More THE CLOSEST THAT Seattle got to winning a 2024 James Beard Award — aka the Oscars of the restaurant industry — comes, oddly, by way of Detroit. All six of Washington state’s finalists lost out at the June 10 ceremony, making it the third shutout year in a row for chefs and restaurateurs here. But when Hajime Sato took the stage to accept the medal for Best Chef: Great Lakes — the first-ever win for a sushi chef — the ripples reached all the way to the neighborhood sushi spot he started in West Seattle in 1994.
And 30 years later, that place, Mashiko, is still carrying out his uncompromising vision. Sato is both a sushi chef and a visionary, and it was a small, quiet revolutionary act when he devoted Mashiko to serving solely sustainably sourced seafood in 2009. Could he make customers who were accustomed to the conventional rainbow of usual sushi suspects — sourced from near and far, endangered or not, at whatever cost to the environment — happy with something different? Could he convince diners that this difference was for the better, both for the planet and on the sushi platter? He could and he did, with Mashiko earning a legion of fans locally and becoming an underground favorite beyond.
After his wife’s health took the couple to Michigan, Sato founded Sozai in the Detroit metro area in 2021, earning James Beard finalist status in spring 2023, then winning this year. Meanwhile, at the West Seattle Junction , three Mashiko employees took up ownership in.
