It took one scream into the kitchen for all the chefs and cooks to get into line.
He was serious, but kind. Harsh, but the most gracious perfectionist. And although broken English was his only way to communicate, Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto never failed to train his chefs to create sushi masterpieces, Ezra Bertakis said.
Bertakis owns Chef’s Way Organic Farms in Hillsdale, Michigan and occasionally makes sushi for Bon Appetit Hillsdale College functions. In his early days, he trained under Iron Chef Morimoto.
“When he yells in a restaurant, the restaurant stops and everyone runs and gets their butts in gear,” Bertakis said. “Fast is not fast enough for him in the restaurant. At his level, you don’t make him wait for anything. It should be there, next to him, when he’s ready to do it.”
But Bertakis’s story began long before he worked in Morimoto’s restaurant.
It all started when he was a kid. He was a true sucker for his mom’s gourmet cooking. Bertakis was a farm boy; organic and fresh food were infused into his childhood. Flash forward to after college when Bertakis found himself in Florida enrolled in culinary school.
Classes lasted from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. every single day. He spent the rest of the day — until midnight — practicing all that he’d learned.
“It’s really competitive because everyone is really serious about wanting to be a chef and not any other job,” he said. “They really cover everything, from every individual flavor to every cuisine around the world to wine tasting.”
Culinary school was an “intense experience,” Bertakis said, which taught him the full menu of the fine-dining world — Caribbean, Japanese, Asian fusion, and French cuisine were all in his repertoire.
Soon, he began working as a sous-chef at an American fine-dining restaurant in Boca Raton, Florida. At the same time, Morimoto expanded his Japanese restaurants across the country — and Boca Raton Resort was his next stop.
After completing construction on his new restaurant inside the resort, Morimoto invited Bertakis to be one of the first chefs on board.
“He saw my work ethic, he saw my drive, and when it was done he said, ‘You ready to work for Morimoto now?’ and I said, ‘You bet I am,’ without skipping a beat.”
“I was the only white guy in the restaurant, and everyone else was Japanese,” Bertakis said, laughing. “They were the kindest, most hard-working guys I’d ever met. I was walking into the best of the best cuisine that I hardly knew anything about. You go into a normal French restaurant, everyone’s a jerk to you. Here, they accepted me, and they taught me.”
Every day, the chefs sat in a circle at lunch. This was their only moment not spent serving customers in the restaurants. Instead, they took turns making each other lunch. “We were a team. They don’t want you to not know what they know, because that doesn’t make them any better. You’re never as strong as your weakest link.”
Beautiful, clean, and the finest dining. That was Morimoto’s. Unlike most sushi restaurants, Morimotos’ Sushi Bar primarily focused on fish instead of plate aesthetics. Whether it was overnighted from Japan or shipped in from Hawaii, their fish came from all around the world.
“You’re not going to experience that at many places in the world. You have the option of a black throat snapper, which is a Japanese deep-sea fish caught by line. It is $90 per slice of sashimi,” he said.
Amidst their restaurant responsibilities, Bertakis and Morimoto became friends. Morimoto was an avid golfer, Bertakis explained — and so was he. He was the only golfer in the kitchen — and quite a good one, he added, laughing. This made him and Morimoto regular golfing partners.
“These memories were just some of the best memories in the world,” Bertakis continued, “having beer on the course and knowing that he was just like the rest of us and not just a famous TV show star that you couldn’t talk to or be normal around.”
After this, Bertakis said he had the confidence to do anything. It was time to move on. “I felt like I had hit the top-tier restaurant level, and it was time for me to really step it up.”
He ran sushi bars in Florida, backtracked to New York to work in another Morimoto restaurant, and then moved to Michigan where he worked as the corporate executive sushi chef for General Motors and ran Sushi Bars downtown. He finished his cooking days as an executive chef for Chen Chow’s Brasserie in Birmingham.
“I came to the point where I needed to buy a restaurant of my own and do something on my own. And the opportunity came when my grandma passed and my grandpa didn’t want to run the farm. And I’m like, ‘You know what, as a chef, I can’t find the quality food that I want that’s fresh enough. Let’s see what farming’s all about.’”
That’s when he attended the Organic Farmer Training Program at Michigan State University, a nine month, five day a week, intensive course. From running greenhouses, to organizing 10 acres of produce, to learning all the aspects of selling and growing, Bertakis said he couldn’t go out onto the farm without the program. After graduating, he decided to go the organic route, and Chef’s Way Organic Farm was born.
“Organic was going to be my only option because it’s a niche industry. So, I can command a higher price and it’s not as saturated,” he said. “Plus, my land has been organic since before organic was even a thing.”
Up next, Bertakis will be rolling gourmet sushi twice a week at Johnny T’s Bistro. Rick Tropiano, Johnny’ T’s owner, said he wants to start sushi nights the last week of September.
“It’s a definite and niche market that is not being met right now,” said Tropiano. “Ezra’s talents and abilities and his experience working under sushi chefs and learning the trade makes him a no-brainer,” Tropiano said. “Knowing that he did it locally in the past and had a good rapport was also a big encouragement in the decision to do that.”
Bertakis will be visible for all customers to see, providing a live and takeout experience depending on interest. Bertakis is still in touch with high-quality fish distributors, and plans to ship in fish from around the country.
“I’m not going to skip on high-quality just because we are in the middle of the country,” Bertakis said. “Expect quality over quantity here.”