Article by Alice Rennie

Gochisousama!

By Alice Rennie Motouji in front of the restaurant’s sign

It’s still a few minutes before opening, but already there’s a line outside the door. In order to take a photo of Motouji and his employees, I need to enter before they are busy, and I glance a little guiltily at those who are waiting as I walk inside the restaurant.

The restaurant’s aesthetic is like that of a night in Japan—yellow lanterns hang from the ceiling above the dining area, and to the left, there are elevated areas of tatami, where one must take off their shoes to sit at the table. Just like every other time I’ve walked into

the restaurant, I can’t help but be reminded of Japan’s summer festivals.

The first thing that greets me when I walk into the restaurant is the small shelf that also serves as a divider between the diners and the register. On the shelf are a number of kokeshi dolls—specifically, kokeshi dolls that can be placed into one another like Russian nesting dolls. Small as they are, their cute smiling faces mimic the one that is often found on both Motouji and his employees’ faces.

And when I greet both him and his employees, the matching smile on his face is obvious, even underneath the mask. He’s happy to greet me, as are his employees—it’s just before the restaurant opens, but they are still pleased to pose for the photo. It’s at this moment that I realize there’s an issue with the camera, and every photo that I’ve taken of him and his employees sitting together on the bench has turned out blurry.

Despite this, he laughs. “Maybe we’ve all turned into ghosts, and the camera can’t handle us,” he jokes. It’s a silly comment meant to lighten the air, and he and his employees laugh. The moment after this is when I take the photo. Though their faces are half-hidden by masks, and I worry that my phone’s quality might not be good enough, their laughing smiles are perfect enough to make the photo great.

Gen Moutouji is the owner of a Japanese Fusion restaurant, where he innovates new, unique recipes and fosters a community of joy with his employees and customers. California, and especially the Bay Area, is filled with diversity, which is reflected by the various types of cuisine in our restaurants, cafes, and eateries. In order to bring something new to the table, and avoid stereotypes such as “Japanese restaurants always have sushi” (Motouji), his menu is filled with Asian-fusion dishes that can’t be found anywhere else in the area.

Gochi Japanese Fusion Tapas is a restaurant in Mountain View, though the first of its stores opened in Cupertino in 2005 (“Gochi”). Motouji was originally a server at the restaurant, where he further developed his customer service skills, and was taught not only how to cook, but about the fusion style of cooking. Fusion food, or “the blending of culinary worlds to create new, hybrid dishes,” (Geiling) is what the restaurant chain specializes in, helping Gochi to bring something new and enticing to the market. Beyond simply standing out, the restaurant’s“fusion cuisine” makes the menu dynamic. “I thought that if I labeled the restaurant as just Japanese, then I’d have to face the stereotypes such as ‘there must be sushi because it’s a Japanese restaurant,’” Motouji said. By giving his restaurant the label of “fusion”, he would have more freedom in selecting his menu. And he’s no doubt been successful—as while there are a number of traditional dishes on the menu, such as yaki udon or chicken karaage, a large number of the items are of Motouji’s own creation.

One such dish Motouji describes is through how it’s cooked. “[It’s] black pork stomach boiled in brown sugar, and cooked in a pressure cooker with red

(left photos, from top to bottom) Iidako, Yakiniku Kimchee Meshi, Salmon on Chips

wine (merlot or cabernet), brown sugar and vinegar.”

The remainder of his menu he describes in similar fashion, and when asked where their inspiration comes from, he starts listing. “Visiting other restaurants,” he says, “or tabe-aruki,” which refers to the act of eating food while walking, often smaller individual dishes that can be bought at street vendors, “or seeing things on the T.V. and internet” is what brings him the most inspiration.

Whether an idea gets put on the menu depends on how practical it is for the restaurant to actually make it. Many of these fusion dishes are the restaurant’s most popular, including pizzas, stir fries, gratins, and so much more, just waiting to be tasted.

Of course, not every concept turns out to be a success. One dish, which Motouji called “Tori Soboro no Tostada”, meant to be a combination of a traditional Japanese rice dish and a Mexican dish that involves a toasted tortilla base, was such a case. “It just didn’t sell,” he recalls, laughing. Despite the occasional

(above) Motouji and his employees posing for a photo.

failed attempts, fusion cuisine has brought the restaurant great success—and customers have been able to sample many new, interesting tastes!

Before achieving his current success, however, Motouji had to work hard to even open his location. After a number of years of working at the first restaurant, both Motouji and his wife, a manager at Gochi Cupertino, started discussing parting ways with the restaurant. Motouji still had his sports training license, a leftover from his career as a professional athlete, and planned to further his career in that direction. But before he could, the owner of Gochi Cupertino offered both Motouji and his wife an exciting offer: How would you like to open a sister restaurant?

It was an offer the two of them couldn’t refuse. “At first, we looked around at a lot of areas,” Motouji recalled about first opening the restaurant, “like Sunnyvale and Mountain View. We did keep in mind that we wanted to be at a separate

“I don’t have the skills to make something from zero to one, so I take the one and one from others to make me better.”

location from the main restaurant.” Eventually, the location chosen was Mountain View, and the storefront on Castro Street opened in 2013.

Despite paying the hefty costs of having the chosen building renovated, and the time spent building up their new customer base, they were quick to be kicked out—as “a developer proposed a new mixeduse, four-story project for the site” (Kadvany).

It took another two years for Motouji to be able to reopen the Mountain View Gochi restaurant. Nevertheless, it reopened in 2016, now on El Camino Real.

Luckily, he had many returning customers from the previous location, and many new customers interested in trying the new fusion flavors. Now, his restaurant is so well-known that Gochi Japanese Fusion Tapas is listed as the best fusion on the Mountain View Voice’s best restaurants of 2021.

Creating a welcoming environment for his customers, and especially his employees, is also a major goal of Motouji’s. One of his employees, Misako Heims, has been working at Gochi for five years, and she fondly recalls her time spent there. Before working at Gochi, she had been working at a Japanese Supermarket, and occasionally, she would converse with Motouji whenever he came to shop. After a number of interactions, he invited her to come work at Gochi, stating that her welcoming smile and charming personality would be great for the restaurant’s atmosphere.

And when she did eventually make the job shift, she found that she enjoyed her time there immensely. “He’s the best mood-maker,” Heims says, when speaking of Motouji. “Thanks to him, laughter and fun can be born out of a mistake. [He fosters an environment where] teamwork is good, and if someone makes a mistake, no one gets angry - and instead we cover each other.”

Motouji himself also mentions this, when speaking of the environment he tries to create in the restaurant, stating that even when his employees make mistakes, he doesn’t get mad, just instead asks them instead to simply move on to the next task at hand. “I want there to be a friend-relationship between me and my employees,” he says.

Though Motouji does more than just to create a welcoming environment - he also goes out of his way to help his employees should the need arise. He is very considerate of his employees, and should he see that they are in need or in a tough situation, he’s quick to try and provide aid (Hiems). Heims recalls that when she first got the job at Gochi, she was financially unstable, and feared that she would never be able to set foot

again on the Japanese islands. “Thanks to [Motouji], I was able to return home and hug my daughter… and the following year I returned home again before my mother died at the age of 70.”

Treating his employees right means that his customers are also treated right - as the visible happiness of the employees often brings many customers back for more, not only for the wonderful food but also for the great service. “Quality service, quality food! All the staff members were very helpful, and energetic,” says Calvin Wang, a local guide reviewing the restaurant.

When it comes to future plans, Motouji doesn’t see any big changes. “It’s not as if I’m trying to open a second restaurant,” he says, when asked about his goals for the business. “I want to try as hard as I can to maintain what we’ve got now.” When it comes to personal goals, he mentions still having his license to be a sports trainer, though he leaves it for far in the future. He sees no reason and has no desire to leave Gochi, wanting to “continue as-is.”

Fortunately, it seems that Motouji’s plans for the future are popular ones; even in spite of the pandemic, the restaurant still has a steady stream of loyal customers—to the point where it’s hard to get a seat without a reservation. “In the end, I want the customers to have good memories [of Gochi]. They don’t have to come every day or every week,” Motouji states, when asked about his customers. Even if they only came back once a year, he’d always be happy to have them.

Motouji laughing with one of his employees.

About the Author

Alice Rennie is a high-school junior at Freestyle Academy, where she takes Animation as her elective. She has a great interest (read: addiction) in manga and anime, and hopes to one day move to Japan to become a manga artist. Until then, however, she’s just a simple seventeen-year-old who draws, writes, and has fun with her friends in her free time.