I have to object on pure principal. Movies have taught me time and time again that if you trot out a fruit cart, it gets smashed in a high speed car chase. It’s so common that such must happen in the big city eight to ten times a day. There must be a fruit cart distribution factory that makes an absolute killing.
Single mom Juana (Diana Elizabeth Torres) y papá (Rodrigo Duarte Clark) get up at ten to four to prepare the fruit cart. Elementary school daughter Lydia (Kaya Jade Aguirre) has to get up, too, which sucks. On the street, mom is giving away the goods to the homeless. Yeah, I know we have to establish Juana as a decent person, but no blue collar worker who has to rise at 4 a.m. has homeless dough to spare. Even without the inevitable daily car chase destruction, Juana throws in the towel on the old fruit game when a pair of thugs pistol whip her and take the till.
Catching sight of a sushi restaurant in need of help, Juana applies. Does she apply because she needs the money or is she fascinated by the product? Hard to tell exactly, but the plot of East Side Sushi is getting Juana from glorified dishwasher to full sushi chef. I imagine this isn’t a piece of California Roll even if your name is Yakamoto and you live in the sea; for a Hispanic woman? ¡Ay, caramba! Juana though, has real talent for food. It takes head chef Aki (Yutaka Takeuchi) quite literally two seconds to understand that Juana knows her way around food preparation. It’s enough to encourage Juana to learn sushi preparation in her copious free time.
There is a big step between self-taught sushi chefery and public preparation. There is an even bigger step, however, between capable sushi chef and letting a Hispanic woman take the reins in public. As East Side Sushi points out, what would you think if went into a Mexican restaurant and every worker there was Japanese?
The Hollywood version of this film would almost certainly convolute the issue – Juana would need a love affair with Aki and her demanding father’s heart would give at some point and her daughter would fail out of school for lack of parental
supervision – and then it would all end with a big illogical smile like none of those things were ever issues at all. East Side Sushi does a great job of keeping the focus on Juana’s rise to chef. No, the acting isn’t wonderful and the plot is simple, but the writing knew enough to understand that there were enough sub-issues with the plot as is and the direction understood that Juana had to show both anger and restraint at the same time; she’s dealing with Japanese businessmen, not bikers.
East Side Sushi was filmed in Oakland and I had the rare treat of being in one of the establishing shot locations (the Grand Lake Theater) while it was on screen. Yeah, it’s stupid to be excited about such, but how often does that happen, really? Unless Obama is having a film fest in the Oval Office, you can’t ever really expect that, can you?
♪Green chili y sashimi
Forced together exposing bigotry
Side by side on box bento lunch plate, oh fate, destiny?
We all know that food trucks are the same wherever you go
There are dogs and cakes and Panini
We learn to eat when we learn to give
Each other ingredients to survive, and fuel to drive
Green chili y sashimi
Doesn’t really sound that great to me
On second thought there’s a burger place there, hey man, why don’t we?♫
Not Rated, 100 Minutes
D: Anthony Lucero
W: Anthony Lucero
Genre: Food ‘n’ bigotry
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Overlooked chefs
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Restaurant owners
♪ Parody inspired by “Ebony and Ivory”
