Three Generations of Mothers Bring Sushi to Chicagoland

Mother's Day is a particularly special day for Giulia Sindler, owner of the restaurant Kamehachi in Northbrook, since she belongs to the third generation of women to continue the restaurant legacy her grandmother began.

“Kamehachi means eight turtles,” explains Sindler. “The turtle signifies longevity and the number eight is an infinity symbol, so together they represent long life and good luck.”

Sindler's grandmother, Marion Konishi, opened the original Kamehachi  of Tokyo on Wells Street in Old Town in 1967. It is is widely recognized as the first sushi bar in Chicago. Across the street from the renowned Second City comedy theatre, Kamehachi  introduced a new trend in dining and became a favorite spot amongst chic, sushi-eating Chicago personalities, including prominent businessmen, politicians, artists and celebrities.

Marion Konishi grew up in Torrence, CA, the daughter of vegetable farmers who had come to this country from Hiroshima in the 1930s. She entered into a traditionally arranged marriage at an early age, and soon after World War II broke out, she and her family were sent to an internment camp in Arizona. Her daughter, Sharon, was born while they were living there in Camp Rivers.

After the war was over, Konishi’s husband came to Chicago to look for work. Marion returned to California temporarily but soon followed him to Chicago, where they settled in Old Town. They belonged to a community of Japanese-Americans, maintaining many traditions of their culture amid the colorful and diverse Old Town neighborhood. Many of these Nisei (first American-born Japanese) settled in this area to rebuild their lives after the war and attend The Midwest Buddhist Temple on Menomonee Street nearby.

Konishi soon had a second daughter, but she and her husband divorced shortly afterward.  “It was very shameful to be divorced at that time and in the Japanese culture,” comments her daughter Sharon Perazzoli. “But she was a survivor.”

Konishi went to secretarial school and worked for the American Medical Association for several years, raising her daughters. Then a cousin who owned a Kamehachi in New York City decided to open one in Chicago and asked Konishi to run it for him, which she did.  However, he took most of the profits. Finally after about ten years she was able to buy him out and the restaurant became her own.

Konishi’s daughter Sharon became a professional dancer, performing in the Flower Drum Song with a national touring company and also dancing with Bob Ito. After a three-year career she married an Italian musician, had two children and concentrated on being a mother.

“She was a great mother,” Sindler says. “She was always there for me.”

Sindler, who grew up in the Washington D.C. area, loved to spend summers in Chicago with her grandmother, helping in the restaurant.

“I remember my grandmother’s station wagon always smelled like fish,” Sindler said. “She would drive to the airport herself to pick up the fresh fish.”

 However, Sindler admits that as a little girl she was sometimes frightened of her grandmother.

“She was definitely in charge and no nonsense!”

“She worked very hard at the restaurant. It was her life,” Sindler adds.  “I could always find her perched at the end of the bar in her white uniform and red apron with a cigarette in one hand.”

When it came time to apply for college, Sindler applied to Northwestern without even having seen the campus. “I just knew I wanted to be in Chicago,” she says. While in school there, Sindler worked with her grandmother on Sundays.

“I don’t know that I did that much work, but I just liked being in the restaurant with her.”

It was also at the restaurant where Sindler met her husband Brian, a regular customer at the sushi bar.

After graduating from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in 1987, Sindler worked as a technical writer, an advertising copywriter, and eventually as an assistant to a local businessman who was opening an art gallery in Old Town. It was here that she learned many of the necessary business skills she used later to run the restaurants. 

When her grandmother died in 1990, Kamehachi closed. Two years later, at Sindler’s prompting, she and her mother resurrected the restaurant at a new location two blocks away.

“We didn’t do it for the money,” said Sindler. “We wanted to reincarnate the history of the restaurant because people loved it so much. And we definitely had a guiding spirit.” 

Working side by side, the mother-daughter team has continued to honor their family’s tradition and through their passion they developed Kamehachi into a multi-unit “mini” chain. At one time seven locations existed in Chicago and the outlying suburbs.  At present , five locations remain open—in Northbrook,  Old Town, Streeterville, River North and a sushi café in the Chicago Loop. 

The mother daughter duo has also formed a restaurant consulting company and recently consulted for a sushi concept restaurant in Florida.  

“I can remember going into the homes of my grandmother’s friends as a little girl,” recalled Sindlers. “It was like entering a different world. The shoes would all be lined up by the door. It’s hard to describe the feeling, perhaps a peace and a softness, like the women themselves.” 

Sindler seems to have evolved from that culture herself, calm and tranquil as she talks about juggling all the aspects of running five restaurants, as well as managing her home and two children’s schedules.  Her husband Brian, an artist, is also a hands-on parent, busy now helping with their daughter Elenna’s blossoming musical career. 

When asked if she thinks Elenna will carry on as the fourth generation of women to run the restaurants, Giulia laughs and suggests that it may well be her son Adam who does that. 

“Elenna is more interested in other things,” she says, “but I know that whatever it is she decides to do, she will put her heart and soul into it and be successful.”