How a Plate of Sushi Became “Expensive Food”

T

he History of Premiumization Shaped by Japan’s Economy and the American Market

When you visit a Japanese restaurant in the United States, you begin to notice something interesting. A bowl of ramen can cost more than $20, and at a proper sushi restaurant, spending $100 per person no longer seems unusual. Move up to omakase, and meals priced at $200 or $300 per person are easy to find. What is even more interesting is that American consumers seem relatively comfortable paying these prices. Japanese food has developed an image of being precise, professional, made with high-quality ingredients, and requiring the highly trained skills of a chef.

But when you look more closely at Japanese food, something seems strange. Not all Japanese food is inherently luxurious. Ramen, udon, donburi, curry, yakitori, and karaage have long been everyday foods enjoyed by ordinary people and office workers in Japan. Even sushi, which can command extremely high prices in America today, cannot simply be described as having always been a luxury cuisine in every form throughout its history.

That raises an important question: Why has Japanese food in America developed such a strong image as “premium food”?

I believe we cannot find the answer by looking at the food alone. We also have to examine the era in which Japanese food established itself in America, the people who ate it, and how Americans perceived Japan as a country at the time. The price of food is not determined by ingredients alone. Sometimes, the people who eat a food help determine its value.

1. Sushi Did Not Begin in America as Cheap Food

Sushi did not suddenly appear in the United States. Japanese food and sushi had already existed within Japanese American communities, and after World War II they once again began to be consumed primarily within those communities. However, the American sushi culture we recognize today began to take shape in earnest during the 1960s. Sushi gradually moved beyond Japanese and Japanese American customers, and full-fledged sushi bars began appearing in cities such as New York and Los Angeles.

What matters is the type of sushi that arrived and the customers who were eating it. Even in Japan, Tokyo-style sushi bars were far removed from inexpensive everyday dining. Sushi bars in 1960s Japan could be expensive, and their customers included wealthy diners and businesspeople. It was this relatively upscale version of sushi culture that crossed the Pacific. Unlike many immigrant foods that entered America as inexpensive working-class meals and were premiumized later, sushi began its mainstream American journey with a certain degree of prestige already attached.

Americans also encountered sushi through a distinctive service format. A professional chef stood behind the counter, sliced fish in front of the customer, and prepared individual pieces to order. Diners watched the chef’s knife work and technique. Americans therefore did not experience sushi simply as “raw fish and rice.” They experienced it as “a special Japanese food prepared in front of you by an expert.” The chef’s skill, service, and physical space became part of the product.

On the West Coast, Kawafuku in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo became one of the symbolic starting points of the modern American sushi bar. In the mid-1960s, Japanese food importer Noritoshi Kanai opened the restaurant with sushi chef Shigeo Saito behind the counter and Saito’s wife managing the front of the house. Kawafuku combined California seafood such as sea urchin, abalone, mackerel, and tuna with selected seafood brought from Japan’s Tsukiji Market. In many ways, this combination of American ingredients, Japanese technique, and selected premium imports became an early model for the American sushi industry.

Another restaurant, Tokyo Kaikan, took a different approach. It had a large dining room seating around 300 people and offered sushi, tempura, teppanyaki, and other Japanese dishes. It even had a second-floor disco called Tokyo-a-Go-Go. Japanese food was moving beyond something Japanese immigrants ate for a taste of home. It was becoming a sophisticated dining experience that American consumers were willing to pay for.

New York saw a similar development. The sushi bar at Nippon, which opened in 1963, was already associated with upscale dining. In 1972, a sushi bar appeared at New York’s elite Harvard Club, and by the 1970s food critics were increasingly treating sushi as gourmet food. What mattered was not only when Americans began eating sushi, but where they ate it and how they experienced it.

2. Japanese Businesspeople Became Sushi’s Gatekeepers

Another important group then entered the story: Japanese corporate executives and expatriate employees. As Japan’s economy expanded through the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese companies increased their presence in automobiles, electronics, trading, finance, and other industries in the United States. Along with those companies came executives and professionals whose spending habits differed significantly from those of earlier generations of Japanese immigrants.

Many traveled with company-paid allowances and expense accounts and brought with them the dining preferences of Japan’s more affluent classes. These managerial and professional customers became a kind of gatekeeper, introducing sushi to American colleagues and business partners.

Imagine the scene: a Japanese executive invites an American business partner to dinner. Instead of choosing a hamburger restaurant or inexpensive immigrant eatery, he takes the guest to a proper Japanese restaurant where a trained chef handles fresh fish behind the counter. For the American guest, the first impression may have been simple: “This is what important businesspeople from Japan eat.”

That distinction matters enormously in branding. There is a significant difference between a cuisine first encountered as a cheap meal for laborers and one encountered while corporate executives entertain clients. During the 1970s, sushi restaurants increasingly followed the movement of Japanese people and Japanese capital while attracting affluent American diners as well. When The Washington Post reported on Washington, D.C.’s sushi boom in 1983, early customers included Japanese diplomats, while upscale Asian restaurants were becoming associated with the expense-account crowd. Ultimately, it was not only Japanese individuals who introduced sushi to American society. Japan’s economic growth itself became a salesman for sushi.

3. As Japan Became Wealthier, Japanese Food Began to Look More Valuable

By the 1970s and 1980s, the story moved beyond restaurants. Japan had transformed itself from a war-devastated nation into one of the world’s most powerful economies. Toyota and Honda automobiles filled American roads, while Sony products entered American homes. By the late 1980s, Japanese corporations were purchasing American real estate and companies, and Japan’s economic power had become strong enough to generate anxiety in parts of American society.

Food does not exist independently of a country’s image. Consumers inevitably transfer some of their impressions of a country’s technology, design, products, and service to its cuisine. Japan increasingly represented precision, technology, quality, and efficiency to American consumers—and sushi fit that image remarkably well.

Sushi was small, precise, dependent on visibly high-quality ingredients, and difficult to prepare properly. Most importantly, it looked difficult for ordinary Americans to reproduce at home. That is an important condition for premiumization. Consumers are willing to pay differently for something that makes them think “I could make this myself” versus something that makes them think “I should leave this to an expert.”

The sushi bar intensified that perception. The chef stood directly in front of the customer with knives and fresh fish, preparing each piece immediately after it was ordered. The process itself became almost a performance and created an ideal environment for the image Americans increasingly associated with Japanese food: craftsmanship.

This was not the result of a single government strategy to make Japanese food expensive. It emerged from decades of overlapping forces: Japan’s economic growth, corporate expansion, affluent Japanese business customers, the unique sushi-bar format, and American curiosity about Japanese culture. As Japan’s economic value increased, the brand value of Japan increased with it—and Japanese food benefited from that halo.

4. Hollywood Turned Japanese Food from Premium into “Cool”

If economics and business built the foundation, Hollywood and celebrity culture added another layer during the 1980s and 1990s. One of the most important figures in this transformation was Nobuyuki “Nobu” Matsuhisa. After training in sushi in Japan and working in South America, Nobu eventually settled in the United States. In 1987, he opened Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills, where Hollywood figures began gathering. One of his regular customers was Robert De Niro, who eventually encouraged Nobu to open a restaurant with him in New York. In 1994, Nobu opened in Tribeca with De Niro and other partners.

The symbolism was powerful. Japanese cuisine moved from:

Japanese Food = Business Food

to increasingly becoming:

Japanese Food = Celebrity Food.

Sophisticated design, alcohol, polished service, and Japanese-Western cuisine became part of the experience. Nobu helped push Japanese cuisine beyond simply being “food that could command a high price” toward becoming “an experience where a high price felt appropriate.”

That legacy remains visible today. Omakase, kaiseki, wagyu, and sake pairing have become familiar concepts in America’s luxury restaurant market. Yet Japanese cuisine also retained an extraordinary price ladder. Consumers can buy $10 supermarket sushi, eat $15 udon or $20 ramen, and still accept $100 sushi courses or $300 omakase meals. The existence of inexpensive Japanese food does not destroy the perceived value of expensive Japanese food. Japan managed to achieve mass-market accessibility and premiumization at the same time.

5. The Real Achievement Was Creating a Willingness to Pay

After spending many years working in the American restaurant industry, I have come to believe that one question is almost as important as how good the food tastes: How much is the consumer prepared to pay for it?

Food cost can be calculated numerically. Food value cannot. Two customers can each spend $100 on dinner; one may leave saying, “That was expensive,” while the other says, “That was a great experience.” The difference is Perceived Value. Perhaps the greatest achievement of Japanese food in America, then, was not simply creating thousands of sushi restaurants. It was creating the perception that Japanese food is worth paying a premium for. This is something today’s K-Food industry should think about seriously. Awareness of Korean food in America has risen dramatically. More Americans recognize words such as Kimchi, Korean BBQ, Korean Fried Chicken, Buldak, and Bibimbap. But increasing awareness and increasing value are not the same thing. Getting more Americans to eat Korean food and getting them to willingly pay more for Korean food are two different achievements.

Japan did not simply export food. Economic growth sent Japanese businesspeople overseas; restaurants followed them; American business elites entered those restaurants; Hollywood and celebrity culture followed; and the professional image of sushi chefs and Japanese craftsmanship strengthened the story. Together, these forces created a genuine Premium Category for Japanese food in America. But that raises another question. If Japanese food had successfully established a premium image in New York and Los Angeles, how did sushi reach small cities across America? Fish is not a hamburger patty. Freshness matters. Refrigerated and frozen distribution matters. Restaurants need multiple species of fish and a reliable supply of Japanese ingredients.

Yet sushi eventually spread across the Midwest, the South, and smaller American cities. Behind that expansion was another story—one involving True World Foods, the Unification Church, and a massive seafood distribution network connecting the United States. Perhaps the final force that completed the success of Japanese food in America was not the glamorous sushi chef at all.

Perhaps it was the refrigerated truck driving down an American highway before dawn.

To be continued in Part 2.

Written by Hansong Kim