Obon’s Humiko Hozumi and Jason Duffany have come a extensive way. The two have viewed their enterprise improve steadily more than the final seven years, from their vegan Japanese foods business’s early times at farmers marketplaces, where they had to clarify onigiri to unfamiliar clients, to opening a stall within just the food stuff corridor Morrison Marketplace in February 2020. Upcoming thirty day period, they’ll just take one more action ahead: This July, Obon Shokudo will bid farewell to its Morrison Current market stall and just take around the former Kachinka area on SE Grand Avenue. The cooks broke the information on Instagram, asserting a new restaurant that will serve homestyle Japanese curry, dwelling-built udon, and kenchinjiru stew, when ramping up the manufacturing of fermented goods.
Hozumi and Duffany want their new cafe space to offer you anything distinct in Portland’s vegan and Japanese foods scenes, offering meatless usually takes on Japanese consolation food items. “There are so many Japanese restaurants out there, but no 1 is undertaking vegan Japanese that is homestyle,” she claims. For them, that suggests dishes like umeboshi (pickled plum) onigiri, curried kabocha squash korokke, panko-breaded Ota tofu katsu, and hearty kenchinjiru miso vegetable stew — created with seasonal ingredients and dependent on Hozumi’s household recipes.
“I uncovered to cook dinner as a result of own encounter. That’s my passion,” Hozumi claims. “Our foods is … what your mom and grandma would prepare dinner at house.” The theme of household is carried by means of the Obon name and branding: the black and white logo depicts Hozumi’s family crest, and Obon is both a Japanese pageant in mid-August that commemorates one’s ancestors, and the name for a wooden lacquered tray employed for tea ceremonies and snacks.
Initially from the mountainous area of the Saitama Prefecture in Japan, Hozumi states Obon’s food is, for the most aspect, common to in which she grew up. Like the Pacific Northwest, the area presents an abundance of mushrooms, and Hozumi’s relatives experienced a smaller vegetable farm that presented significantly of the fodder for meals. Her mom would make miso from scratch, and her father would make udon noodles by hand, which grew to become the inspiration to the fresh new and bouncy residence-built udon served at Obon Shokudo now.
When the partner-wife staff moved from San Francisco to Portland, they in the beginning released Obon as a catering business enterprise right before checking out the risk of selling tofu misozuke — miso-fermented tofu with a wealthy pate-like regularity — as a wholesale products. It wasn’t till Heman Bhojwani, the owner of nearby vegan and gluten-totally free distributor Earthly Gourmand, proposed they sell Japanese food items that Hozumi and Duffany entered Portland’s farmers industry scene. The Jade Night time Market in the summer time of 2014 was Obon’s first celebration, just before a two-calendar year operate at the Lents farmers market and a slate of other marketplaces and events.
Despite the fact that Obon discovered good results at farmers markets, it in the beginning confronted some challenges as Portlanders had been not as acquainted with homestyle Japanese cooking as other styles of Japanese cuisine like sushi and ramen. “It was a major, steep, uphill fight,” Duffany suggests. “People did not want to try out our food items, and we experienced to give out samples.” As opposed to San Francisco, Hozumi states the Portland foods scene was a little bit powering when Obon initially launched, and the two used a lot of time educating dishes to prospective customers. “Not many men and women realized what onigiris were… also, kenchinjiru was one more matter people today had a challenging time with,” she states. “We commenced telling them it is like miso soup, but with a lot more veggies in it, not like a cup of miso soup you are going to get at sushi restaurants. Persons utilized to inquire us if korokke have been falafels.”
Following a while, Obon turned a farmers market place standby, and the organization made name recognition within Portland’s considerable vegan group. At the new cafe, then, the two will be capable to dive into a broader spectrum of dishes. For lunch, Obon Shokudo will serve the present menu of bentos, curry, onigiris, and okonomiyaki. The dinner menu will involve izakaya-model smaller bites, like skewered dishes. A bar menu — with drinks like freshly squeezed orange juice with sake and soju — is in the is effective, as properly.
Significantly of the menu will count on fermented merchandise, which the two will do them selves: To raise the production of fermented merchandise, Hozumi and Duffany recently released a new brand name referred to as Obon Kojo, to comply with Multnomah County’s fermentation restrictions. The new company will provide miso and koji to Obon Shokudo and eventually provide to other eating places, as well.
For Hozumi and Duffany, there’s a lot far more to Obon than cooking: They want to make organic vegan foodstuff accessible to the much larger population, regardless of profits degree. “There’s continue to a deficiency of foodstuff justice in the cafe field,” Duffany says. “We consider to do every thing natural and organic. Which is the most affordable high-quality you’ll get from us… we want to provide definitely very good food items to men and women that just cannot find the money for to shop at Total Foodstuff and costly places.”
“There desires to be a lot more persons doing that style of point,” Hozumi adds. “We are this kind of little fish, what we do for society is a smaller affect — but this is what we do.”
Obon Shokudo will open up at 720 SE Grand Ave. on July 1.
• Obon [Official]