“Working In The City” is The San Diego Sun’s feature Q&A series with downtown San Diego business operators. It’s a way to get to know the city by meeting the people who work here. This is the 14th in an ongoing series.
Company: Asa Bakery Cafe (634 14th Street, East Village)
Sister companies: Under Dreampeer INC., we also have Sushi Gaga (traditional omakase) and Bar Kamon (craft cocktail speakeasy), both located at the Asa Bakery Cafe site. We also run Beshock Ramen, one in East Village and one in Carlsbad.
Owner/Manager: Ayaka Ito (partnered with Kumi Ito and Masaki Yamauchi). I lived in East Village from 2017 (when Beshock Ramen first opened) to 2022. Now I live near SDSU (Del Cerro), about 10 miles from East Village.
Employees: 100-plus.
Celebrity sightings: Padres players – Yu Darvish likes our sandwiches and Ha-Seong Kim comes to Beshock sometimes.
Regulars: Roy is a regular. I started to see his takeout order every day, ever since the pandemic. He’s become a friend. He has dinner at Beshock almost every day and comes to Bar Kamon for a nightcap.
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Specialties: It’s different at each place…
- Asa Bakery Cafe. Under Chef Yuto Hikosaka, we sell 25-plus varieties of Japanese pastries, soft-serve ice cream, sandwiches, hayashi rice, coffee, matcha and other Japanese tea lattes.
- Sushi Gaga. Chef Shinnosuke Otsuka makes traditional omakase course dinners, with most of the ingredients coming from Japan. High end and exclusive experience. Sake pairings offered by certified sake sommeliers from an exclusive list of sakes.
- Bar Kamon. 1920s Taisho Roman-themed Japanese craft cocktail bar. Creative craft cocktails using Japanese or Asian-influenced ingredients.
- Beshock Ramen. Homemade ramen, sushi rolls, Japanese style appetizers, serving 60+ varieties of sake.
Family business start-up story: We opened Beshock Ramen in 2016 with my mother Kumi and my cousin Masaki. We wanted to share Japanese cultural things that we think are great but not so accessible here in San Diego. I’m a certified sake sommelier, so I wanted to bring some of the sake culture here.
Best aspects of working downtown: There’s a good mix of industry people and locals, along with tourists. So we don’t really slow down in business from season to season.
Worst aspects of working downtown: Parking. And the homeless situation is pretty wild. We wanted to do a self-serve style at Asa, but that wouldn’t work downtown because of people who might just wander in.
Most surprising part of working downtown: You can’t leave anything outside after you close – tables, chairs, plants, propane gas, anything. It’s not like that in Japan. Pretty much nobody steals things like that.
Scariest downtown work memory: We’ve had four car accidents in front of our downtown Beshock location. It’s chaotic. We’ve seen some robberies and police chases, too.
Finding staff: There’s always a group of people, especially bartenders, who want to work downtown.
Pandemic moment: During Covid, a regular customer came in and had a mild mental breakdown. Her life situation had built up inside. One of our employees hugged her. We encouraged her, and others, to come back in to talk with us. Especially if they lived alone and didn’t have anyone to talk to.
Big event boosts: We survive from our regulars. Big conventions like Comic-Con and TwitchCon are good. Baseball games are interesting. We get big crowds before and after the games, but during the games we’re very slow. I think some people who might come to eat avoid downtown when there’s a baseball game because they know parking will be crazy.
Favorite downtown business that isn’t yours: Cowboy Star. They’re genuinely nice people. They’ve been around for a long time and they share advice. Also, Sovereign Thai. They’re newer but their food is amazing.
Business friendliness of the city, on a scale of 1 (easiest) to 10 (hardest): I’d say 7. With Asa, we knew the permits would take us 8 months to a year. We planned accordingly.
How can the city be more business friendly: Maybe they could get more staff? During the pandemic, some people were working from home, so it wasn’t as efficient. That was a huge cultural shock. In Japan, everybody works according to the schedule. Trains and buses are never even a minute late in Japan. My mother had done business all her life in Japan and couldn’t understand why things weren’t done here by the due date. With permitting, everybody blames everybody else. The contractors blame the city. The city would have an agent pass us on something. Then another person would come five months later and say, “you’re missing a part.” Why didn’t they tell us that five months ago? Everybody’s not on the same page.
Best insider tip for running a downtown SD business: Train your staff to make connections and be welcoming. SDSun
Want to nominate a business (or your own) to be featured in Working In the City? Email: rondonoho@gmail.com.
