Teriyaki:

A true Seattle original Originator Toshi Kasahara still cooks from a Mill Creek location

by Maria A. Montalvo

Oysters or geoduck? Coconut cream pie? Pho? Even a Dick’s Deluxe? There are so many wonderful culinary adventures available to us here in Washington. But when thinking about naming a quintessential Seattle food, teriyaki is synonymous with Seattle, like a Chicago dog or Philly cheesesteak.

Why? Well, you could consider that we have a sentimental attachment to teriyaki in Puget Sound as the American version of this Japanese dish originated in Seattle.

In 1976, this traditional style of Japanese cooking began to gain favor when Toshi’s Teriyaki introduced Seattle to a new style of teriyaki. It was first served on skewers but is now instantly recognizable in its white takeout containers.

Toshihiro Kasahara, the force behind the gastronomical innovation, immigrated to Seattle from Japan and opened the city’s first teriyaki shop on March 2, 1976.

Toshi’s Teriyaki Restaurant on Roy Street in Lower Queen Anne (a second opened soon at Green Lake) had 30 seats and five items: teriyaki chicken, teriyaki beef, and tori udon (noodles in chicken broth), which were served all day long, plus teriyaki steak and Japanese-style chicken curry at dinner.

Each item came with a molded mound of white rice, along with a cabbage salad with sesame oil and rice wine vinegar dressing. For a couple of bucks, you would get a tasty and satisfying meal made fresh just for you.

Today, the style of teriyaki Toshi invented is referred to as Seattle-style teriyaki. It was clear that Kasahara had found what Seattleites wanted, with people eating more healthfully and embracing Chinese and Japanese flavors.

Kasahara used sugar instead of the traditional sweet rice wine in his teriyaki sauce – the sauce is available for purchase on his website. It was initially created as a blend of soy, sugar, and chicken juices. It evolved into an all-American blend of soy sauce and sugar. A Seattle classic was born.

Toshi’s style of marinated, grilled chicken and beef eventually turned into Seattle’s regional specialty, with hundreds of shops springing up across town serving Toshi-esque teriyaki, with Toshi himself creating a chain of sorts, with 17 locations bearing his name by 1996.

The demand for teriyaki was constantly growing, and today there are hundreds of teriyaki spots in Washington. The rest of the country has caught on, but not like in our home state.

The best part of this story for south Snohomish County residents is that Toshi Kasahara, who lives in Bellevue, today owns just one location. And it’s right here in south Snohomish County on Bothell-Everett Highway in Mill Creek, a fixture since 2013.

“People are looking for something tasty for a reasonable price,” said Kasahara, 73, who arrived in the U.S. in 1967 at age 18 to study at the cooking school at Portland State University. “I’ve always been interested in cooking,” he said. In fact, he cooked teriyaki when growing up in Ashikaga, about 70 miles north of Tokyo. But mostly it was fish with his own blend of teriyaki sauce.

As you might expect, chicken teriyaki is the dish most requested by patrons. “Beef can sometimes be unpredictable,” he said. “Some can get more chewy than others. Chicken is typically pretty consistent.”

Forty-seven years after opening in Seattle, Kasahara still does all prep work and cooking inside Toshi’s Teriyaki Grill’s kitchen. He remains humble when told he must be a pretty good cook. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe a little bit.”

If you’re looking for the original Toshi’s Teriyaki, you have to stop in Mill Creek. Any restaurant called “Toshi’s Teriyaki” other than that location is not his. He had about a dozen locations as franchises, later selling the name when franchisees wanted to purchase their locations. There are Toshi Teriyaki locations in Edmonds and Lynnwood, among others.

Kasahara’s restaurant now sports the name “Toshi’s Teriyaki Grill.” “We wanted to be a little different than others,” he said. “When you sell your name, you don’t really have control.”

So why open in Mill Creek other than Bellevue? “It’s very simple,” Kasahara said. “Somebody had this place and wanted to be out. It was a very reasonable price, so I could not say no. This was small enough, and I’ve always liked a simple, small place.”

Worldwide favorite

Teriyaki’s literal definition comes from two Japanese words: “teri,” to shine, and “yaki,” to grill, and that is what traditional teriyaki literally is – grill-marked meat with a hint of shine from that sweet glaze.

In Japan, teriyaki is a mix of soy sauce, sake, and the rice wine mirin, which imparts a subtle sweetness; Japanese chefs in the 1600s originally invented it. Traditionally, the meat was dipped in or brushed with a sauce several times during cooking, usually grilled over an open flame. The meat and rice would be finished with a drizzle of teriyaki sauce.

We in Washington claim the humble and delicious American teriyaki as our own, but what about other American claims to teriyaki?

Some food writers and historians claim that it originated in Hawaii’s Japanese community sometime in the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1960s, teriyaki sauce – similar to what Toshi applied to grilled meats and poured over rice – had become a part of Hawaii’s culinary landscape, so it seems reasonable that Seattle may have inherited its love for teriyaki from Hawaii.

With more digging, though, it likely was not Hawaii that brought teriyaki to Washington, but the other way around. The Japanese restaurants prevalent in Washington and California before World War II featured many dishes with the traditional interpretation of teriyaki.

Spots throughout Japantown, a neighborhood of Seattle, and other Japanese restaurants nearby, thrived between the two world wars. As the country’s second-most-populous Japanese district, it was an area buzzing with food and shopping.

However, the year after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order resulting in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, few of these once-successful businesses survived until their owners were released from internment camps.

Amazingly, though, many new restaurants were established and some even somehow survived their communities that were practically destroyed during the war – and many were still serving teriyaki, along with sushi and yakitori.

Not only did these entrepreneurs pick up where they had left off through a lot of hard work, but the already healthy American appetite for Japanese flavors was reinforced by the returning military members who served in Japan and wanted to find that cuisine again.

From Maneki to Bush Garden Sukiyaki, legendary Japanese restaurants appeared htroughout the region. Teriyaki beef even showed up on 1950s menus at Canlis. So no matter how ubiquitous teriyaki restaurants became in the 1990s and 2000s, the origin story of this Americanized version of Japanese comfort food is likely right here in Puget Sound.

Lucky for us, not only is Toshi based nearby, but you can go find a number of crave-worthy teriyaki spots in south Snohomish County.

Of course, visit Toshi’s Teriyaki Grill in Mill Creek, the restaurant Toshi opened a decade ago. The menu is larger than his original five items, but not by much, and focuses on its perfect preparation and, of course, his signature sauce.

When you go to this Toshi’s, it feels like you are walking into a place with history. Their egg rolls are as good as their teriyaki (and I love a good egg roll), well-filled with a mix of meat, vegetables, and herbs, and served piping hot. He is definitely still doing it right, as Toshi’s Mill Creek spot recently won a 2022 Best of Western Washington Award.

5 Corners Teriyaki in Edmonds offers traditional teriyaki dishes with your choice of protein (chicken, beef, pork, prawns, tofu, salmon, short ribs, and more) served with rice and a green salad, yakisoba with rice, fried rice, stirfries and other wok dishes, as well as ramen, noodles, and even bento boxes that include a main protein with gyoza, sushi rolls, and edamame.

5 Corners’ egg rolls are also fantastic, and they are the big East Coast-style ones, a meal in themselves – perfectly prepared and delicious.

Teriyaki Miako in Mukilteo is consistently rated among the top spots in town, and that could be one of the reasons it has been serving up comforting dishes since 1948. It’s famous for its spicy teriyaki chicken and its fried chicken, but also for favorites like yakisoba, orange chicken, and fried rice. Portions here are even larger than most teriyaki places, and the dishes vary across a much wider array of cuisines.

The draw of teriyaki is unmistakable.

Teriyaki is an inexpensive, reassuring meal with that perfect combination of savory umami and satisfying sweetness. It remains one of my favorite meals, even more since I discovered more about our region’s culinary history.

Perhaps Seattle is equally proud of originating something delicious that has persisted based on the strength, creativity, and love of food from those who developed it. n