Today, the influence of Japanese cuisine – with all its sophistication, balanced flavours and complex, unique ingredients – can be experienced across the globe. But it wasn’t always like this; products such as dashi and ponzu were rarely used outside of the country until relatively recently. Over the past ten or so years, however, chefs have realised the incredible flavours these artisanal ingredients contain, incorporating them into dishes based in all sorts of different cuisines. In the UK, chefs turn to one company – and one man in particular – to source the very best Japan has to offer. Set up in 2007 by Japanese food obsessive Stu Turner, SushiSushi sells a huge range of top-end Japanese ingredients, tableware and kitchen equipment not only to restaurants but to the public as well, via its online shop. We chatted to the man behind the company to discover what inspired him to set it up.
‘I used to live in Australia and while I was there I worked in a sushi bar,’ says Stu. ‘After leaving Australia, I spent a bit of time in Asia and I just loved the food. I came back to England and, living in the North, there was just nothing like that around at the time. I missed those interesting, Asian flavours that keep evolving with every bite. I also wanted to start something for myself, having always worked for other people, so I just decided to go with it. It didn’t make any money for a long time, but we’ve built it slowly over the last fourteen years by just adding and adding and never going backwards.’
SushiSushi’s website started life as more of a blog than a shop, providing information on how to make sushi and authentic Japanese dishes. However, with experience in ecommerce, Stu noticed a gap in the market for selling Japanese products. ‘It all started with this sushi making gadget, which I found at a wholesaler. I wondered if we could just sell them on the site, with a little PayPal button, because at that point you couldn’t put an ecommerce site together very easily. I only bought six from the wholesaler, so it was very low risk.’ The gadgets sold out in no time and Stu went back to the wholesaler to buy more and more, until eventually he’d run them out of stock. At that point he got in touch directly with the company that made them and asked if he could start acting as a UK wholesaler, which he did from his flat. As they continued to fly off the shelves, he began packaging them with sushi rice and nori bought from local supermarkets, and the business grew from there.