A generation after Nobu, Peruvian sushi is flourishing in Long Beach

On a Sunday evening in Long Beach's Bixby Knolls neighborhood, chef Eduardo Chang and his wife and business partner Daiwa Wong greeted Sushi Nikkei guests as they walked through the busy dining room to celebrate the restaurant's two-year anniversary.

Chang and Wong specialize in Peruvian-style sushi, including different types of tiradito, like yellowtail with jalapeño and ponzu sauce or the catch of the day with tiger milk, aji amarillo, cancha (roasted corn) and sweet potatoes. But this evening, the couple served a special menu of traditional Peruvian dishes not typically found at Sushi Nikkei.

“You have to try it,” Chang told a table of three, praising the seco norteño, braised short ribs slow-cooked in cilantro sauce. “It’s just here for tonight. “We wanted to pamper our guests.”

And there were lots of guests to pamper.

Every table in the 50-seat restaurant was occupied and more guests were crowding the door. Some were regulars, and Wong embraced them with the familiarity of an old friend.

“When you walk in,” says Samantha Rollins of Lakewood, a customer since the restaurant opened, “it's like they're welcoming you into their home. Everything here is made with love, made with meaning.”

The connection between Peru and Japan has existed for generations and forms a unique thread in Peruvian life known as Nikkei culture. Within two years, Chang and Wong have quietly built a following in Long Beach for their inviting dining room, which serves a sushi-focused take on Nikkei cuisine.

Peru established diplomatic relations with Japan in the late 19th century, and Japanese immigrants began making their way to Peru as the Industrial Revolution made agriculture in Japan challenging. The migration began a long tradition of using Peruvian ingredients with Japanese cooking techniques.

Chang said he initially wanted to call the restaurant simply Nikkei – derived from the Japanese word Nikkeijin, which refers to Japanese emigrants from Japan and their descendants. However, the actual name of the restaurant is Sushi Nikkei – Peruvian style.

“Here, people don’t know as much,” Chang said. “People here would read it and not know what Nikkei is. That’s why we added sushi because they’ll recognize that.”

Chang and Wong opened their restaurant to share the Japanese-Peruvian cuisine that Chang's mother and grandmother cooked for him as a child. Over time, the couple has become silent ambassadors, sharing their cultural history with guests, one sushi roll at a time.

“You see 'Peruvian style' and think lomo saltado,” Wong said. “The challenge is this [raise] Familiarity with Nikkei cuisine.”

One of Sushi Nikkei's specialties is a scallop with parmesan. The sweet scallop is brushed with lemon butter and placed over a perfectly formed piece of rice, then topped with Parmesan cheese, which is torch-roasted before serving. Parmesan and sushi may seem like an unexpected combination, but the gentle, rich bite is a close relative of Conchitas a la Parmesana, a popular Peruvian dish of scallops baked with Parmesan.

It's an unexpected Nikkei dish that in some ways reflects the idea that Nikkei cuisine, at its core, is about constant movement and fusion.

“Nikkei food is not just meant to describe Japanese-Peruvian food,” says Jane Matsumoto, senior director of culinary arts at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Los Angeles. “Nikkei food could be Japanese-American or Japanese-Mexican. Nikkei Peruvian is just one example of the many ways that Japanese ingredients, Japanese techniques, Japanese foods and styles have been incorporated into another culture.”

When groups recreate the food of their home country in a new region, substitutions are made, flavors are imitated as best as possible, and over time this new taste becomes a tradition.

The Japanese influence in Hawaii has led to dishes like Spam Musubi, Matsumoto points out. There are even cases of fusion within the Asian diaspora in Latin America, which can be traced in slightly more well-known Peruvian dishes such as lomo saltado. The 19th century brought Cantonese indentured workers to Peru, and the steak and potato stir-fry is a staple of Chifa cuisine, a culinary tradition that combines Chinese and Peruvian cultures.

Wong and Chang have their own family ties to Chinese culture. The couple first met in high school at Colegio Peruano Chino Juan XXIII, a bilingual Catholic school in San Miguel, Peru. Wong's mother, a teacher, and her father, a merchant, sent her and her brother to school with the help of a scholarship, while Chang's single mother worked as an accountant to support her two children.

“My husband and I were school friends. “We went to prom together, but just as friends,” Wong said.

The two continued their friendship after graduating, but Wong traveled to the United States to find better opportunities and Chang attended Cordontec culinary school in Peru. Wong gave birth to her first son and became a nurse, while Chang became an Itamae sushi chef and eventually opened his first restaurant, Yume, in Lima.

Chang came to the United States for a visit and their friendship eventually blossomed into romance. They married in 2018. By then, Chang and his partners had already opened a second restaurant in Peru, but in 2019 he came to the United States permanently to be with his wife.

“He has already opened his successful restaurant, but because of me he decided to leave everything behind and start over,” Wong said.

The couple had their first child together and although they were happy, Wong said she felt bad about Chang leaving Yume. In Peru he was an accomplished chef and restaurateur, but in California he rose early every morning to make sushi for a local grocery chain.

“Our plan was to open our own restaurant,” Wong said. “I always told him, ‘I know we can do this. I trust your hands.'”

They worked hard and saved money for three years to secure a spot: a former Mexican restaurant on Atlantic Avenue in Bixby Knolls.

“It was very different,” Wong said. “We remodeled every corner.”

They swapped Fiesta orange and yellow for a muted black and navy color scheme. The remodel also included the addition of a mural, drawn in a cross-hatched black-and-white style, depicting a Japanese farmer that now overlooks Sushi Nikkei's dining room. Peruvian artist Rudolph Castro's artwork is a powerful reminder of the cuisine's history and a silent guardian of tradition.

Sushi Nikkei opened in January 2022 and was listed as a “Point of View” restaurant in the Michelin Guide in August.

“We’ve had people since we opened. It was packed every weekend,” Wong said. A second Sushi Nikkei location in Belmont Shore followed in December of that year.

At both locations, the Parmesan Scallop can be ordered individually or as part of a tasting menu that includes three other sushi varieties representative of Sushi Nikkei: Sweet Salmon, Tuna Power and Asian Shiromi. In addition to parmesan, quinoa, cream cheese and aji amarillo peppers are among the ingredients Chang includes in the sushi nikkei tasting.

“A lot of people don't like cream cheese in sushi, but with tuna and salmon it's a good combination,” Chang said.

Cheese, says Matsumoto, was integrated into Japanese foods with the introduction of Western and European cultures. The evolution of its use continues today.

“Modern Japanese put cheese in Japanese croquettes,” says Matsumoto. “I recently heard that someone covered okonomiyaki with cheese.”

For tiradito, another typically Japanese-Peruvian tradition, raw fish is sliced ​​like sashimi, but seasoned with ingredients like aji and lime instead of wasabi and shoyu.

Early Japanese immigrants also introduced Peru to the idea of ​​eating a wider variety of seafood, including squid and squid. A menu item from Sushi Nikkei, Octopus Fire, is a culmination of these two stories, presented as a row of thinly sliced ​​octopus in citrus, parrillera sauce, and a Peruvian salsa called chalaquita.

“Chalaquita is like Mexican pico de gallo,” Chang said.

However, the dusty roll—crispy shrimp and avocado, topped with octopus and finished with parmesan cheese and tangy orange sauce—isn't named after anything Peruvian or Japanese. It was inspired by the cartoon character the couple's young son is obsessed with – the orange airplane named Dusty in Disney's 2013 animated film “Planes.” It's their way of incorporating their own story into their style of Nikkei cuisine let.

In 2023 the family turned five and had a baby girl. Wong still works as a nurse by day and manages the Bixby Knolls restaurant by night. Chang looks after the Belmont Shore location while Wong's mother helps with her children. However, on the night of the special anniversary menu, they worked together at the Bixby Knolls location. Wong moved around the dining room as usual while Chang stood at the pass, reading tickets and sending food to tables.

They believe they have helped advance Nikkei cuisine in Southern California in the two years since the couple began their restaurant journey – a generation after Nobuyuki “Nobu” Matsuhisa popularized Peruvian sushi in the United States, first at Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills and later Nobu restaurant chain with him.

Chang and Wong said they are proud to introduce their heritage to a community that appreciates it and to help guests like Rollins have their first experiences with Japanese-Peruvian culture.

“When you come here, you learn a lot from eating a culture,” Rollins said.

The work of passing on Nikkei culture continues because it is an identity – like any other – that is constantly evolving.

In the weeks following the anniversary, guests call hoping to order the Seco Norteño, hungry for the tender beef and the rice and beans that accompany it. Wong regretfully tells them it was just a special menu, but she hopes there will be more special menus – and many more anniversaries – in the future.

“How many more years do we want to be here?” said Wong. “We want to be here forever.”