Like the pandemic, 9/11 was a major, tragic, and world-rattling event that caused many people to reevaluate their lives and careers. For film maker, artist, and purse maker Etsuko Kizawa it was the final straw that led her to finally open the restaurant she’d always imagined. “I wanted to do something more meaningful—get people healthy and happy,” she says. In 2002, Kizawa transformed her storefront at 102 Suffolk Street on the Lower East Side into Soy, a cozy, homestyle Japanese restaurant. There, Kizawa served what she calls “simple, wholesome, good food,” recipes that she had learned cooking with her mom as a kid growing up outside Tokyo.
Soy was a small neighborhood joint and well-loved for 15 years until development in the neighborhood went into overdrive and Kizawa got priced out. In 2017, she packed up and moved upstate to start the next chapter of her life. “I spent almost 30 years in the city, I felt like it was about time to leave,” says Kizawa, who wasn’t planning on bringing Soy to the Hudson Valley with her. “Then I found the location. The garden was the main thing for me. It was a big restaurant, maybe too big, but I thought, ‘OK maybe I can continue.”
In 2017, she bought the building at 419 Main Street, Rosendale (formerly home to the Bywater Bistro) and set about bringing homestyle Japanese food to the community. “I was always around food, I always loved cooking, I was always curious,” Kizawa says. “My mom was the kind of person that would cook everything from scratch. She would make me do simple tasks like peeling potatoes, snapping peas, deveining shrimp, wrapping dumplings.” By the time Kizawa was a teenager, she was cooking full meals on her own.
The menu at Soy is an extension of what she learned in her mother’s kitchen. A far cry from the greasy tempura and mass market sushi that “Japanese food” connotes in most Americans’ minds, the food at Soy is simple, wholesome, and authentic. For starters, there are homemade dumplings (both pork and veggie, $10); hiyya yako, a chilled silken tofu dish with red pickled ginger, bonito (fish) flakes, and nori ($8); miso soup; lactofermented vegetables made in house $5); and more.
“Japanese home cooking is more fusion than people think,” Kizawa says. “There are Chinese elements, Western-style components. We like to keep it healthy and balanced—more vegetables, not too much meat.” The menu features a mild katsu curry served with a tilapia cutlet over rice ($16).Kizawa serves niku jaga, what she calls “the ultimate Japanese mama’s dish,” with thinly sliced beef cooked with potatoes, carrots, and onions ($15). “It has a universal home cooking feel,” she says. “And a lot of people can easily relate to beef and potato—most cultures have something like that.” A popular dish (the closest thing to sushi at soy), is a spicy tuna bowl that comes with raw fish served over a bed of rice with sliced avocado. For cents on the dollar, you can add tempura flakes, kimchee, and/or pickled ginger. The monk bowl is a big hit with vegetarians and vegans and comes with salad greens, tofu, pickles, and seaweed salad over rice.
Keep your eyes on the specials board. In the summer months, this is where local produce from neighboring Fiddlehead Farm will appear, and in winter where you can find seasonal dishes like oden, a soup of fish cakes, cooked in a light broth.
The inside of the restaurant features a small market with some Japanese pantry staples. With service mainly outdoors in the lush backyard during summer months, Kisawa using the inside for Saturday night movie screenings. Recent films included Moonstruck, Wayne’s World, and Kiki’s Delivery Service.
Staffing at Soy has been an issue since the beginning, with the pandemic only worsening things. So be prepared to wait, as everything is made from scratch with a small team. “In a strange way, this pandemic—this quietness—it complements my food so much more,” Kisawa says. “I’m not trying to push it. Busier is not better. I am trying to take it as it is. As long as I can pay the bill and people are happy, that is just the best.”
This article appears in June 2022.
