Sonoko Sakai is a beloved figure in LA’s food scene. The chef and author’s 2019 cookbook, Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors, won the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ award for Best International Cookbook. She also regularly holds workshops on making Japanese staples like fresh soba noodles, ramen, and katsu curry.
Her new book, Mai and the Missing Melon, follows a young girl who wakes up to the smell of a ripe melon in her house.
Many people in Japan consider melons as precious fruit, Sakai tells KCRW. Locals grow them in greenhouses and gift them during special occasions. They’re packaged in wood boxes lined with velvet and come with high price tags.
This is a far cry from how Americans view melons. Sakai was shocked by what a server handed her after she ordered a melon at Bob’s Big Boy in LA in the 1970s. This was after she lived in New York, Tokyo, and other cities.
“Instead of getting a sliver of a melon, they served half of a cantaloupe with a maraschino cherry,” she explains. “Just to see this beautiful orange cantaloupe and something that I didn't have to share with my brothers and sister — I come from a very large family of five children — I just felt like a princess.”
“I'm almost like my grandma. I'm thinking, ‘What can I leave behind? And these childhood experiences that I shared with my grandmother were so beautiful that I needed to write it down, and I needed to illustrate it,” says Sonoko Sakai. Credit: Ben Hunter.
Mai and the Missing Melon is inspired by Sakai’s trip to deliver a beautiful melon to her grandmother in the coastal Japanese town of Kamakura. Sakai’s great-aunt was dying and asked her to give away the melon that she wasn’t able to eat. However, on the way to her grandmother’s, Sakai left the fruit on the train.
“She was like, ‘Oh my God, we must find this melon.’ And if we fail to find it, I thought, ‘Oh my god. I'm not only going to lose my aunt, my grandma's gonna die too,’ because they're both already in their 80s.’ We went on this mission and we found the melon.”
Writing Mai and the Missing Melon was one way to preserve these memories with her grandmother.
“I'm almost like my grandma. I'm thinking, ‘What can I leave behind? And these childhood experiences that I shared with my grandmother were so beautiful that I needed to write it down, and I needed to illustrate it.”
A love for storytelling and food
Prior to being a chef and author, Sakai worked as a film buyer for a Japanese distributor, as well as an independent producer. Soon, she realized she couldn’t survive in those roles. Food, and especially noodle-making, became a place of refuge.
“That seemed like a rote job that was almost like therapy. I just said, ‘Oh, God, I do really love food. And maybe I don't have to hustle.’”
She continues, “Then I realized that when you live for so many years, you have a lot of stories. Everybody has a story to tell. And I said, ‘God, I just think I should just focus on telling my stories. And it just so happened that I tell stories pretty well through food because I love to cook, and I love being around food and people who love food.’”
Sakai traces her passion for storytelling to her grandmother, who often shared memories of her life, imparting values along the way. “She was not a wasteful person. She lived through three wars. So it was always about not wasting food and living life to the fullest. And so she was an incredible storyteller. So I was always listening.”
Courtesy of Shambhala Publications.
Courtesy of Shambhala Publications.
Courtesy of Shambhala Publications.
Courtesy of Shambhala Publications.
Courtesy of Shambhala Publications.