Restaurant management announced on Instagram that it is closing on Sunday, June 14, after six-and-a-half years of serving diners at at 2451 Shattuck Ave.
Owner Yoshika Hedberg told the Chronicle that the restaurant’s lease is up and she decided against renewing it. Fish & Bird has stopped being profitable, she said, as sales have dipped and higher ingredient and operating costs press her already-thin margins. In the last two years, co-owner Asuka Uchida and chef Shin Okamoto also departed, leaving her as the sole operator.
“It’s been a great six-and-a -half years. I love our regulars and I’m going to miss them a lot,” Hedberg said.
Hedberg and Uchida, who met at Japanese chef Chikara Ono’s now-closed Oakland izakaya B-Dama and later worked together at Ono’s Alameda omakase spot Utzutzu, opened Fish & Bird in January 2020. They brought in Okamoto, a former colleague at B-Dama, as chef.
Fish & Bird quickly garnered attention with dishes tapping into sousaku ryouri, or “creative cuisine,” a style of contemporary restaurant in Japan that leans into varied preparations and international influence. Fish & Bird landed on the Chronicle’s list of the top Japanese and sushi restaurants in the Bay Area; former Chronicle restaurant critic Soleil Ho wrote that the restaurant’s style “closely reflects what one can find in restaurants in Japan’s cities.”
Early dishes included cheese-stuffed fish cakes, duck tataki dressed with black vinegar and a runny quail egg, and nabe with thin slices of Berkshire pork and mizuna, a Japanese mustard green, in a clear broth. In typical izakaya fashion, the bar offers sake, shochu, beer and Japanese spirits like whisky and gin.
“We wanted to do something no one is doing here: a modern style of Japanese cooking,” Hedberg told the Chronicle ahead of the restaurant’s opening. “We don’t want to call it fusion. It’s something truly Japanese but with a flair of local flavors.”
Hedberg, who is turning 60 soon, is thinking about what she’ll do after closing Fish & Bird. After Uchida left the restaurant, she started Plenty Plus, a brunch tasting menu popup out of Oakland café Plenty. Hedberg is, however, done working in restaurants.
“The physical work is demanding. The hours are demanding. I want to do something else next,” she said.