They serve vastly different kinds of eats, these two tucked-away spots that are front and center in today’s column.
They’re both longtime gems and they’re celebrating landmark changes.
One is Sushi Katsu in Akron’s Merriman Valley, whose founder Tony Kawaguchi is a pioneering sushi chef in the area. Kawaguchi is retiring after 25 years of owning his own place, but his restaurant will live on with new owners.
The other is the Bake Shop in Ghent, which is turning 30. The business — in a roughly 170-year-old home — is a sweet institution in the Bath hamlet of Ghent. It’s at 800 Wye Road, behind Lanning’s Restaurant.
We’ll start with the sweets, before we move to sushi.
“We’re not glamorous,” said Bake Shop owner Nancy Fay, who runs the place with niece CeCe Carmany. “We’re making stuff you would make at home if you had the time to make it.”
The word “stuff” sells the Bake Shop short. Fay and Carmany are cooking up an array of homespun goodies including sticky buns, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookie, apple pie, blueberry pie and various breads, such as white, six-grain and sourdough.
Fay and Carmany will celebrate the shop’s birthday with free pieces of layer cake Feb. 26 and Feb. 27. Also next week, the shop’s Facebook site will feature shop trivia contests. Baskets of goodies will be raffled.
Fancier items at the bakery include French apple tarts, which Fay makes with phyllo dough, using a recipe from a friend.
Wedding cakes also are part of the business. Fay and Carmany make an average of two to three a week.
The shop also offers simple lunches, including homemade soups and sandwiches, including tuna salad and egg salad with chips on the side. There is no fryer, so there are no french fries.
Prices are modest. Pies go for $8.99; bread ranges from $2.55 to $4.50 a loaf; brownies are $9.99 a dozen.
The Bake Shop was open a couple of months when Fay and her sister Betty Newell, who founded the place with Fay, thought, “What do we do with the leftover bread?” The idea of selling sandwiches was born.
Newell died in 2009. Another sister, Mary Anne Krejci, a real estate agent, is Fay’s landlord.
Thirty years ago, Fay and her sister Betty were making cakes at an area Dairy Queen, when Dairy Queen’s corporate office put the kibosh on the sisters’ cakes. (The sisters owned the Dairy Queen with their brother, Dick Fulton, who died four years ago.)
So the sisters decided to take their talents elsewhere and open a bake shop in the old house on Wye Road.
A practical pair, the sisters installed old wood and glass display cases — one is from an old jewelry store — adding to the place’s unassuming charm.
A newish freezer boasts ice-cream cakes featuring ice cream from Velvet, a Utica, Ohio, company.
The original wood-plank floor remains, as does the porch, which gets a workout in warm weather. Inside, there are a few tables in a small room off to the side of the counter area.
Longtime customers can regularly be found at the tables or at the counter, fetching items to go.
“There’s the gang of boys that come in on Saturday morning and yak for three hours,” Fay said of the group of young-at-heart men. “It is a fun place.”
Getting up at 4 a.m. can be a drag, she said. But she relishes the place’s friendliness and chattiness.
“Our friends, our relatives, everybody drops in and says hello,” she said.
She’s thrilled when somebody wanders in for the first time. The shop’s Facebook site and website have brought some new faces.
There have been lean times, such as during the Great Recession. “You buckle under,” Fay said, “take out [of the mix] what’s not selling everyday.”
At 65, she has no plans to retire, although she is thinking about taking some more breaks: “This is the best job I’ve ever had. ... I think I’ll work the same hours, but take more vacations.”
Hours are 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday. It’s closed Monday. Phone: 330-666-3347. Website: http://www.bakeshopinghent.com.
On to sushi...
There’s probably no more of a sushi-centric place in the area than Sushi Katsu at 1446 N. Portage Path.
It’s a hole-in-the-wall — I mean that in a good way — in the back portion of the Parkwood Plaza.
Unassuming, for sure. Authentic, for sure.
The tiny spot is a second home to owner/chef Tony Kawaguchi, who is retiring at the end of the month, after 25 years of running essentially a one-man sushi show.
He does employ two servers, each of whom works part time.
Kawaguchi, 58, like many people nearing the end of their careers, seems to be of two minds about leaving the place.
He acknowledged he wants a break, time to visit his son, who lives in Colorado, and his parents — both in their 80s — who live in Japan.
Yet Kawaguchi said he will miss running the place, spending hours behind the sushi counter, seeing familiar faces.
“Jane [his wife, former Beacon Journal food editor Jane Snow] is excited,” Kawaguchi said, smiling. “I have to suck it up.”
He’s happy that the place he has nurtured from the beginning is going to keep going, under new ownership.
The new owners include Dave Jursik of Akron, who noted, “It’s a legacy. You want to keep it going. You don’t want to screw it up,”
Jursik, who was in the restaurant earlier this week, is one of three business partners taking over the place March 1.
He spoke as he stood near the back wall decorated with photos of celebrities who have dined on Kawaguchi’s sushi, including former Cleveland Indians baseball players Omar Vizquel and Sandy Alomar Jr.
Jursik and his business partners own Basil restaurants in Canton and Green, which serve a variety of Asian food. They plan to open their third Basil in downtown Wooster in May.
But there are no plans to turn Sushi Katsu into a Basil, said Jursik and business partner Tony Ly.
Ly said while they’ll do some freshening up of the place, they want to keep it sushi-centric and unassuming, like a sushi bar you might find in Tokyo, Japan. That’s where Kawaguchi trained as a sushi chef.
“I do want to keep the TV,” Ly said. But the old magazines will go.
Ly said he was in the place recently, and someone, seeing an old magazine, observed wryly: “I didn’t know Princess Diana passed away.’’
Ly said he doesn’t want to put off loyal customers with too much change too fast.
“We want this place to change organically,” he said, “and grow organically.”
One big change: two sushi chefs will take the place of one. The two 27-year-old chefs are Tin Win, who came to the United States from Myanmar with his family when he was a child, and Jason Neiswanger, who is from Beloit, Ohio, in Mahoning County.
The new owners are talking about adding ramen and other noodle dishes to Sushi Katsu’s menu.
Sushi Katsu, essentially one room with a wood-topped sushi bar on one side and a dining area that boasts laminate-topped tables and an upright cooler for beer and other beverages — looks pretty much as it did when it began.
Kawaguchi arrived in Akron in 1988, two years before he opened the place.
Hibachi Japan, then in Akron and now in Cuyahoga Falls, persuaded him to come to Akron to work. Hibachi Japan catered to Japanese executives working at Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. in Akron.
Born in Sapporo, Japan, Kawaguchi apprenticed as a sushi chef in Tokyo before the Hatsu Hana chain recruited him in the early 1980s to work at its sushi bars in Hawaii, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. He comes by the restaurant business naturally. Kawaguchi said his father owned a place in Japan that served “Western food.”
Just two years after Sushi Katsu opened, Bridgestone/Firestone moved its corporate headquarters from Akron to Nashville.
By that time, Kawaguchi said, “I had a good foundation, noting “now it’s local people” who make up the bulk of his customers.
Earlier this week, customer Earl Eskridge, 28, stopped in for takeout. Eskridge praised the freshness of the fish, and noted Kawaguchi’s friendliness and eagerness to have him try different kinds of sushi and sashimi (raw fish and other seafood served without rice).
“He takes his time with it,” Eskridge said. “It’s not often these days you see the same person making your food, [assuring that] the quality is consistent.”
Hours are 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It’s closed Sunday. Phone: 330-867-2334. Website: http://sushikatsu.com.
Other thoughts
Oh, my, I goofed in a column earlier this month.
Reader Barbara Bunsey let me know, in a friendly email, that I had incorrectly used the word “pierogis” in reference to more than one pierogi.
“Just thought you might like to know, there is no such word as “pierogis,” Bunsey wrote in an email. “In Polish, it’s one pierog, two or more pierogi. The “i” at the end of a word makes it plural.”
I guess I can take some solace in knowing that the word “pierogis” has appeared many times in our favorite newspaper. A check of our electronic library, which dates to 1985, turns up 107 stories, briefs and items with the word pierogis.
And Merriam-Webster confuses the issue: This dictionary says “pierogi” or “pierogies” is plural for the “case of dough filled with a savory filling.” I’ve also used the word “pierogies” in stories. Yikes.
So now you know what I know that I didn’t know before.
And I goofed again. In a story earlier this month about shrimp and grits, I referred to Crook’s Corner and erroneously said it was in South Carolina.
I realized I made the error shortly after I made it. But it was too late to correct it for the print edition of the newspaper.
I heard from readers Glenn and Mary Campbell about the mistake, who noted they are fans of Crook’s Corner, which is in Chapel Hill, N.C.
In his friendly email, Glenn Campbell wrote: “My wife and I first enjoyed shrimp and grits there in 1990 when we relocated to North Carolina and the Chapel Hill area. There are many great restaurants in Chapel Hill, however, if you crave shrimp and grits, you must go to Crook’s.”
The Campbells now live in Green.
Pierogi and shrimp and grits all around. And cheers to good-natured readers!
Event at North High
Here’s what looks to be an interesting Black History Month community event, featuring speakers and a student musical performance. And I’m mentioning it here because it also involves food.
The event at North High School in Akron will be Feb. 26. It will begin with an assembly at 5 p.m. in the school’s auditorium that will include speeches and poems and a short film.
At 7 p.m. in the school’s cafeteria will be “Taste of Soul” with food catered by LA Soul of Akron. (LA Soul, which offers soul food, has a restaurant at 1001 E. Tallmadge Ave. in Akron.) North High is at 985 Gorge Blvd.
“Taste of Soul” tickets are $5 for adults and $4 for students.
Students are selling them in advance. Call 330-761-2665 by Tuesday. Tickets also will be available at the door.
Send local food news to Katie Byard at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com. You can follow her @KatieByardABJ on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com.