Diasuke Nakazawa, the protégé of world-famous sushi chef Jiro Ono, is now the proud owner of a new restaurant in the West Village. In a city of elite sushi joints, the sushi being dished out by Nakazawa is considered easily among the best.



While it might be easy to attribute Nakazawa's success to working with Ono, The New York Times' Jeff Gordinier has discovered an interesting backstory on how Nakazawa's ended up becoming Ono's protege. Turns out he would have never even made it to New York City without a little help from social media:
Deeply unsettled by the earthquake and tsunami that savaged Japan in 2011, Mr. Nakazawa moved his family to Seattle and got a job at Shiro’s, a sushi mainstay on the Pacific Coast. That’s where the New York restaurateur Alessandro Borgognone tracked him down in 2012. Mr. Borgognone and his wife watched “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” one night; mesmerized, the restaurateur, who is associated with Patricia’s in the Bronx, became determined to import one of the key players from Sukiyabashi Jiro to New York City. Knowing he would never be able to entice either Mr. Ono or his son, he decided to zero in on the sweet-omelet dude.

Mr. Borgognone found Mr. Nakazawa on Facebook. He wrote a letter to the shokunin, using Google’s translator to convert the words to Japanese, and sent it into the blue. Eventually the Facebook message led to an exchange, then to Mr. Nakazawa’s first trip to New York and then to dreams of opening a world-class sushi mecca in the West Village.
Nakazawa has also told The Seattle Times that he got the confidence to uproot his family for work in America from working for Jiro, a demanding perfectionist. He worked for Jiro for ten years, and it took five of those years to just get behind the sushi bar. With that kind of dedication, you just know that this guy knows his sushi skills.