($919 at Lowe's).

Editor in Chief Nilou Motamed describes as a “rock and roll sushi chef.” He’s a punk musician—and Austin, his longtime adopted city, is the perfect place for him to flex his musical muscles after restaurant hours.. For Okai, these dual passions have always been intertwined.He started cooking professionally, drawing on his experience back in Japan working for a family catering company after the breakup of an erstwhile punk project many years ago.

“I came to realize that cooking is very similar to music,” he says.“And since my music career didn’t really take off, I decided to pour the same passion for music into cooking and becoming a chef.”.Okai’s food is refined and thoughtful, but like his music, it’s anything but quiet.

His behind-the-counter energy is palpable, and the team doesn’t shy away from spectacle every now and then—”Once every three months,” says Okai, “we host an event where we bring the full.and cut the fish in front of 50 to 60 people....this gives me a lot of adrenaline.”.

Rothman attributes some of this spark to Okai’s interdisciplinary approach to food, describing how “he talks about his cooking in sort of musical terms.” These confluences are what help him create and innovate while keeping his cheeky, rambunctious aesthetic intact—Rothman notes that “he’ll talk about how the Rolling Stones or The Beatles have this sort of core identity as musicians, but that they adapted very smartly over the years to new audiences so that they could stay modern.”.

Okai, whose restaurant constantly teases out what a sushi experience can be—playing R&B through the understated 12-seat dining room, for example, or incorporating elements of Central Texas BBQ into his nigiri—“talks about his cooking in the same way.”.is white rice that has been fractured and broken into pieces during milling.

In Vietnam, this "low grade" rice was a common food for the poor, while rich families ate the pristine manicured grades.In recent decades, Vietnamese cooks have reclaimed broken rice as a piece of culinary heritage, and street vendors in Saigon may serve it alongside a fried porkchop glistening with fish sauce and caramelized sugar.

Because broken rice releases extra starch as it cooks, it behaves similar to sushi rice, so it forms a nice rounded dome when packed into a bowl.. Par-cooked rice.Last but not least, we have.