Oona Tempest, 24, lost her birth father — a fisherman by trade — when she was one year old. She met the sushi chef she calls her “adopted father” almost twenty years later, working as a substitute waitress at his Upper East Side restaurant in 2013.
Oguma could be a strict teacher at times, but Tempest — a Massachusetts native who moved to New York to study art but today serves chef-curated omakase meals under the name Sushi by Bae — admired his passion and principles: “His philosophy was just focus on sushi, just focus on your work. That was really beautiful to me as an artist,” she said.
Tempest’s gender and Jewish heritage made her an unlikely apprentice. Still, Oguma instructed her in not only the art of making sushi, but more practical matters: how to save money, by conserving plastic wrap for example, and how to stand up to suppliers selling fish beneath her standards.
Named one of Zagat’s “30 under 30 rock stars” redefining the restaurant industry in New York City in 2016, Tempest struck out on her own, working for a brief time at the now two Michelin-starred Sushi Ginza Onodera. Earlier this year, she partnered up with friend and fellow sushi chef David Bouhadana to offer at his Gansevoort Market sushi counter her own 90-minute, four-seat $100 omakase experience. She’s brought that Sushi by Bae concept to Bouhadana’s new Sushi by Bou spot at the Jue Lan Club, a posh Chinese eatery in the Flatiron District.
1. She moved to New York to study art at the School of Visual Arts, where her thesis involved sushi.
2. She considers herself an artist whose medium is food, rather than a chef.
In addition to shaping rice, she added, “There are artful ways to score the fish that make it fold more aesthetically over the rice than [other ways].” Tempest pays close attention to the way her sushi looks when it’s served, so she’s developed her own techniques for cutting fish to present it from its best angle.
3. As Tempest sees it, there’s a lot more to sushi than cutting and molding fish.
4. She specializes in edomae-style sushi, which involves a lot of curing.
Literally, “edomae” translates into “in front of Tokyo”; figuratively, it refers to fish from the city’s bay and abstractly, “It’s one of those things that sushi chefs philosophize over, like what is the meaning of art,” Tempest said.
Illness ultimately cut short her training under the “remarkable chef” Masaki Saito, she said.
6. She hit it off with fellow sushi chef David Bouhadana (the “Bou” to her “Bae”) because they both felt like “outsiders” among their colleagues and friends.
7. She wears black when she’s working, instead of the traditional white sushi chef uniform.
“This is just what fits me,” she said of her sartorial choices behind the counter. A uniform designed for a man’s shoulder-to-waist ratio and someone much taller than five-foot-two would impede her work, she added.
You can reserve a meal with Tempest at the Jue Lan Club (49 W. 20th St.) by texting 347-495-4221.