Brother Chefs Reunite at Sushiko in Chevy Chase

Piter and Handry Tjan worked at the restaurant in 2008, then left only to return years later

October 15, 2014 8:50 a.m.

To paraphrase one of Jane Austen’s most famous phrases, “it is a truth universally acknowledged” that a great sushi chef must be Japanese.

Piter and Handry Tjan, two Indonesian immigrants, have fought against that misconception since they started out as young sushi chefs in Maryland.

The two brothers recently reunited at Sushiko in Chevy Chase, the remaining outpost of the District’s first sushi restaurant that opened in Glover Park in the 70s and closed in 2013.

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“I feel sometimes it’s not the correct job because I’m not Japanese,” Piter said last week as he sat with his brother at a red booth inside the restaurant that’s tucked into a space at Chevy Chase Center off of Wisconsin Avenue.

The two brothers are trying to rekindle the success they brought to the restaurant while working there in 2009, when it was named one of the top 10 sushi restaurants in the country by Bon Appetit.

The story begins in 1999 when the brothers—Piter was 19 and Handry was 16—and their family came to Baltimore from the Indonesian island of Sumatra. At the time, their mother told them they had come for a visit. About three months later, they learned they would be staying permanently.

Piter took a job at his uncle’s Chinese restaurant in Glen Burnie and Handry went to high school. One of Piter’s friends told him about an opening at Kawasaki, a sushi restaurant in Baltimore, and Piter got his first job making sushi. That’s where he learned how to scale, slice and arrange fish.

By chance Piter met the owner of Raku while playing badminton at George Washington University in 2005. The owner gave him a job working on the sushi line at the restaurant’s Bethesda location. During this time, Piter began teaching Handry the techniques of making sushi. Handry says he learned by rolling rice in newspaper.

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By 2006, Handry also had joined the Raku staff. In 2008, Piter was tapped to open the new Sushiko in Chevy Chase and brought along his brother to help him about two months later. Soon after, they had received a good review from the Washington Post and the Bon Appetit nod.

But Piter wasn’t content. He wanted to expand his culinary skills and left the restaurant in 2010 to join the staff at Uchi in Austin, Texas. He went there not only to work at one of the top sushi restaurants in the country, but specifically to work under chef Tyson Cole, a James Beard Award-winning chef who is not Japanese.

“He inspired me,” Piter said. “He says to me, ‘You don’t have to be Japanese to be an excellent sushi chef.’ ”

 At the same time, Handry left Sushiko to open Thai Pavilion at National Harbor in Prince George’s County. In 2013, he was invited to become the executive chef at Sushiko in Chevy Chase and returned to the restaurant. Though Piter had settled into Austin and was raising a family, Handry encouraged him to return to Chevy Chase.

In January, Piter returned. He says he wanted to be closer to his mother and to raise his family here.

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Now the two hope they can bring the restaurant, which in recent years has slipped in popularity among diners, back into the limelight. They’re offering a new fall menu, a nine-course chef’s tasting menu and the opportunity to indulge in “omakase,” in which Piter or Handry prepare special dishes with seasonal ingredients using the freshest fish available on a given day. Last week, that included items such as fatty tuna with white sturgeon caviar, kumamoto oysters and mackerel wrapped with monkfish liver.

A sushi omakase tasting costs $60 and up per person, while the chef’s tasting menu runs $90 per person. Sushi rolls range from $8 to $17; while sushi and sashimi are $3.50 to $5 per piece.

The Tjans say they source their fish with the assistance of Sushiko “creative director” Daisuke Utagawa from all over the world and receive deliveries six days a week. Utagawa refers to the brothers not as chefs, but as artists.

“Pretty much we’re just trying to help build the restaurant with our experience,” Piter said. “We’re combining what he learned, whatever I learned and we talk about how to bring it together.”

Chef Piter Tjan prepares a plate of sushi at Sushiko in Chevy Chase. Credit: Andrew Metcalf

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