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    Starring Texas

    The sushi craze's dark side: Texas film shows how foodies threaten to make tunararer than oil

    Cynthia Neely
    Oct 6, 2012 | 7:02 am
    • Feeding tuna at the cages off Port Lincoln, Australia
      Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber
    • Tuna Nigiri Sushi as served by Master Sushi Chef Sugiyama in Tokyo
      Sushi: The Global Catch
    • Activity at Tsukiji Market, Tokyo
      Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber

    Hut one! Hut two! Hut Sushi?

    Have you heard the one about the Texas high school that sells sushi at its football games? Me either, but it’s no joke.

    Austin-based filmmaker/lawyer/Internet pioneer Mark Hall shared that little tidbit as we talked about his award-winning documentary, Sushi: The Global Catch, set to screen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston this Saturday night at 7 p.m. with additional showings on Oct. 13 and Oct. 19.

     

    Foodies everywhere are gobbling up bluefin tuna at such a rate that, as the film puts it, “We’ll run out of tuna before we run out of oil.”

    When a food becomes so popular as to be welcomed at the holy gridirons of Lone Star high school, you know it’s entered the mainstream.

    Though Hall can’t remember the name of the school with such gourmet concessions (“It’s in the Dallas/Fort Worth area,” he says) this is just one more indicator that Tokyo’s ancient cuisine has been embraced by the whole modern world.

    While there’s no immediate danger of raw fish replacing hot dogs and popcorn on game nights, Hall says its demand has exploded absolutely everywhere on the planet, even in such other unlikely places (you’d think) as Poland. But indeed, Warsaw is where the seed was planted for Sushi, Hall’s feature-length documentary. Already, this film is spawning a sequel, a book (contract signed) and possibly a TV series.

    He’ll be returning to Japan soon to shoot stills for the book and prep for Sushi 2.

    Hall, who grew up in Houston and whose parents “still live in Memorial,” told me the story of how his award-winning film came about. (And if you think going to film school had something to do with it, you’d be way off the mark. Pun intended.)

     

    One bluefin tuna can easily sell for $100,000 or more on the auction block at Tokyo’s famous fish market.

    The short version credits his education in business, law and languages: A degree in finance with a minor in German from Texas A&M, an MBA with a specialization in international finance and Japanese language from the American Graduate School of International Management, and a law degree from Southern Methodist University which included a semester studying international financial law in London.

    Hall was awarded a scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Investment to attend classes at the Boeki Kenshu Center in Fujinomiya, Japan. He is fluent in Japanese and German and has a working knowledge of Polish, Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish.

    And to think I was able to converse with this man! (Well, I did have four years of Latin in high school.)

    Hall says he’s always had to have “some creative thing to do other than lawyering.” In 1998 he began his involvement with the film industry and became an active member of the Austin Film Society. As he provided Austin filmmakers with legal and business advice, he eventually began writing, directing and producing films himself, including a documentary for television Mission on Seven that explored the film archive at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center.

     Back to Poland.

    While working in Warsaw as an international attorney. Hall joined some “government people” for lunch one day after a meeting. Expecting a typical Polish restaurant (lots of meat) he was surprised by their choice of a newly-opened sushi bar!

    This got him to thinking. (By now you know Hall’s one serious thinker.) He saw the cuisine as “emblematic of how economies have rapidly globalized. “

    Apparently, foodies everywhere are gobbling up bluefin tuna, specifically, at such a rate that, as his film puts it, “We’ll run out of tuna before we run out of oil.” That’s in spite of its expensive price tag — one bluefin tuna can easily sell for $100,000 or more on the auction block at Tokyo’s famous fish market.

     

      Who knew that it was possible to run out of fish? 

    With that revelation, the film argues for sustainable sushi bars that offer tuna alternatives in their roll. Interviews with fishermen, environment activists and restaurateurs, including celebrated chef Tyson Cole — owner of Uchi on Westheimer (a sushi lover’s paradise) — are featured.

    Through his film, Hall examines the traditions, global growth and potential consequences of a cuisine gone wild. Who knew that it was possible to run out of fish? Aren’t there zillions of them?

    The coveted bluefin tuna, which takes several years to mature to its full size, is being caught too early and over fished. If a predator fish is fished out of existence, its former prey’s population explodes upsetting nature’s balance. Hall believes it could cause the collapse of oceans.

    And where would that leave people?

    Four years ago, Hall created Sakana Film Productions, an entity to produce documentaries focused on culture, food and politics (Sakana means fish in Japanese). His firm film under that banner is Sushi: The Global Catch which he produced and directed throughout five countries.

     Brian Satterwhite, another gifted native Houstonian, composed the score for the soundtrack. Hall believes the music is great enough that it can stand on its own. I don’t doubt it. I met Satterwhite while we were working on an independent horror film in Houston called Mr. Hell. His spooky, throbbing score was so perfect I can still call it up in my head. That was six years ago.

    Since then, Satterwhite has written scores for more than 90 short and feature films and accumulated 11 Gold Medals of Excellence from the Park City Film Music Festival.

    Yet another Houston native, Catie Cacci edited Sushi. I feel like a mama hen, so proud that our city’s talents are producing such award-winning films with the promise of more to come.

    Both Hall and Satterwhite will be at Saturday's screening. Going yourself is one way to support Texas filmmaking.

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    Success stories

    A man, a plan, a restaurant: How Kevin Naderi opened Roost with a little luckfrom Craigslist

    Sarah Rufca
    Nov 3, 2012 | 11:30 am
    • Naderi in the kitchen at Roost, where the chef/owner/landlord changes the menuevery three weeks.
      Photo by © Billy Knox
    • Roost is small, with only 58 seats, but Naderi says he likes the intimacy.
      Photo by © Billy Knox
    • Roost opened in the old Latina cafe space on Fairview in December 2011.
      Photo by © Billy Knox
    • Naderi acts as his own prep cook during the day and manages the dining roomduring dinner service.
      Photo by © Billy Knox
    • Naderi's "Rustic American fare" in the kitchen at Roost.
      Photo by © Billy Knox

    Kevin Naderi was looking for an apartment and planning to open a taco truck when he found the building that would become both his home and his business — on Craigslist.

    At 25, Naderi was itching to get out of his parents' house — "You know, when you're Persian, you're there 'til you're like 40," — and found a vague listing for a space available on Fairview. Walking into the former Latina Cafe, he discovered that it wasn't an apartment that was available, it was the entire building, including four residential units and a street level restaurant space.

    Naderi got a loan from his parents and within weeks he was both a restaurant owner and a landlord (and the proud owner of his own apartment, conveniently located right above Roost).

    Naderi likes to say that he was lucky to find it. But as the Romans said, fortune favors the bold.

     Roost opened to immediate excitement in December 2011, impressive considering Naderi had a relatively low profile as a sous chef at Haven and didn't have a splashy designer space or PR team — just a collage of recycled shutters he nailed to the walls himself and an active Facebook page on which he would post pictures and menus.

     

    "The fact that we don't rip people off is big," says Naderi.

    "We opened around the time when Triniti came up, Underbelly was in the works, Oxheart was in the works, Uchi had just opened, all these places probably average at least $60 to $150 a person per check. I wanted to do something where you could come two to three times a week instead of two to three times a year," says Naderi. "The fact that we don't rip people off is big."

    From the wait list to the wine list, Roost often feels like a one man show. During the day Naderi is sweating it out in the kitchen (Roost doesn't have a prep cook) but during service he leaves the cooking to his crew and manages the dining room, controlling the crowd and keeping an eye on his guests.

    "I wish I had two sous chefs and a floor manager and a sommelier and a pastry chef. I'd be kicking ass," Naderi says. "But I opened this place by myself. If you want to talk to a manager, it's me; you want to talk to the chef, you talk to me. I do all the purchasing, all the ordering, pay the bills. It's tough keeping up with all this stuff. I have a ton of grey hairs now," says the 26-year-old.

    With raves for his rustic, locally focused food and the intimate, unfussy dining room, Roost has modernized the neighborhood restaurant with an ever-changing menu.

    "We have a lot of regulars and the fact that we change the menu every three weeks is a huge plus. They aren't eating the same thing twice," says Naderi. "I think as a neighborhood restaurant you can do more of what you want. Being such a small place, it's easy to explain to tables, 'We're trying this out, we're trying that out.' If you're a big commercial restaurant you have to stick to what people know."

     

    "I think as a neighborhood restaurant you can do more of what you want. Being such a small place, it's easy to explain to tables, 'We're trying this out, we're trying that out.'"

    "A lot of people do braised beef ribs; we'll do braised beef cheeks. It's kind of the same idea but a little different and people can try something new. And when I tell them it's just like barbacoa tacos, they're like, 'Oh, I love barbacoa."

    Just under a year in, Naderi admits there have been some bumps along the way. The service window between the dining room and the kitchen was originally where Naderi planned to expedite dishes, but by week one he realized "no one wants to sit next to you when you're messing with plates."

    An early BYOB option (started while he was waiting for the restaurant's liquor license to come through) was also scrapped because Naderi couldn't afford to have his limited tables full of customers that weren't ordering more than an appetizer.

    Still, Naderi says that he can't imagine his restaurant any other way.

    "I love the size. Sometimes people are like, 'Are you going to expand this, make it bigger?' But I'm grandfathered, so if I knock down a wall I'm screwed," he says. "I think the size is cool. People like the quaintness of it. Sometimes people get too big for their britches and want to do three or four restaurants right away. I'm like, let's chill for a minute, hit the one year mark and see what's going on."

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