If it weren't for bluegrass music, there might not be sushi in East Nashville.
When Hide Watanabe's father was a boy of 11 or 12 growing up in Kobe, Japan, he bought a radio kit, assembled it, and when he turned it on the first music he heard was bluegrass, coming from the U.S. Navy station near his home. He fell in love with the music instantly. He loved bluegrass so much that even though his parents forbade him—many Japanese were opposed to anything American at the time—he would steal off to the woods to listen in secret.
Eventually, the elder Watanabe would learn English—by hanging out with American sailors at a Kobe coffee shop—and go on to form the band Bluegrass 45, which in 1971 became the first Japanese bluegrass band ever to tour the United States. Later, his son would accompany him on one of his many overseas trips. "We were at a bluegrass festival in Nacogdoches, Texas," Watanabe recalls. "I met a little kid who was playing the banjo. And I told my dad I wanted to play."
So he learned. And for years, Watanabe pined for American soil. When he was 18, his father finally let him go, and he landed in Nashville hungry to play music—which he started doing immediately. Ironically, wanting to stay in America is what led Watanabe to sushi, not his Japanese heritage. "I heard that being a sushi chef was a good way to get a green card," he says. So he studied at Ichiban on Second Avenue, learned the craft, and eventually began working as the sushi chef at Wave Sushi Bar, located inside East Nashville seafood house Batter'd and Fried.
"I didn't have a favorite Asian restaurant in Nashville," Watanabe says, with a hint of pride that could be taken as cockiness in someone less obviously gracious, "so I'm proud of what I'm doing." His eponymous restaurant (see review on p. 59) opened at the corner of Riverside Drive and McGavock in late 2008 and has done well enough, with its pan-Asian and sushi menu, to recently expand its hours.
Watanabe the chef has served hundreds, probably thousands of Nashvillians; Watanabe the picker has likely entertained as many. He's played, informally, with friends—Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe among them—and recorded with the likes of Kenny Baker and Josh Graves. For his part, Scruggs is a patron of the restaurant—but does the bluegrass legend like sushi? "Nooooo," Watanabe says, the way you say it when someone asks you if it's cool to serve hot chicken on multi-grain foccaccia bread. "Earl usually has the rib eye or chicken teriyaki."
For all his bluegrass pedigree, right now Watanabe is confining his fingerpickin' to fish, rice and seaweed. Asked if he's considered having bluegrass nights at his restaurant, Watanabe says his plan is to keep those two parts of his life separate—though he does see a parallel between the two: "I don't want to serve anything I wouldn't want to eat, or play anything I wouldn't want to hear," he says. On a more personal level, he adds, "When I get offstage, and someone comes up to me and says, 'Hey, that sounded really good,' it's the exact same feeling as when someone tells me the food is delicious. It means a lot to me."
Photographed at Watanabe by Eric England
