From The Peopling of New York City

What does the landmark committee do?

Are you talking about the landmark commission? That’s a New York City agency. I was one of the people who led the final efforts to have Jackson Heights designated as a historical district. So.. uhh. It was quite a civic battle with the landmarks commission and the other city agencies because to finally get them to declare the district, the boundaries… quite an undertaking.

Sounds very challenging.

Yeah it was

So what type of organization do you get to support your efforts.

We had very widespread community support. We did a good job of explaining to people that it wasn’t just brining in another layer of control into their lives. It was about brining another layer of quality life enforcement. Based upon the benefits of the designations, we got widespread community support and we solicited political support and that’s how we did it.

What actually influenced you to join the committee to get such action?

Some people for some reason unknown to me thought that I could lead the final effort. There have been other people leading efforts up that point. The effort was at the critical stage where they needed somebody who was going to be a good community organizer. That’s why it amuses me when sometimes heard disparaging remarks about the president Obama. Like what’s his qualifications. Well he’s a community organizer, what the heck is that. A community organizer has to work very hard, has to be very good at understanding the different constituencies and working with them all so that they all see a common objective and work for a common goal.

So I am guessing that this job has really helped you understand the community a lot better right.

To this day, I wound up being the community’s expert in what Jackson Heights; one of the two community experts, of what Jackson Heights should look like. There’s very little subjective about what the landmarks committee does. To the public it may at times seem subjective, but that’s just a mark of their flexibility, that they are not just hard and fast about everything. But the question that is…where is that flexibility and how does it serve the reasonable needs of homeowners and the people. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. So to this day I represent a lot of people in the community through the landmarks commission when they need work done. 4:21 You mentioned how you determine how the community should look. What do mean by that.

In terms of the archietecture. In terms of somethings we know are right and soemthigns we know are wrong. For example…the storefronts should not be chrome. It’s just inappropriate. Its not because I say so, its because during the historic period of the community when it was built, chrome wasn’t used in store fronts.

What do you mean by chrome, the metal chrome?

Yah. Uhh soo chrome is inappropriate. You don’t build store fronts out of chrome. You also don’t build storefronts out of brown metal. Black metal is okay because it simulates the black painted wood which was used back when Jackson Heights was built. When somebody wants to rebuild the front of a store, its fine to use black metal, not brown metal. It was the first time the landmarks commission made up the rule for Jackson Heights was the first time we convinced them, it was kind’ve a fight to convince them to say that okay…brown metal should not be used in Jackson Heights, whereas they do allow it to be used in other store fronts in other historic districts.

So this is to preserve….

The look, and feel and character of the community. What makes it the same things that make it feel right and comfortable when you walk down the block. Normal people don’t analyze intellectually everything they see, but they know, they have an immediate sense when they walk out on the block if it feels comfortable, if it feels right. You can go into a community which is brand new, for example and the archietecture is very different. But if it feels right and if it feels organic and appropriate you know it. So it doesn’t just have to be like Jackson Heights. It can be like a lot of other things too. But in Jackson Heights, there should be a certain look and feel; it has the highest density of sidewalk trees in New York from the time of its conception. So sidewalk trees are very important. In SOHO, the landmarks commission doesn’t even allow sidewalk trees in the sidewalk. They will, allow them in planters but not in the sidewalk because SOHO is built as a manufacturing area. No one was worrying about trees in those days. In cities… they weren’t worried about making the city livable, they were worried about their idea of commerce at the time. So you know… it has to do with all these different kinds of understanding.

In preserving the historic aspect, are you aiming for any specific ethnic group?

I don’t understand the question.

In my class , we discussed that Jackson Heights has one of the largest South Asian communities. Is your commission group aiming at preserving the South Asian community appearance or…

It has nothing with who occupies here. It only has to do with looks. Jackson Heights has where other communities have … crossed over the lines down the tubes visually, ascetically. There are other communities like Corona for example. Corona is a community that once people become educated and have other alternatives, they tend to want to move out of it. That’s not what we want Jackson Heights to be. Jackson Heights should successfully nurture and balance families and children for generations and we would like to see that part of the future. And the make up of those families has changed over those years. That’s okay, its not about who the family is, its about a nice area to raise American families, of any background. It doesn’t matter where we came from. We all came from someplace at some point.

What do you think of this change away from this historic look.

Well, people come in and, new people come into the community and they don’t understand it. They know that their comfortable and they like it but they don’t understand why. They don’t understand that if they cut down that tree, and somebody else cuts down their tree, then somebody else puts up a high fence at the same time somebody else decides I don’t want a lawn, I want concrete in font of my house, and at the same time , that a super decides its okay if I want to put a light over there instead of wiring it internally in the building to run aluminum metal up the side of the building. All of these things slowly depreciate how the community feels. And any one item, any one thing, doesn’t matter all that much frankly. But what happens is collectively, someone puts up a fence and somebody else says “oh I haven’t thought about that” and puts up a fence also. Invariably their fence isn’t low their fence is a little bit higher and somebody else puts in a fence of a different color, and somebody puts up a fence of a different material and by the time 10 years is out, you have a hodgepodge and people slowly start to feel like they can’t pinpoint it, but they walk down the block and it just doesn’t look or feel the same. It’s not where they moved into, and they start to feel like, gee maybe I wanna move out to a nice neighborhood. Whatever nicer is. Everybody can define their own definition of what a nice neighborhood is. But what they really mean is it doesn’t have the quality of life they are accustomed to. It has nothing to do with the people. It has to do with.. and that’s why in making these decisions that it not be a subjective thing. We go back to what was created here. Jackson Heights was the largest privately owned city in the United States, so far as we know. So we know what its supposed to look like. Its not a highly subjective thing. We have the pictures. I has more private parks than any other community in the United States. It was a small city; five mile from Manhattan.

There’s a large group of incoming immigrants, so im guessing that’s a part of the reason why the neighborhood is deteriorating.

Well its inevitable that when people come into a community….

That they would want to bring in their own culture, their own ideas.

Yeah no problem with that. Where the problem can arise sometimes is when there ideas, without realizing it fragment and depreciate the visual aspects of the community. So it’s a matter of education and explanation and I find that many of the minority groups are highly cooperative and once they understand why they like it here they realize that some of the changes they were making or were thinking of making are a) aren’t necessary because there’s a better way to accomplish what they want to accomplish. If they want to put up an awning that’s okay, just don’t make it a plastic fabric, make it canvas. Then its okay. Don’t make it bubble shape with advertising all over it, just make it a slope. So there are ways to accomplish what people want. They just have to understand that execution maters.

That actually brings me to the business aspect of it… What actually caused you to start a business in Jackson heights?

I liked it here and.

Did you come first or did the business come first?

I came first and then my wife was thinking about a place to open a business. She wanted to open a Japanese café, and so we looked at places in Manhattan, some places in Brooklyn, and we said you know what, we know Jackson Heights, why don’t we do it here and so we did. When we opened Japanese, there was nothing like that here and people thought we were crazy. But we stayed flexible and we kept our ears to the pavement to listen to our customers, and our customers guided us, we discovered that they wanted more vegetarian healthy foods and that kind of stuff. So we evolved our menu with a certain color of green. With a parsley leaf next to everything that’s vegetarian. And a lot of the Indian community, they have a different definition; a more strict definition of what is vegetarian. They don’t include eggs for example. So we are very very careful in what we label vegetarian. We only label things that qualify it in the strictest interpretation.

Where do you get your information on how to determine what is vegetarian or not. Like do you have community input into that or it just research?

We know, if it got meat, its not vegetarian. If its made of pork fat, we don’t use pork fat, its not vegetarian. If something has egg in it its not vegetarian. So its just common sense and before we label something, we take a very careful look at the ingredients and the preparation process.

Where do you find most of your customers from?

From all over the immediate Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst, the other side of Northern Boulevard, uhh Elmhurst. We opened approximately at the geographic boundaries of Jackson Heights historic area.

You would say that your restaurant is pretty unique compared to all the other restaurants. Its one of the only Japanese restaurants. Is that correct?

Well it’s the first of its kind here. The first healthy foods, quote unquote, restaurant that opened here. Uhh soo… yeah, its unique and the other thing is, we go out of way to make contributions to local organizations, local PTAs, we make contributions to them, and they call us, they are so stunned you know, How come your making a contribution, we didn’t solicit from you. The local library, the veterans of foreign wars, all kinds of organizations.

How do you think you responded to the demand of food. Nowadays people want fast food. How do you think that your authenticity has changed with respect to this demand.

We are carful about that. We tell them that we are not fast food, we are slow food. We tell them, we have something on our menu, right there on the front menu, nothing boils in pots all day, our food may take a little longer.

Ahh that’s really good actually.

What happens is that when you deliver food, people think that its either pizza or Chinese and Chinese food it seems you practically hang up the phone and its on your doorstep. Well its not that way with Japanese food because we are delivering restaurant quality meals to them. Its custom cooked for them. And when you do that it takes longer. It doesn’t take longer because its just sitting there. We have a system so that the food is finished normally, a few minutes before it goes out the door, so that they are getting a freshly cooked restaurant quality meal. And it doesn’t arrive all disheveled in mess.

Is your business run by family.

Yes

Do you also hire other people from outside.

Yes. We don’t use extended family, its my wife an I, and we hire other employees.

So who runs the business normally?

Day to day, my wife runs it.

Do you think that the increasing diversity in the community has changed any of your dishes? Like you mentioned the green foods.

Yes. Hispanic people like spicy foods. They also cause us to make more things with salmon because they like salmon. For the Indian community we have put more things on the menu with curry, but it’s a very different curry that they are accustomed to. Usually its not the first generation Indian who orders our curry because its not what they are accustomed to. It’s the second generation, their children will come in and order it because its softer, its on the pallet, its different.

Where do you develop these recipes which accommodate the diversity.

They have to be authentically Japanese. So we adapt Japanese dishes but they have to use Japanese ways about them. For example when we do steak, we don’t confuse Japaenes steak with Chinese pepper steak, because steak used in Chinese food, is a different steak and has been soaking all day in whatever it is they soak it in and you bite into it and its just not the same that you use in a Japanese dish.. While we will adapt things we are careful to keep them authentic.

That’s very important..

For the same reason we are very careful; when Korean people offer Japanese food. Invariably there barbeque sauce and it doesn’t work. People who know Japanese food are skeptical if they go in and there bbq on the menu. That’s the tipoff that there is probably, from a Korean perspective as opposed to a Japanese perspective. See what happens is, if you don’t maintain a certain authenticity, then you become more like a diner. A diner doesn’t only have to be something that looks like a traditional diner, but you become a provider for everyone’s pallet and your not particularly good at any of them. Your just trying to appeal to everybody. For the people who want McDonalds, we can’t help, there’s nothing we can do. We could if we wanted to but by focusing on that, we would be taking our eye off a different ball. There’s only so many balls you can juggle and really do them really well.

How would you respond to the other restaurants that are adapting their foods to adapt to the entire community? Like I know when I was walking around Jackson Heights, I seen restaurants that offer Indian food, Chinese food, all combined into one. How do respond to their approach.

Our customers do. Our customers come to us for Japanese food. Because they know its going to be right. I like Chinese food but I don’t go into a Japanese restaurant expecting them to do a good job with Chinese food. And if you go into a Japanese restaurant that also offers Chinese food, invariably, unless they have two separate kitchens, they have one chef. And that one chef is saying to himself , gee, I can use this steak why do I have to spend and extra hour a day preparing different kinds of steak, and so invariably, in the cook meals, they will have steak that is reminiscent of Chinese food. And Japanese food isn’t always helpful when your cooking good Chinese food. The flavor is different, the spices are different. There are differences, and when you start to mix them all, usually, one type is better than the other, and one type is not as good as it could be. People who have had it always time know its not the same thing. So we can adapt because we are very focused on quality and cleanliness for example so we do salads. That’s something that you normally don’t find in a Japanese restaurant. Different kinds of fresh salads in opposed… salads aren’t a big thing for Japanese people I guess. But we have decided we could successfully integrate really nice salads, triple washed with our menu. You go into another Japanese restaurant, order a salad, and they will give you some lettuce, and a sprinkling of carrots and that’s about it. And they feel like okay, a good Japanese dressing is sufficient. We don’t think it is. People who come in want a real salad. They want tomato on there, so we do that, but it always comes with our homemade ginger dressing.

How do you think that the authenticity has affected the pricing? I know that with originality comes …

It raises cost. There’s no way around it. It raises cost.

So you think that authenticity is much better than the business aspect.

I’m only saying its what we do. Its why our customers come back to us. There are places, they can go to someplace in Woodside that offers both Chinese, in equal emphasis, both Chinese and Japanese, and there are places that have Korean and Japanese but our customers come to us. There’s a reason why people come to us from Forrest Hills. We think they have pretty good sushi there but they like our sushi and so they come to Jackson Heights for our sushi. So what it does, is it helps us define our market and it brings people back to us. People want the real deal and one of the things you’ll learn as you get older is if you want really good quality anything , itll cost more. Silk blouse, or shirt costs more than wool. Cashmere wool costs more than scratchy wool. Better things cost more money. A nicer house, a nicer kitchen costs more money to build. The only way to do it right is to gut everything back to the studs and start from scratch. Let me rephrase that. The best results tend to be more expensive.

With the recession now, how do you think that the customers are going to respond to the changes?

Recession wise… our business is down. All business is down. All the restaurants are down. Spanish restaurants, Indian restaurants, business is down. People don’ t have enough money floating around and so when people are under economic arrest,

They start cooking

Yeah, and when you don’t have enough money in your pockets, you take one less train during the course of the week if you don’t have the money. That’s the way it is.

30 minutes of recording Difficult to transcribe.