!

Candice, I was
happy to be there

to film your wedding.

It was pretty funny to me that

Hiro's dressed up, and you know,

father of the bride
and doing all of that.

And two minutes later,
he's in the kitchen cooking.

Hi, hi.

And the wedding
was in San Francisco.

Hiro brought everything up
from Los Angeles,

he catered that wedding,
that's incredible.

So good.
- Yeah, I'm just really nervous, like.

Thank you.

That one.

They moved to Portland
about a handful of years ago.

They love it.

They've got a garden
in the backyard,

and basically, all they do
is just eat from the garden.

They have connections
to get beautiful fish, too,

you know, so they just
eat at home a lot.

I know.

Jessie was a good dog.

He just died on Monday.

You just got
his ashes back.

And, um, that's his,
what's it called, collar.

But that's actually Mark's belt.

I wondered about that.

Yeah,
it was Mark's belt.

We kind of just put it
on him as a joke,

like, "Oh, it fits,
and it just stuck."

You're a karaoke
singer in Japan?

Um, it's like Japanese pop.

Japanese pop.

I think it's kind of interesting that they've moved from Japan to L.A.,

and now that they're retired,
they've kind of moved to an area that's like Japan.

The people here
are very friendly,

it's a lot more laid back.

Um, the food scene is amazing,

so if they want to go out and keep up with their culinary skills,

their experience,
their perspectives,

like, this is
a great place for it.

- Great, this--
- This is the menu.

I had
an email from Yasuyo

and she said, "We're starting,

are you interested in coming?"

And it's a fantastic
cooking class,

it's absolutely wonderful.
And it's the best bargain around,

because you get to eat,
you get to learn,

you go home with recipes

and delightful people
in the process.

My son, Lewis accused me

of taking so long
to make this movie

just to extend
the time I'm around Hiro,

his family and his cooking.

Autumn in Japan,
it was very difficult

to survive as it was, so never
really did Japanese cooking.

Anything that we
could eat was okay,

because my brother
starved to death after the war,

it was that bad.

And as a result, I never learned
how to do these things.

My mother had five
maids, you know,

before the war,
but then after my father

was killed in action,
she really didn't have anything.

So by coming to
a place like this,

I'm relearning everything
that my mother used to do.

So it's just, it's wonderful.

Thank you
very much again.

It used to be, I remember growing up,
he would tell me all the time,

it used to be two,
"Never give up"

and "Go for broke," so that was

kind of ingrained in me
when I was younger.

But I think after all
that stuff happened,

I feel
like it's changed.

You know, he, he jokes about it,

but tells me now,
I can tell that

his sort of
philosophy on life has changed,

and it's,
"Ah, don't work too hard."

Was that hard for them,

when you started getting
all the tattoos?

I know
they did not like it

when I started getting tattoos,

but now that they
know where I work,

and that it's not just
like a hoodlum shop

or something, they,
they understand.

I don't think they're
very happy with me

getting more and more tattoos,

so I don't really
mention it when I do, but, uh.

Obviously,
for me, it's hard

to step away from
the Obayashi's,

but now they're
situated in Portland,

it was a good time to
bring the film to a close,

and I decided just to
give them the camera

and let them have a few words.

What can I do?

Where I'm going to?

What is this life?

What family?

Because food is not cooking,
food is,

I think, you know,

heart.

We went to L.A. a few weeks ago,

it was in between lunch and dinner time,
so they weren't open.

I wanted to go and say hi,
but, um, we passed by

the same mini mall,
looked really fast.

"Oh, it's the same color
and the same, like, font

that Hirozen was in."