Azumare: The Wok, the Cherry Blossom, and a Whole Fried Snapper
The snapper arrives whole, fried until the fins go brittle, its skin scored and blistered, a pile of tostones and a heap of zarza criolla crowding the platter beside it. Two tables away a sushi chef is torching the top of a roll. Somewhere behind, a wok cracks and a cloud of soy and ginger drifts across the room. Outside the glass the Intracoastal sits flat and grey green, a yacht easing past the seawall at walking speed. This is Azumare on a Sunday afternoon in Aventura, at the far end of an open air plaza built in 1984, where the parking is free and the palm trees are older than most of the tenants.
Nikkei cooking is what happened when Japanese migrants reached Peru in the late nineteenth century and found Pacific fish, chili and lime where their own pantry should have been. Azumare is the kosher version of that argument. Hari Benzaquen opened the first Azumare in December 2022 in Hallandale Beach, in a room inside the Knights Inn Hotel on Diplomat Parkway, then moved the whole idea north to the Waterways at the end of 2024.