Find your new warm weather favorite.
At The Table With: Aaron Israel & Sawako Okochi of Shalom Japan
Instagram: @shalomjapannyc
Aaron Israel (he/him) & Sawako Okochi (she/her)
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Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi were at the Brooklyn Public Library doing research, flipping through a paperback guide of New York written in the 1980s. Somewhere in the Lower East Side restaurant recommendations was a listing for a place on Grand and Wooster: Shalom Japan. It had closed in the nineties, but there it was.
They joked that if they ever opened a restaurant together, they’d call it that.
A few years later, when they were developing their restaurant, they used “Shalom Japan” as the placeholder name, but nothing else felt right. Nothing else felt as true to what they were building: a restaurant that was, as Aaron puts it, unmistakably them.
“We just couldn’t shake it. Nothing else felt more appropriate! So, we named it Shalom Japan. We just wanted the restaurant to be unapologetically us.”
Aaron grew up in New York. Sawako grew up in Hiroshima, Japan. They are both trained chefs, both deeply rooted in their respective food traditions. Shalom Japan which opened in 2013 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is an expression of that crossroads It’s where Japanese and Jewish food share the same table, thoughtfully and with purpose.
The dish that has been on the menu since day one captures this best. The Lox Bowl came from a dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant, a meal that was going well until the rice course arrived with salmon that was slightly overcooked. Sawako casually mentioned that lox would work well over rice if you wanted something less cooked. To Aaron, that landed sideways: lox goes on bagels, that’s the world he came from. But Sawako was thinking about Japan, where fish over rice is simply how things are done, and in Hokkaido specifically, where they salt and smoke salmon in ways that aren’t so different from what an appetizing counter does on the Lower East Side.
I woke up the next morning and went to an appetizing store and bought lox,” Aaron says. “She put it on the rice and a culinary marriage was born.”
Blending their cuisines together wasn’t instant, but it led to a better understanding of one another and the diverse cultures around them in New York.
“It was a slow process to mash the cuisines together, but to find out more about Jewish food and culture was eye opening for me,” says Sawa.
Both of them carry their childhoods into the kitchen in ways you trace directly to the menu. Sawako’s mother was a great cook — one of Shalom Japan’s most beloved dishes is listed simply as “Sawa’s Mama’s Karaage,” the recipe handed down..
“My mom was a great cook,” Sawako says. “I definitely got baking genes from her.”
Those genes show up at home every week: Sawako makes shokupan, Japanese milk bread, using a starter she learned about from a Japanese monk, a naturally leavened culture built from carrot, apple, rice, and nagaimo, a Japanese mountain yam. The starter also goes into the pizza dough she makes on the balcony on weekends when friends come over. Both recipes are in their James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Love Japan.
Aaron’s kitchen memory is his mother’s matzoh ball soup — made for the Jewish holidays, eaten as a full meal with plenty of noodles. When he got older and became a chef himself, he was always searching for the right noodle, the one that would make the soup feel whole.
“The first time I made [Sawako] matzoh ball soup I asked her what noodle she would use,” he says. “She immediately said, ‘ramen.’ We never looked back.”
Sunday mornings at home are a ritual. It’s the one day they don’t need to rush out for the kids, and Sawako makes a full Japanese breakfast: rice, miso soup, roasted salmon, natto, vegetables, tamagoyaki. They eat with pickles they bring back from Japan every summer — “the really good ones,” Aaron notes. “You can’t get them here.”
Their son has an illustrated book about the Jewish deli. According to Aaron he loves learning the names and histories of each item of food.
“The best way is to taste the food,” Aaron says. “We love going to Jewish Delis and sharing that with him. It’s like tasting nostalgia and history.”
Sawako, meanwhile, observes the Japanese food calendar as carefully as she can: chirashizushi on Doll Festival, kashiwa mochi on Children’s Day, soba as the last meal of New Year’s Eve, mochi and osechi on New Year’s Day, ehoumaki on Setsubun. Two food traditions. Two sets of rituals in one household.
Nothing about that feels like a compromise to them. It feels like the whole point.
May marks both AAPI Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month and Sawako is proud to represent both communities.
“It means a lot that we can tell our future generation there’s no clear border in food,” she says, “and also there are so many similarities in culinary culture.”
“Until I met Aaron, I had little knowledge about Jewish food,” says Sawa. “Living in New York also helped me understand different cultures and ultimately who I am. It’s ok to be different and that’s a good thing.”
What has surprised them both is who shows up. Mixed-heritage guests — not just Japanese and Jewish, but all combinations — walk in and feel, sometimes for the first time, that the room was made for them.
A lot of people who come to the restaurant are of mixed heritage,” Aaron says. “They love opening up about their unique traditions. It’s really great to create a space where people feel comfortable being themselves.”
Both Aaron and Saw encourage aspiring culinary creators to stay open minded when building toward their own vision.
“Be honest. Be yourself. And let your passion for who you are shine through in the food you make. People can taste the love.”
Shalom Japan is located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Their James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Love Japan, is available wherever books are sold. Follow them at @shalomjapannyc.
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