Origin Story
Shuji Manabe
SOWING THE SEAWEEDS OF HALIFAX SUSHI
BY LINDSAY WICKSTROM
PHOTOS MICHELLE DOUCETTE
Halifax loves sushi. I’m pretty sure the amount of sushi restaurants is exceeded only by pizza and pubs. But, back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, most Haligonians had never even tried it. The premise of eating raw fish (even though “sushi” primarily refers to the vinegared rice) was too “exotic” for people, and they would approach it with timid curiosity or downright disgust.
Thankfully, we are now a city where a multitude of cuisines from around the world are welcomed with open arms. But we have trailblazers like Shuji Manabe to thank for giving us sushi.
Shuji Manabe opened the first independently-owned sushi restaurant in Halifax in 1992, and would open several more, scattering them on the fertile soils of our emerging culinary scene. Two years ago, he settled into his latest (and probably last) restaurant, Doraku Dartmouth, before he hands the reins over to his business partner and protégé: Erika Tokuyama.
There are two curtains hanging on the doorway to the Doraku kitchen, displaying the Manabe and Tokuyama family crests; the two families whose lineages intertwined to become the heart and soul of Doraku. The next generation of Halifax sushi is on the horizon, and Tokuyama is well equipped to continue Manabe’s legacy.
Our story begins in Osaka, Japan, where Shuji Manabe completed sushi school. He was then recruited by Suisha Gardens, a Japanese-owned chain with locations across Canada, to come work in Ottawa. He was told that Canadians knew nothing about Japanese food, but that they were going to change that. So he hopped on a plane to Ottawa in 1985 to work at Suisha Gardens.
When Manabe arrived in Canada, he realized that a lot of things were going to be different. The first thing he noticed was that the air was drier. It dried out the surface of the fish and sometimes hardened the rice. He had to start using his rice warmer to mix and season his rice, as opposed to the traditional tray, so that he could preserve the temperature and texture of his rice.
But sushi was a very small percentage of sales in Ottawa. It was mainly eaten by senators, diplomats, and people who had been to Japan. Most people would stick to more “approachable” foods like tempura and chicken teriyaki. The Shogun novel and TV series were popular in the 80s, and this played a role in the boom of teppanyaki restaurants—but not sushi. Manabe speculates that it was the internet that accelerated the word-of-mouth (and screen) about sushi, starting in the late ‘80s.
After his stint in Ottawa, Manabe transferred to the Suisha Gardens in Montreal. But he became increasingly interested in the east coast after one of his co-workers left to go work at the Suisha Gardens in Halifax.
“I’m from Osaka, so I like ocean,” he says. “So that’s why I was really thinking it [would be] nice to be beside the ocean. And I heard there was tuna over there too.”
He moved to Halifax in 1992, and opened his first sushi restaurant: Momotaro (“peach boy”, a popular hero of Japanese folklore).
Three years later, he sold Momotaro and opened Momoya Sushi on Barrington St. It was now 1995—the year that the G7 Summit came to Halifax—and Manabe found himself serving Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, George Bush, and all of the Japanese dignitaries (who requested four meals per day).
As sushi started to catch on, Manabe watched, perplexed, as people submerged their rice deep into soy sauce (a faux pas) and topped it with the pickled ginger (which is supposed to be a palate cleanser). He also disliked the increasingly popular spicy mayonnaise, even as he succumbed to demands for spicy tuna rolls.
Another change Manabe had to make was to stop putting wasabi on his nigiri, (which is traditionally put on the rice, underneath the topping), because his customers did not like it.
“But this is the Japanese way,” says Manabe, conceding that he was stubborn. “My wife said: here is not Japan. I accepted. If customers [are] not happy, why am I making sushi?”
Though he has had to make compromises, he has always insisted on his rice. Longtime fans of Shuji Manabe have always known that the secret to his amazing sushi is his special warm rice. When I asked him about it, he explained that he uses the highest quality short grain rice. But his unique rice is also rooted in a historic Osaka tradition.
Manabe says his inspiration was a tiny, one hundred year old restaurant in the Osaka Fish Market, called Endo. At the time, it was a 15-seat sushi bar open only from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., with the whole of its customer base being those involved in the market: buyers, sellers, chefs, and restaurant owners. He was taken there by his employer, who regularly bought fish at the market. The experience was forever imprinted on him.
The rice at Endo was so hot the workers had to cup it quickly and loosely so that they wouldn’t burn their hands. Orders would be ready in 30 seconds, and the Japanese industry folks, who Manabe says are very accomplished eaters, would eat, pay and go within 3 minutes.
This is the style of sushi called tsukami sushi, which is made by lightly grasping the still-warm rice before placing the toppings on. Because the rice is not tightly packed, it has a unique texture that melts in your mouth, perfectly accentuating the umami of the toppings.
“The fish is cold, and the rice is hot—ooooh so good, we say! We thought what we [were] doing [at] our branch [was a] good job. But there…we almost cried. We want to do this but we cannot do this.”
He says most customers eat too slowly, and the contrast would be lost.
“Any kind of sushi—every second [is] different,” says Manabe. “When we start slicing, [when] the chef cuts it—the surface touches to the oxygen [and] starts changing.”
The flavour is in the moment.
So when Manabe opened his own restaurant, he aspired to recreate that moment. He says that after 40 years as an itamae (Japanese chef), he is still trying to perfect his rice.
“When I learned sushi [from] master, [he said]: Fish you cannot control. Somebody brought the fish [and you] just slice it…But even if you have crazy skill, rotten fish is rotten fish. So my master said: sushi rice you can control. Fish: Ask god to control.”
He’s not joking about that, either. The most prized of all sushi fish is the bluefin tuna, and these fetch high prices in international markets. The local tuna fishing season only runs for a few months each year, and the majority of the fish are destined for Japan or Boston, where there are large international seafood markets with enormous buying power. There is no such seafood market in Atlantic Canada, so most of our seafood gets exported.
For Manabe to get his hands on a local bluefin, it needs to be flawed somehow, or the result of a chance surplus.
“Sometimes funny things happen,” says Manabe. “Like a shark bite. And then they cannot sell it. It’s natural, wild tuna. So we never know. Fishermen want to catch, but [sometimes] they cannot catch it. We have no control”.
In 1997, Manabe opened the original Doraku on Dresden Row. This would be the restaurant he came to be known for even it has gone through a few iterations. “Doraku” translates roughly to mean, “enjoy your fun”—or “hobby” or “passion”—which in this case referred to Manabe’s love for Japanese cooking.
But in what was emerging as a pattern of buying restaurants, building up the brand and customer base, and then selling to friends or employees, it wasn’t long before he sold Doraku, too. I asked Manabe why he kept selling his restaurants, and he replied, “People were asking me to sell.
I want them to make money. It wasn’t crazy money but if you worked hard you could save. Not like now.”
In 2001, Manabe opened Ko-Doraku (child of Doraku) in the basement food court of Spring Garden Place Mall. It was a popular takeaway spot with the lunch crowd, and some of the nearby shop owners started complaining about customer congestion. The mall asked Manabe if he would move to the bigger space on the other side of the building.
Shuji Manabe and Erika Tokuyama
It was during this time that Manabe’s wife passed away. He admits that he probably wasn’t thinking clearly at the time, but he took on his most valuable apprentice, Erika Tokuyama, as his business partner, and agreed to move to the bigger location, which also had access from Breton St.
“Before my wife passed away, she said: ‘Give the restaurant to Erika and then you retire.’”
“I’m stubborn,” he says. “I didn’t retire.”
The restaurant was still called Ko-Doraku on paper, but the new awning said Dora-Q.
Manabe says his wife used to joke that his customers couldn’t pronounce “Doraku” (doe-RAH-coo). They would say it with a pronounced “Q” sound (doe-rah-KEW), which she thought was cute. So they decided that the next time they branded they would call it Dora-Q.
Manabe originally wanted to use the Ko-Doraku brand for quick-service restaurants (he briefly had a Ko-Doraku in Purdy’s Landing) and to use Dora-Q for his full-service restaurant with premium sushi. But he couldn’t keep up with the whole concept, and the operation all got absorbed into Ko-Doraku. Or was it Dora-Q?
“I screwed it up,” says Manabe. “Everybody doesn’t understand: what is this restaurant’s name?”
The whole restaurant became Ko-Doraku, but the Dora-Q name was already on the canopy, so he couldn’t change it. Manabe laughs, explaining that a lot of people just called it the sushi “under the Starbucks”.
Since he now had a larger kitchen and more staff, he could accommodate requests for specialized Japanese dinners, and he started doing an Izakaya (Japanese pub) Night once a week. He says this was another one of his many mistakes.
“I thought it’s not so popular. But then one day was so crazy…I was not prepared.”
He explains: “Before I opened Momotaro, so many people say: you should do ramen. So I put ramen on the menu from the beginning. But nobody [ordered it]…So I had to eat, every day, the pork and egg and everything. One month in, me and my wife said: we have to eliminate [it]. I don’t want to eat [this] any more.”
So that’s why when people started asking for izakaya, he didn’t think it would blow up. But it did.
Things had changed from 1992 to 2018, and cuisine like ramen, sushi and izakaya were becoming immensely popular. At the same time, Manabe was starting to feel the years of toil catching up with him.
“I’m 62 years old now and I’m getting weaker and weaker. I used to carry a 50lb rice bag—two bags—at Suisha Gardens in Ottawa…but now [it’s] very hard to carry even one 50lb bag,” he says, holding his shoulder. “But now I have Erika. She can do most things better than me, and faster.”
Doraku - Downtown Dartmouth
It was time to downsize.
He sold Ko-Doraku in 2020, and opened Doraku Dartmouth on Ochterloney Street in July of that year. Manabe and Tokuyama were immediately impressed by the warm welcome they got from the Dartmouth community. This small, neighbourhood restaurant is the perfect fit for them. Loyal fans have also followed them here, both for the warm service and the warm rice.
In the last 30 years, Shuji, Manabe, an itamae from Osaka opened a wave of sushi restaurants (7 in total, 4 of which still exist in some capacity) that left a meaningful impact on Halifax’s culinary landscape. Doraku is a bastion of quality, care, and tradition, in a growing sea of All-You-Can-Eat. Manabe says that even in Japan, the conveyor belt model is displacing low-and-mid-range sushi because people are not willing or able to pay the true cost. This is a specialized cuisine with a high cost of production and high level of skill, and Manabe has stayed true to his roots. This has always been a challenging life, but he insists it’s been worthwhile.
“I made so many mistakes! But it’s kind of fun too. Unexpected things happen—it’s kind of fun. It’s a hard way, but [at the] same time fun.”
Enjoy your fun.
