Listen to article • 0:00 min
One of Fusion Gyms’ five locations is in a strip mall in deep South Philly, sandwiched between a children’s clothing shop and a wig store. In the neon-green glow of the gym’s bright lights, seven Philly sushi chefs stretched on rubber mats, preparing to lift weights set to be as heavy as a fully grown bluefin tuna.
The crew — usually just four or five chefs — meets regularly on weekday mornings, loosely led by Albert Zheng, 34, and Dan Santana, 40, who co-own and run Kiku Sushi in South Philadelphia. (Zheng also owns Javelin in Fairmount and is a partner in the upscale Old City omakase restaurant Ogawa.)
Zheng and Santana are there every weekday. The other chefs drop in weekly or monthly. They exercise to stay fit for their physically demanding jobs, but also just to hang out with each other.
On a recent Tuesday morning, a larger-than-normal group gathered, including chefs from Kiku, Ogawa, and Javelin, as well as Kichi Omakase and Yanaga Kappo Izakaya, which houses the omakase counter 637 Sushi Club.
They also count among their crew sushi chefs from Sagami and Nakama. “We’re less consistent in summer, when our kids are home from school,” Zheng said. “During the school year, we drop the kids off and meet at the gym right after.”
They work out for two, sometimes three hours at a stretch. “The third hour is usually our jaw workout,” joked Zheng. “And it takes longer when there are more people.”
As they wove through Fusion Gyms’ open-floor plan, they compared ingredient lists and traded tips about good restaurants and where to get salmon for a better price. These are regular topics of discussion, along with mise en place and sourcing.
Kevin Yanaga, 55, and Joseph Nguyen, 27 — partners in 637 Sushi Club’s Oma Cafe, which pairs fish with coffee — coached the others through Muay Thai moves while trying to convince the other chefs to join them on a November trip to Vietnam for a three-day Oma Cafe pop-up. “I need help prepping,” said Yanaga.
At one point, Carlos Wills, 26, who helms the omakase counter at Ogawa, pulled up a list of available ingredients sent by his buyer from Japan’s Toyosu Market, the world’s largest wholesale seafood market, and showed Yanaga the $500 tray of uni and $55 60-sheet packet of nori that he was considering ordering once he was done working out.
On this Tuesday, the chefs were also drinking some of the world’s most expensive coffee, brewed by Nguyen. “It’s Orange Geisha and it’s expensive because it’s so rare and it takes half a pound of beans for me to brew one bottle,” explained Nguyen, who also owns and operates the Coffee Connoisseur Club. The Instagram-based subscription club sources beans from Nguyen’s plots in Vietnam and small farmers in South America. “This is a $250 bottle of coffee,” Yanaga interjected.
“I thought about bench-pressing the 281-pound tuna we brought into Javelin for the tuna breakdown last week, but it was so slippery.”
Albert Zheng
“I’m getting kumquat, jasmine, and orange notes coming from it,” said Nguyen. “I like saba [mackerel] paired with this, as the fattiness of it pairs with the bright citrusy notes. Saba with a little bit of wasabi.”
There was no saba in sight as Nguyen held a punching bag while Zheng jabbed, gently coaxing him on where to aim his punches. He did the same for Alex Jiang, 42, from Kichi Omakase. “We have a heavy jab over here!” he proclaimed.
When the crew moved on to bench-pressing, Wills said, “You can tell people this is how I prepare to lift a tuna.”
As Wills sat back on the weight bench and lifted the bar, he said, “This is a 60-pound tuna.”
The sushi chefs spot one another and cheer each other on: “One more! Half a tuna more! You’re very strong!”
“I thought about bench-pressing the 281-pound tuna we brought into Javelin for the tuna breakdown last week,” said Zheng. “But it was so slippery.”
“When we get a tuna like that, it takes eight of us to lift it,” said Yanaga.
“We got a Spanish bluefin last week,” said Wills. “It was $23 per pound, so just over $6,600. Pretty cheap. The Japanese ones are $31 per pound right now.”
“Who wants to do a whole tuna?” asked Zheng as he and Santana added more weights on to a bar for a round of dead lifts.
Nguyen steps up and dead lifts 315 pounds. “We’re hiring him for the next tuna breakdown,” said Wills.
In fact, the chefs do often join up for tuna cuttings, helping one another out even if they aren’t in business together.
But mostly, the crew keeps one another accountable at the gym, welcoming each other even if weeks or months pass between workouts.
Once the coffee was consumed and their muscles were spent, the chefs dashed off in different directions, to their respective sushi counters.
Dining and Cooking