Sacramento fixture Shoki’s reopens with new focus

Summer in Sacramento is no cakewalk: Even with the famed Delta breeze, frequent hundred-degree days provide dry, unrelenting heat. 

But for Ansel Lundberg, Shoki’s ramen has always been worth a trek — no matter the season. 

“I feel like ramen is kind of a winter food, but their soup was so good that it was worth going to [eat there] even when it was hot outside,” he said. 

A frequent customer at the restaurant’s former R Street location, Shoki Ramen House, Lundberg moved to Sacramento after college and called Shoki’s “one of the first great restaurants” he remembers trying in the city. 

Lundberg is among many who’ve developed a fondness for Shoki’s, as it’s commonly known, from the customers who lined up on R Street to grab a bowl when owners Kathy and Yasushi Ueyama closed that location in 2021 to local artists who contributed artwork to the newest iteration of the restaurant on 2530 21st St., which reopened with limited hours on April 27. 

“Our concept here is Yasushi wants to and I want everyone to feel like they're coming to our home, so the food items, the drinks that we use, the things that we choose are things that we actually choose at the house that we think is really good,” Kathy said. 

Its sage green exterior walls, picket-fence patio and gray tile floors under warm lights are a far cry from the charred building that caught on fire in 2018. And “Kathy and Yasushi’s kitchen” has its own cast of inanimate characters: Walk into the restaurant, and the titular Shoki — a framed painting gifted from Yasushi’s great-grandfather, a frog holding up a leaf like an umbrella, Snoopy and Woodstock all populate the space. 

From the art to the menu, this Shoki’s holds the history of a restaurant that has had many names, traveling across an ocean and a town, and the chef who has always been behind it: Yasushi. After the 2018 fire, construction delays and more, this community favorite has reopened on weekends; Yasushi puts together every plate and bowl from scratch — potstickers and gyoza are made fresh the day they’re served — while Kathy, a full-time teacher at Pleasant Grove High School in Elk Grove, works the front. 

Reservations are required, and have been selling out the same day they open, on Mondays each week. 

While the measured opening has left some people confused, Kathy said it’s rooted in ensuring the two of them — the shop’s main employees, alongside their son, who handles social media — don’t burn out. 

“For right now, we’re living it week by week,” she said. “[It’s] for us to be able to … come back without having mass production and using pre-made stuff, because then it defeats the purpose of why Yasushi wanted to be back in the kitchen.” 

It also makes sure everyone can enjoy the food.

“He doesn’t want to experience what he did on the last day of R Street where he had people waiting for hours and we had to start counting, and then we had to turn people down after they had waited for such a long time,” she said.

And, Kathy added, it gives the chef a chance to experiment: “He’s always kind of redoing things — our ramen toppings change from one day to another because he’s just kind of going and playing and perfecting.” 

A history of change, a return to form 

The restaurant has always been about evolution: Yasushi’s first Shoki’s was in Japan, and named for his love of both jazz and sake — Shoki Jazz and Jizake, founded in 1988. He then opened Shoki Ramen House on 24th Street in 2007 after the Ueyamas moved back to Sacramento.

But Shoki Ramen House wasn’t the first restaurant the pair opened in Sacramento. They had previously opened a Japanese restaurant in Folsom in 2001, which Kathy said had a learning curve.

“For him, it was really kind of learning how to do things here in California,” she said. “For me, it was the first time being thrown into a restaurant.”

The pivot from a restaurant serving a breadth of Japanese cuisine to specifically a ramen house happened for a number of reasons, chief among them being people’s expectations being a limiting factor for Yasushi’s originality. 

Enter Shoki’s famous tantanmen ramen — “California-born ramen,” as Yasushi calls it. It was a culmination of the experience he gained at a San Jose ramen shop before opening the first Sacramento Shoki’s and his past experience as a registered nutritionist.

At the original Shoki’s, everything was supposed to be made from scratch — a practice the current Shoki’s has continued. 

“The main concept was sesame seeds,” Kathy said. “Usually, tantanmen is made with peanuts and yuzu, but Yasushi, as a dietitian, knew there are a lot of people who had allergies to peanuts, so he wanted to make sure he didn’t use that.”

The R Street and 21st Street locations, similarly named Shoki Ramen House, came later, then the Shoki’s food truck. And now, the 21st Street location is Shoki’s Ramen, Gyoza & Koji, reflecting a new menu focus. 

The vision for the reopened Shoki’s has been in flux, Kathy said. Initially, the location was supposed to be a replication of the R Street location, and at one point, Yasushi planned to retire.

But after reflection and conversations with Kathy, he decided he wanted to be back in the kitchen. 

“He said, ‘I want to go back,’” she said. “Not only back to how he started at 24th Street, but back to when he was cooking with his grandmother, with his mother, being a dietitian and sake sommelier.” 

All those disparate experiences are pulled into the small-batch meals Yasushi serves each weekend, which Kathy says focus on his kaiseki techniques of cooking, which are designed to allow people to taste layers of flavor in the food, and on the natural umami of the ingredients he uses. 

Most of those happen to be both organic and California-sourced, from places like Riverdog Farm and Full Belly Farms in Guinda and Chico’s Rancho Llano Seco. 

“We go to the farmers’ market on Sundays to go shopping,” she said. “We're using organic Mary's [Free Range] chicken, cheekbones, everything. His bones are even organic, now, [the ones] that he uses to make the broth.”

Sacramento’s impact on Shoki’s 

The Ueyamas see the process of restaurant-making as one intertwined with building relationships with local businesses and customers alike. 

They’ve partnered with Gunther’s Ice Cream to offer green tea azuki and kurogoma ice creams, and offer a yuzu citrus cider from Two Rivers Cider Company, along with Himitsu, a Ruhstaller beer.

And their customers have also influenced Shoki’s: In its earlier days, the restaurant originally didn’t offer take-out, Kathy said, until a customer wanted a bowl of their ramen as his last meal. 

For many, the restaurant has become a family tradition. 

“We had a customer the other day … he took off his shirt because he bought another [Shoki’s] shirt, and he's like, ‘Can you sign it?’” she said. “This was where they kind of grew up.”

Among those is local artist Jose Di Gregorio, who regularly took his daughters to the R Street location on Friday nights for a “dinner night out.” 

He says the heart of the Shoki’s experience hasn’t just been the food, but the relationships surrounding it.

When Shoki’s on R Street closed during the early pandemic, save for selling ramen kits, then moving to takeout only, Di Gregorio said that was when he really “became homies” with the Ueyamas. 

“We frequented Shoki’s a lot more as an option, in part because options were limited but also because we love the food,” he said. “Whether it was small talk or anything like that, they developed a genuine concern and curiosity about who we were … and [Kathy] would provide my daughters with free drinks or an ice cream, or give me a beer [from time to time].” 

Di Gregorio also painted the mural on the side of the new restaurant, by Yasushi’s request, and says it’s a reflection of friendship first, “livelihoods that happen to work together” second. 

“Kathy is my friend who happens to own Shoki, and you know, I’m her friend who happens to be an artist,” he said. “I see them, and I’m really stoked for them, and I love being a part of the relationships they build.” 

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