When Saori Kawano arrived in New York City in 1978 from Yokohama, most Americans’ ideas of Japanese food ended at instant ramen and onion volcanoes. Since then, if you’ve enjoyed hand-cut soba noodles or an omakase dinner, or admired the graceful curves of a rice bowl or the flash of a Japanese knife blade, you can probably thank her.
Ms. Kawano is the founder and owner of Korin Inc., an importer of knives, kitchen tools and tableware from Japan that has become a place of pilgrimage for restaurateurs since opening in 1982. It’s the main U.S. supplier for big-name chefs like Nobu Matsuhisa, Daniel Boulud, Masaharu Morimoto and Eric Ripert; restaurants like Buddakan, Sugarfish and Eleven Madison Park; and hotel chains like the Four Seasons and Mandarin Oriental.
Her TriBeCa showroom, packed with wares ranging from $20 kitchen shears to $2,000 sushi knives, hums with customers arriving with knives to be sharpened, and the spin of the custom-made Japanese whetstone that powers the business.
The space is narrow, but it contains a vast network of connections and knowledge that has fueled the extraordinary rise of Japanese food in the United States.
“So much of the popularity and familiarity that we have now is due to her,” said Michael Romano, the chef of Union Square Cafe from 1998 to 2013. He was an early convert from European to Japanese chef’s knives, opened Union Square Tokyo in 2007, and now lives there part-time.