Sushi Row the Coffee Table Book

For over a year, I've been working to convince the city to officially designate the three-mile stretch of Ventura Boulevard between Coldwater Canyon and Lankershim as Sushi Row, with actual street signs that acknowledge what happened there. Because something remarkable did happen there. That corridor in Studio City is where mainstream America first encountered authentic sushi culture, shaped by proximity to the studios and the creative community of New Hollywood. I've spent two years documenting it in a coffee table book with 345 photographs and interviews with the chefs who built it from the ground up.

Sushi Row - Reincarnation on

When I set out to do a photography project about what I considered the most beautiful food in the world, sushi, it never occurred to me that the story might change. I spent hours and hours figuring out a fresh way to photograph it, building a set with a large softbox and 25 different mirrors. But somewhere along the way, the story stopped being about the food and became about the people, and the drama of fighting to survive and make a name for yourself as a pioneer in the world of American sushi on Ventura Boulevard, on Sushi Row.