Scott Kohno knows when a new customer is about to come into Yama Sushi Marketplace because he hears the locked front door rattling. As the store’s regulars are already well aware of, the front door isn’t used at Yama. There’s a sign out front that directs customers to enter through the back door, where the parking lot is located.
The small store is divided into two rooms. Upon entering from the back door, there’s a small table in the center with cute Japanese stationery items, and pantry items and bottles of sake line the shelves to the right. A refrigerator on the left is full of cold drinks, nigiri sushi, and sushi rolls that have been packed that day. The second room is where one finds the heart of Yama Sushi Marketplace: the fish counter. Hungry customers take numbered tickets and wait their turn to get freshly sliced sashimi.
The refrigerated case is filled with filets of different fish of various sizes, each one labeled with the price. Customers choose the filets they want and the staff will cut it further into sashimi slices. Typically, you would choose multiple cuts of fish and the staff will arrange them into a sashimi platter to take home alongside some sushi rolls.
Yama, located in the San Gabriel valley town of Alhambra, been around for over 40 years. The small sushi market was initially opened as Yama Seafood in 1984 by Kenzo Yamada. Yamada – better known as Yama-san – was a fish broker. “[Yama] used to sell fish to all the restaurants and markets at the time,” Kohno, the current owner, said, “so he knew how to get the best cuts of fish.” Yama then used that knowledge and connections to open Yama Seafood, offering fresh fish for sashimi and sushi directly to consumers in San Gabriel. He quickly built a following among the locals.
Yama Sushi Marketplace’s offerings are much cheaper than going out to a sushi restaurant and the quality is on par. For people who are having a party or gathering at home, a sushi or sashimi platter from Yama is a sure crowd-pleaser.
While Yama had a lot of loyal customers, the business was almost a one-man operation. “Yama would not allow anyone to touch the fish,” Kohno recalls, “He was very old-school Japanese. It kept the quality but he was working seventy or eighty hours a week, you know. He worked every single day.” While that maintained the quality, it also meant long wait times for customers as only Yama-san could slice the fish. As an early customer years ago, that was something that deterred Kohno from visiting Yama more frequently.
One day, someone brought a sushi platter to Kohno’s house. When Kohno asked where he got the platter from, the man answered that it was from Yama and that Yama-san was his stepfather. Kohno told him to relay a message to Yama-san that Kohno and his family would be interested in stepping in if Yama-san needed help with his business. It wasn’t until 2022 that Yama-san said he was finally ready to retire. Scott Kohno, his wife, and another partner bought the business from Yama-san.
Kohno had a retail consulting business that worked with a lot of department stores, specialty stores, and food operations. “We do have the background of what retail and food is all about, so let’s see if we can apply some of our knowledge and make this work,” Kohno said of his decision to take over Yama Sushi Marketplace.
Of course, during the transition, Yama-san helped get everything up to speed. Aside from Yama-san himself, there’s also Enrique “Kike” Moreno Diaz, Yama’s main manager who has been there for more than 40 years. Both Kike and Yama helped train the staff in the proper ways of caring for and cutting the fish and the fish sourcing process that Yama-san had in place remains, maintaining the fish quality they’re getting.
The first thing Kohno changed when he took over was to increase production. Kohno remembered that in the past, “there would never be enough sushi, or even sashimi.” Back in the day, things would run out quickly. “[Yama] would open at eleven o’clock and they ran out at eleven-thirty,” Kohno says, “Customers would literally be fighting over the last California roll.”
The California roll at Yama Sushi Marketplace is a bit of a legend: not your run-of-the-mill California roll but something perfected after two decades of experimenting. From the size of the roll and the actual ingredients used, to the ratio of each ingredient, everything has been put through trial and error.
Kohno didn’t mess with the tried-and-true items; he just added more products and personnel. With increased inventory, you can now come to Yama Sushi Marketplace in the evening (they close at 7pm) and still find things to buy, although they might still have run out of certain items by then. The fish wasn’t the only inventory that got a bump. The market now has one of the biggest sake selections in the city and Kohno’s wife also curates the stationery items the market sells.
Kohno and his partner are also expanding Yama Sushi Marketplace beyond San Gabriel. They now have a location in West L.A., where they have also added a limited amount of seating. While limited, it’s more than the San Gabriel location had. “Even today in San Gabriel, you’ll find a lot of people just eating in their car, or sometimes they will have a tailgate party in the parking lot.” In addition to the seating, the West L.A. location also hosts sake classes and sushi making classes. At $15 per person, these classes are some of the best deals in L.A. and sell out quickly.
San Gabriel need not be envious, though – this location will soon expand as well, as Yama Sushi Marketplace has acquired the space next door. While the sashimi and sushi will naturally still be the focus, they will add a full kitchen along with seating. Soon, you can grab a sushi roll from Yama Sushi Marketplace and enjoy it fresh, on-site – and not in the parking lot.
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