In its first six years, Shobu Japanese Cuisine has faced a variety of challenges that in some ways have been out of its control.<\/p>\n
From unknowingly opening four months before a worldwide pandemic to dealing with homelessness and vagrants that has turned off potential customers, Shobu Japanese Cuisine, according to restaurant management, has faced a few \u201cbreak or make\u201d moments.<\/p>\n
Including owner Jerry Yang retiring in September.<\/p>\n
Shobu Japanese Cuisine staff, led by restaurant manager John Chang, has worked hard to continue to provide an authentic Japanese cuisine experience with a variety of sushi options and ramen noodles.<\/p>\n
Located on Blackstone Avenue a block south of Herndon Avenue, Shobu was voted as the No. 1 Japanese cuisine in the Fresno area, according to the 2025 Fresno Bee Best of Central California \u2014 The People\u2019s Choice Awards.<\/p>\n
One of the restaurant\u2019s more popular foods on the menu is actually an Asian fusion dish that combines Japanese broth and Vietnamese pho noodles.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou take your favorite Japanese broth, like tonkotsu broth, which is a rich and creamy mixture, and you add in not ramen, which is traditionally a wheat flour noodle, but you add pho noodles, which are white rice noodles,\u201d said Chang, who also serves as the restaurant\u2019s head chef. \u201cIt\u2019s really good. It\u2019s like the pho noodles soak up more of the broth.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople really like it and order it a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Shobu is most known for its sushi.<\/p>\n
The restaurant\u2019s Yelp rating of 4 1\/2 stars based on 662 reviews backs up the many word-of-mouth compliments it has also generated.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople tell us all the time that our flavors are different compared to other places,\u201d Chang said.<\/p>\n
Yet even with all of its success, Shobu still struggles in some ways to stay open, management said.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s partly due to inflation with the rising cost of goods and services, and the fact that people are eating out less.<\/p>\n
A January 2022 story in Food & Wine broke down reasons \u201cdining out no longer feels \u2018worth the money\u2019 for millions of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Chang said Shobu definitely has had its stretches of both busy and quiet times.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome day, you wonder if we might close or we might not,\u201d Chang said.<\/p>\n
Last summer, Shobu owner Yang voiced his frustrations with homeless and vagrant people hanging around his restaurant. He said he\u2019d sometimes caught people in his covered patio area after having hopped over the iron wrought fencing.<\/p>\n
Yang said he considered closing the restaurant all the time if the vagrant issue in the area wasn\u2019t addressed.<\/p>\n
Many other businesses along Blackstone Avenue have had to deal with vagrant problem, too. Some businesses in the area eventually closed for good \u2014 like the old Starbucks and Long John Silver\u2019s once located just a block north of Shobu.<\/p>\n
Roughly nine months later since Yang publicly considered closing Shobu, Chang said there have been fewer incidents involving vagrants and homeless people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gotten better; you deal with it when things happen,\u201d Yang said. \u201cFor us, we\u2019re just trying to focus on providing a great Japanese restaurant experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In its first six years, Shobu Japanese Cuisine has faced a variety of challenges that in some ways…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113,22268,117051,117050,117052,1457,117053],"class_list":["post-268751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-japanese-cuisine","tag-jerry-yang","tag-john-chang","tag-pho-noodles","tag-restaurant","tag-restaurant-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}