O pioneers! - six of Northwestern States' top tastemakers

Sunset, August, 1997 by Schuyler Ingle

Harry is the second generation, and the driving force of Mutual Fish today. His son, Kevin, could be the third generation of the Yoshimura fish dynasty, should he decide to stay in the family business. It's not the easiest act to follow. Dick set a standard for high-quality seafood. Harry has maintained that standard, and acted as a bridge between his culture and a much broader population in Seattle.

"Early on, only a couple of Caucasian chefs would try different things out," Harry recalls of his first years at Mutual Fish. "The more fearless among them would buy the strong-flavored, small, bony goatfish and kali kali favored by the older-generation Japanese, and put them on menus, boning them out in the kitchen."

That was then. Today, the Yoshimuras have brought the full riches of the sea to Seattle dinner tables. The best restaurants in the city call Mutual Fish in the morning to see what's fresh. Innovative chefs like Palace Kitchen's Tom Douglas have added kasu cod and ocean (seaweed) salad to their menus because Harry introduced them to these traditional seafood tastes. Teaching in his peculiar nonteaching way, Harry has shown the Pacific Northwest what quality, flavor, and tradition in seafood are all about.

Mutual Fish Market, 2335 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle; (206) 322-4368.

CHUCK BEEK MONORAIL ESPRESSO

When Chuck Beek bought his first espresso cart and started selling coffee to Seattle beneath the monorail (hence the name Monorail Espresso), there were only four basic drinks to choose from: espresso, cappuccino, latte, and mocha, in one size and with one kind of milk. He made them all strong, or in his words, "double restretto." It was 1980.

"The first time a customer asked me for a double-double," says Beek, "I thought I'd heard it all. But it was only the beginning."

Back then, there was one espresso cart on the streets of Seattle, and Beek owned it. He would own more carts over the next 15 years, and move them around to various locations in the city. He would see other carts spring up on the pavement, many of them owned and operated by people he had trained. He would see Seattle become to coffee what Bordeaux is to wine: the world capital, imitated but never duplicated. He would see new coffee drinks develop, flavorings added, different kinds of milk demanded. "There might be 1,000 different coffee drinks today," Beek says, "if you add up all the possible combinations."

His greatest business skill has been survival for all these years. "I just never knew it wasn't easy," Beek says of the street coffee business. "So I survived. I never quite saw how hard it was."

His wife, Susie, came into the business to help. They made many friends downtown, and a lot of those friends had occasion to help out through the years. Like when the Beeks were suddenly forced to move the cart and had no place to park it at night. A restaurant owner came to the rescue and let them park the cart in his doorway at night - for a year. "That guy," Beek says, "gets free coffee for life."