Photograph by George Sakkestad

Nobo Eguchi, owner of Sushi on the Run, works with the sweetened rice he will use in his sushi.

Japanese, American ideas meet at Sushi on the Run

By Suzanne Cristallo

Nobo Eguchi is preserving the culinary tradition of Japan as best he can at Sushi on the Run, his shiny sushi bar in Los Gatos where patrons squeeze onto eight stools pulled up to a two-foot-wide counter. But tradition sometimes flies out the door as customers push themselves to invent Americanized combinations that Eguchi, nonetheless, delights in accommodating.

His hands deftly work the boiled, sweetened rice and slice the raw fish with grace and speed. They seem independent of the smiling Eguchi, who carries on the chatter of the day. It's an intimate place--no more than 200 square feet--with mirrored walls to give an illusion of width.

Items carry names like Big Wave Daddy, Los Gatos Roll and Paul's Passion. They are creations of the regulars who constitute 85 percent of Eguchi's customers. Some come in two or three times a week, others twice a day.

"They sound crazy to me," says Eguchi with a grin, referring to the unlikely concoctions his customers love. From cream cheese to macadamia nuts or chile to peanuts, he's willing to depart from traditional Japanese combinations to please his diners.

They favor hamachi, or yellowtail fish, which Eguchi has vacuum-packed and air freighted every day from his hometown of Kagoshima, a small fishing community on Japan's southern main island of Kyushu. Eel, squid, octopus and mackerel also come this way. Tuna and salmon are shipped from Santa Cruz.

Eguchi grew up with "mom-style" cooking, quite different from the restaurant fare he spent years learning to prepare as an apprentice in Osaka.

Sushi (the rice and fish morsels served one atop the other and wrapped in seaweed or as a sliced roll) and sashimi (sliced raw fish served with condiments) have passed through centuries virtually unchanged.

In 1280, the Chinese were eating rice mixed with vinegar and oil and topped with meat or raw fish, yet it was the Japanese who made sushi their specialty. In 1702, the Edo sushi shop opened in Japan, where chefs used tweezers to remove bones from the raw fish and wrapped the sushi in bamboo leaves. The dish became popular with servants of the shogun and continued as a staple of the populace.

It wasn't until 1963, when the Nippon restaurant opened in New York, that Americans could partake of rigorously authentic sushi and sashimi in the United States. The sushi of the '90s is a different matter, however, as Californians with desires for new tastes are effecting change. "In Japan, they don't want big change," Eguchi reflects. "They want tradition."

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Sushi on the Run, 114 N. Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos. Lunch: Tues.-Sat., noon-2:30 p.m. Dinner: Tues.-Thurs., 5-9:30 p.m.; Fri. and Sat., 5-10 p.m.; Sun. 12:30-4 p.m. 354-1125.

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