A Day at LA’s Hottest Japanese Restaurant Breaking Down a 137lb Tuna

Yess is a casual izakaya style restaurant.

I like dealing with the direct fire,

and also, I like philosophical idea

of buying a whole fish and then process it.

As head chef, my responsibility is

to bring everybody together.

They all have their own ideas and their own heritage.

I have to do prep, and I'm responsible for communicating

with producers, fishermen, to bring the best season

to the customers, because every day, it's changing.

My role is to bring a moment of the food onto the table.

[mellow groovy music]

[car engine drones]

My name is Junya Yamasaki.

[dogs barking]

Sorry about my dogs.

I'm a head chef at restaurant Yess, here in Los Angeles,

and I just came back from Malibu,

and I got lots of fennel flowers,

but now I'm back at the restaurant in the business,

so I really, really in a hurry, so I gotta go.

Oh, wow.

Right. Let's go.

We can use this flower just to decorate,

but also for our dishes, because it's white fennel.

Basically, it's the same as fennel.

This is the restaurant dining space.

Yess restaurant is all about the customers connecting

to the kitchen and connecting to nature.

We have a long counter,

the people sitting and facing a kitchen.

I have to feed my dogs,

and I have to come back for a quick briefing,

and then the kitchen is gonna start.

10:30, so shall we have a meeting, everyone?

Morning meeting is very important,

because we use very fresh ingredients,

and today, I made the menu a little bit different

from daily basis, because we are gonna receive

137 pound of bluefin tuna,

so on top of everydays in a-la-carte menu,

let's do a tuna special today.

We call it lip to tail eating,

so we try to eat every part of, you know, tuna.

On top of that, another fisherman is coming

to drop 10 vermilion rockfish.

Okay, so shall we?

Yes, Chef. Okay, let's do it.

It's 11:00, and I'm expecting to get the tuna anytime,

but before the fish come, I have to start lighting a fire.

We have a small fire,

it's gonna be like a slow cooking process,

so I have to do that now.

So we use almond wood, which is amazing for smoking.

By the way, this is such a unique cooking system.

In Japan, we call it okudo-san.

San means somebody like, in high up, so it's very precious.

A big house like a temple or big farmhouse,

they used to have this kind of system.

We cook rice every day with this.

Much easier to put rice cooker,

but it's just nice to be able to cook by direct fire,

and also, more than anything, tastes so much better

if you cook the rice with this.

The bottom of the pot gets slightly caramelized smoky taste.

It's so important to connect to the fundamental,

like a primitive part of cooking.

This is such an important connection to the past.

It's not just a spiritual side of it,

but it actually does taste better,

so, you know, so that's why we use this.

I clean every day in the morning this robata grill.

I take all the ash.

It's nothing complicated,

it's basically a box, all insulated,

and I change the height, length,

according to what I have on the menu.

It's like a Lego block.

This is a insulated bricks.

And today, the reason I have this wider, shallower part,

because I'm gonna use almond wood.

So I'm gonna cook the aged tuna steak on the direct fire,

which need a much shorter distance to the fire.

So I use this section from here to here,

vermilion rockfish and duck.

Relatively high heat, but the distance,

otherwise it catch the fire, because the oil drops

and it's gonna be disaster.

And then lastly, I made a little, little, little hole here,

because I'm gonna use this section

to smoke bluefin tuna otoro.

Here is a hay, and I put a little bit of charcoal

and then put the hay.

Joe is gonna slice otoro, like the fatty tuna,

and pass it to me,

and in the matter of ten second or so,

I'm gonna lightly smoke and then pass it back to him,

and then he's gonna serve it.

But that's basically, this is the setup.

[Bailey] And how many are you getting, Junya?

I just need 10.

So these fish are called vermilion rockfish.

For me, it's California's staple fish,

or like signature fish.

One of the most sustainable but also stable fish

for the fishermens to catch.

His quality of fish is just phenomenal.

Well, this quality didn't exist

before Junya came to southern California

and showed us, like, the technique and the tools

and how to properly bleed the fish.

[Joe] Usually, it comes in, like, a banged up truck,

but you brought it in a Prius today.

Carbon impact is very important.

That is important. You know?

Boats, they burn a lot of fossil fuel,

so my way of giving back.

Is it just riding shotgun?

[Conner] No, it's, you know, the backseat folds down.

[Joe] Okay.

Everybody always thinks these fish are millions

of dollars or something,

because it's more of like an ego competition-

Yes, yeah. For the people buying them.

Well, most of the restaurant, they buy loin-

Yes. Correct. Or belly,

they buy section.

For this quality of tuna, the only way we could provide

in the restaurant at this price is

because I'm buying a whole fish

and directly from this amazing fisherman.

Completely cost effective.

[Junya laughs]

Thank you so much. Enjoy it.

The mechanical anatomy of this fish is just incredible.

They don't stop swimming.

They swim from the moment they're born until they die.

So like, you see the fin is like this, completely sealed,

and then there's a little ditch here,

so the streamline is like a bullet.

The body has this, like, energy source,

which, even after they're brain dead,

the body is like, independently alive.

So this shinkei-jime method,

so it goes into the brain like that,

and then go like wiggle,

but it's actually not really dead,

so that's why you wanna insert this wire

all the way from the brain to the spinal cord

to stop the nerve system.

That increase the quality so much

because of, you know, no stress whatsoever.

I'm gonna process the head to smoke it.

Just cleaning inside a bit.

Like a little small gill left,

and then any kind of like, bloodline.

Just wanna apply generous amount of salt.

So we're gonna smoke the head now

for about like four or five hours.

Then we take the meat out like a pulled pork,

and then we gonna braise it with soy sauce.

Tuna negima.

So we gonna smoke the head right now.

This beautiful big grill.

We not really supposed to be a smoker,

but we do a DIY-style smoker.

To cover the head, this is perfect, a plant pot.

So now it's covered for four, five hours.

I just put in the thermometer so I can read the temperature.

I try to keep the temperature like a 200 degree Fahrenheit.

I just started to do this for fun with friends

using this pot, and it worked really well,

so I'm just like, okay,

might as well do it at the restaurant.

Okay, now I'm gonna take the collar off.

Call it kama.

It's a collar.

It's like a tomahawk steak.

It's really, really delicious.

Another interesting thing about bluefin tuna is

their body temperature is higher than normal fish,

so you do this shinkei-jime dispatched,

and then immediately you cut this artery

and then bleed fully for like 30 minutes

if it's this size, in the water,

and then you have to stuff lots

of ice inside to cool it down,

and then you have to put whole body in the ice

to cool it down, otherwise the tuna is gonna burn itself.

Inside, there's always little bit of water,

so I'm just cleaning before I start processing it.

We smoke the tail and then shred the meat and we make dashi.

Dashi is like a essential broth

that we use a lot in Japanese cooking.

After this loin is removed,

for those meat you can scrape it.

It's called nakaochi.

Means the meat between the bones.

We scrape it and use it for one of the dish we do today.

So some parts, we gonna dry age with the bone in.

It get denser, it gets sweeter.

Basically, the tastes get stronger.

But, you know, that doesn't mean it has to be aged.

There's a beauty of fresh meat,

especially something like nakaochi.

So how many bone marrow?

We can get one, two, three.

Well, today, we're gonna make a bone marrow martini,

which is not at all traditional,

but it's like, bone marrow is a slightly briny jelly,

so I'm thinking as like a olive,

[mellow jazzy music]

with shochu and also tomato pure water

and then lemon zest and then bone marrow.

It's like refreshing, soulful martini.

Akami is a loin.

Otoro is fatty tuna.

Chutoro, we call it like a medium-fatty tuna.

So we're gonna cut today like, this much is enough.

Today, gonna use that otoro, chutoro,

and also part of akami, too.

Probably you saw the big Toyosu Market,

they use big, big knife.

Not that [laughs].

[gentle jazzy music]

Joe is gonna take this fatty tuna part,

and he's gonna cut into so-called saku,

the block that he can use for sashimi.

That's his job.

Every day, he takes the part that he needs,

and then he make into sashimi.

The fish came today, all in a dry ager,

start to use from today,

and then every day, started to get aged.

This is a remaining of the previous tuna

I got three weeks ago,

so this is like a very, very, very last piece of loin.

The surface is a little bit dry, ruby red,

and then closer to the skin, it's nice layer of fat.

That's why it's pinkish.

It's so much more dense and strong.

Same as dry aging steak.

It's amazing sashimi as well,

but also, it's so decadent, but it's so nice to do a steak.

Tuna steak, it's very, very simple dish,

but sometimes people wanna have a steak,

so we do tuna steak frites.

So first, trimming.

This dryness is important, because it seals the meat.

That will make the meat not that easy to dry out,

so it's very important to get this, you know,

leather-like skin.

My dogs love it, because they love jerky, so, you know.

That's a bloodline.

Not all the chef discard, some chef they use it.

For sashimi, I don't really include it,

but for steak, I wanna include a little bit of bloodline.

I like the complexity of taste,

a little bit of, like, irony taste.

Tuna breakdown is done,

but it doesn't mean it's end of the day.

I have like, many other little things to do, so I gotta go.

It's now 2:30.

The tuna head is still smoking really heavily.

Nathan is prepping his lobster sandwich.

He's finished the tail into katsu,

now he's prepping the salad from the claw,

and Rohan is doing family meal,

and, at the same time, just finish frying tofu

for his tuna head menu,

and now I'm just fileting the vermilion rockfish.

Why not, like, you know?

New fish on the menu, grill super fresh.

I'm doing the grilled vermilion rockfish

with the green grape and shiso salad,

or salsa, you can call it.

I love prepping, and also I wanna be in the kitchen

working together with my staff.

We do all together, so I'm always in the kitchen now.

In traditional Japanese grilled fish,

you quite often use the skewer,

so it doesn't have any mark on the skin.

The reason I score the skin is the skin shrinks,

so if you score the skin, that will prevent.

And really, skewing really helps a lot

to operate on the grill.

Sometimes I use a very traditional Spanish grill

that many people use, and we are really open,

like we are not trying to do everything very Japanese.

I think the part of the beauty of a Japanese restaurant

outside of Japan is this kind of exchange.

[Nathan] Chef, here's a tasting

for the lobster- Right, right.

You know, it's absolutely important to taste

and taste and taste several times, you know,

even for one dish.

New dishes, we taste all of us together

and discuss, you know, what's the ideal,

and everybody's opinion matters,

and, you know, we work it together.

So last week, we are using shrimp,

and then we change ingredients to Texas prawn,

we call it Texan prawn.

Every time we change one ingredients, we all have to try.

Oh, very good.

I can get the batter lighter, though.

Taste is good. Fried dough, yeah.

It's different from- It's a little doughy, yeah.

Different from shrimp. It's much more meatier.

Yeah, it's good. It's very nice.

So that's what he's been working on since the morning.

The bun is toasted with the lobster butter.

After picking the meat from the shell,

he roast the shell and then make two things,

lobster butter and lobster aioli,

which is on top of the bun,

and then we put lobster claw salad and then lettuce,

and then he just made lobster bisque

as a sauce on top of lobster katsu,

so it's a whole lobsters in it.

[Joe] The lobster salad might need a bit more-

Vinegar? Seasoning,

because you don't really get much kind of seasoning

until you actually hit the katsu.

Yeah, in general, like, it's really nice and fresh,

but you need, in order to eat this big,

you have to have much stronger taste.

Let's take a little peek of the tuna, okay?

It looks good, but when it's cooked, the tuna start to cry,

because internally, like, it start to boil,

all the fat comes out from the tears,

and that's a sign of it's done,

so it needs one hour, two more hours,

but before the service, it should be done,

and then take the meat off.

Okay, so this is porcini.

This is coming from south of Yosemite.

So this is like a first porcini I went to pick this summer.

I'm not allowed to tell the location,

partly because in the mushroom picking world,

it's very secretive.

Many fishermen I know are really into mushroom hunting,

so that's how I get to know the place,

and then out of all the respect to them,

I can't really tell where I catch.

When I catch, I catch a lot.

I sometimes, I sell my mushroom to other restaurants.

So this is the baby porcini, you see?

Cute, cute, cute.

And this, you can eat it raw,

and same as, you know, nakaochi,

the meat between the rib of the tuna,

that's also super fresh, so we gonna put it together.

You can call it carpaccio,

and we use pear as a medium to combine together.

For some dishes like this,

we have a saying like ichigo ichie.

Means one ingredients meet the other.

Shaved baby porcini meets, you know, bluefin tuna.

Both are like, top of this season.

One in the mountain, one in the sea, let's put it together

that can, you know, they meet each other.

That's like really beautiful poetic expression

of like, you know, cooking, I guess.

I mean, it tastes amazing, but also,

you have this dish only this time of the year.

It capture the moment of the season.

That itself is very Japanese spirit,

even though we call it carpaccio.

And then finally, pine salt.

In the Sierra, porcinis are growing

under the lodgepole pine trees,

so this is a needle that I, you know, pick from the trees

where the porcini is growing.

We grind it, and then with the salts.

Let's taste it.

Let's taste it.

[gentle groovy music]

Yeah, try with the pear.

Wow. That's pretty damn good.

So good. You get the pear.

[Junya] Dishes are all looking really, really good, guys.

[Joe] Thank you, chef.

Prep is like 90% done? Is it done?

90% done.

I have like a 10% workout after the lunch.

Time to eat.

Yeah, it's like 4:00. It's time for family meal.

I have to walk my dog.

I'm gonna just shuffle, like, really quickly

and then take my dog.

Chanterelle, stop.

So this is my sous chef, Artichoke.

This is my junior sous chef, Chanterelle.

The biggest stress of my life,

more than the restaurant. [laughs]

Pretty much for them, I have to go

to the mountain all the time.

Okay, I have to go, and then let's forage, you know?

And they actually work.

On the way back with too much mushroom and it's too heavy,

I bought this backpack for the dogs.

Put lots of like, you know, porcini

on Chanterelle on the back,

and then, you know, Chanterelle carry chanterelles.

[mellow groovy music]

Now it's time to do a meeting with front of house staff.

So this meeting is about all the up to dating of the menu.

We don't change entirely,

but there there is always a little bit of adjustment,

bit of a change of ingredients, you know.

If there are limited numbers,

we have to mention it's limited.

And also checking who's coming, you know?

Sometimes, like, all the friends and family comes.

VIP, you know who is VIP?

The family of Rohan's girlfriend?

Rohan, your girlfriend's family are gonna be here?

[Rohan] Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Good to know.

I'm gonna send some, like, good stuff.

That's it about the guests, right?

[Staff] Yeah.

Any other questions?

No, thank you. No.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, I have to hurry up.

Thanks.

Now it's 5:30, like 30 minutes before opening,

I have to change into uniform.

I just have to do, like, a couple things just before.

Like 30 minutes before, I still have to prep.

This is the grill setup today, so that's my setting,

and then Nathan is doing all the, you know, kakiage tempura

as well as lobster katsu sandwich.

And then in this section, all the sashimi and the cold cut,

and Rohan is doing all those other salads

and, you know, anything else but sashimi.

Oh, shit, it's 6:10 already.

What are we doing?

Like, the customers are here.

Please, please, please, please, please leave.

[mellow groovy music]