One of the Triangle’s most beloved restaurants has closed after 37 years
After 37 years and one dramatic shift, one of North Carolina’s most artful restaurants has closed.
Durham’s Yamazushi held its last service March 26, serving only eight guests its traditional Japanese kaiseke meal.
Owned by married couple George and Mayumi Yamazawa, the restaurant slipped into retirement. The pair are embracing the end of the run.
“It’s been wonderful, there’s such freedom,” Mayumi Yamazawa said. “I can’t believe we’re not working Fridays.”
The lease for Yamazushi ended in March, but the Yamazawas said they were offered an extension. Instead, they decided to close and begin working on their long-desired tea ceremony project, Majin-An.
“We wanted to do something other than the restaurant business, we wanted to offer something new related to tea ceremony,” Mayumi Yamazawa said.
The restaurant’s chef, George Yamazawa, moved to Durham in 1983 after an apprenticeship in Osaka. He and Mayumi opened Yamazushi in the Woodcroft Shopping Center in 1986 as a straightforward sushi restaurant largely catering to local tastes, meaning heavily sauced rolls sometimes dotted with flavored mayonnaise.
“Sushi was not popular in 1986,” George Yamazawa said in a 2018 interview. “People didn’t want to try it. We had to give it away.”
But the restaurant became popular and for 20 years Yamazushi operated as a familiar kind of sushi restaurant.
The transition to kaiseki
Then George Yamazawa faced three bouts of cancer and leukemia. After surviving the disease he suddenly wanted something different for Yamazushi, something striving for what he saw as the highest art for food and hospitality. He and Mayumi rebuilt Yamazushi into a kaiseki house, ending the a la carte sushi menu and instead serving a set multi-course meal for only a few diners each night.
Kaiseki is a formal Japanese meal comprised of eight courses, progressing through an appetizer, sashimi, a seasonal dish, a fried course, a grilled dish, a soup dish, a rice dish and a dessert. But the Yamazawas catered to every aspect of the meal, from George making the restaurant’s specific pottery, to growing the herbs and flowers and vegetables in their garden.
“It’s the true sense of entertaining,” Yamazawa said in 2018. “It’s not only how it tastes, but how it looks. It’s not just about filling up. It’s not just about eating, it’s a meal with a purpose.”
“We would like the restaurant to be remembered as very unique,” Mayumi Yamazawa said. “We first started as a regular sushi restaurant 37 years ago. After George overcame cancer, we came to a new understanding of how to serve and grow organic food. That was the last 12 years.”
Yamazushi’s kaiseki meal could take days to prepare and several hours to experience. Reservations were often booked out for months and served as few as a handful of diners a night. The restaurant rose to a special kind of prominence in the Triangle dining scene, existing as one of the very few, and possibly only, traditional kaiseki menu in the South.
“Many people have different memories for Yamazushi,” Mayumi Yamazawa said. “(The restaurant) stayed in people’s hearts in a very unique, special way. It took a lot of care and reflected the joy of eating out and experiencing a meal.”
New location needed for the tea house
Inside Yamazushi, the dining room is a tranquil hideaway meant to insulate diners from the world beyond. Situated in a busy strip mall with neighbors like a bar and gym, Mayumi said the couple knew a tea ceremony was impossible in that location.
“It requires compete silence,” Mayumi said with a laugh. “We can hear the bar and exercising place inside, so it was impossible to incorporate (tea ceremony) into Yamazushi.”
The tea house Majin-An will take at least another three months to complete, Mayumi said, and will likely offer classes to the public.
“George is building a tea room as part of the residence,” Mayumi said. “We want to continue offering some kind of cultural experience to people in Durham.”
Yamazushi’s final service was for eight diners, all family and friends of the restaurant, Mayumi said, which helped give the meal a sense of closure.
“When we sent those customers off and said goodbye, we had such a feeling of accomplishment,” she said. “We just want to say thank you so much to our diners. We’re really filled with appreciation for all the guests and friends who have visited us.”
This story was originally published April 11, 2023 at 1:05 PM.
