Chefs Perry Saito and John Gamble keep stepping up their game, from opening their popular food truck Katsu Kart in 2021, to moving to a 12-seat restaurant tucked inside The City Kitch in Wesley Heights. At the end of January they opened DŌZO Japanese-American Kitchen with a larger restaurant space in the heart of Dilworth.
It's hard to go wrong while ordering from this menu, but if there's one dish to start with, let it be the Crab Fried Rice.
"Good fried rice has so many factors to make it the right way, and it has always been shoved down to the side dish sections of menus.
We wanted to make it stand out on its own and make the most “baller” fried rice, while not losing our minds and just throwing truffles or A5 [wagyu] at it" Saito says.
Most importantly, Chef Saito credits the use of quality koshihikari rice. "Then," he says, "we load it with crispy braised pork belly, local Urban Gourmet Farms mushrooms, fresh blue crab and lace it with crab fat butter we make with crab roe sourced from South Carolina. To finish it, we drop a couple of ounces of sake-washed ikura on top."
CRAB FRIED RICE
"When we first started talking about DŌZO City Kitch, I thought the one menu item we needed the most...is fried rice," says Saito, a fourth generation restaurant worker who grew up in his father’s sushi bar. He teamed up with Gamble, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America-Hyde Park.
DŌZO Japanese-American Kitchen I 1419 East Blvd., Suite A.
"Good fried rice has so many factors to make it the right way, and it has always been shoved down to the side dish sections of menus."