WeBe Sushi Closing Absolutely Broke My Heart

I have, for the most part, dealt with all the restaurant closures with a “what can ya do?”, then a sad smile and a long airy sigh. But WeBe Sushi closing absolutely broke my heart.

I came to San Francisco from Santa Cruz but before that Los Angeles. Or San Gabriel Valley I should say. Technically a part of Los Angeles County, but not really. Like being a poor relation. 

My first time trying sushi was a crappy browning avocado roll bought premade at the grocery store in Santa Cruz during my college years. I thought I was extremely brave and painfully cosmopolitan to try this. I had no idea how to eat it so I put a bit of wasabi and ginger on each bite and drowned it in soy sauce. Lovely, delicious, salty, soy sauce. 

When finally moved up to the City (Capital letter. No first name necessary. Like Cher). I would pass what would eventually become my very favorite restaurant every day on my way home from BART, if I wanted to take the slightly fancier street of Valencia rather than the wild carnival ride that was Mission street.

At the time, for some unknown cockamamie reason, I was commuting back and forth from Berkeley for my job at Cody’s Books. I could barely even afford the BART fare. Once I stole a roll of quarters from my housemate just to be able to get to work one week. I am deeply ashamed of this but I was broke and I suppose she will read this but it’s probably time to fess up. The point is I would pass this funky little restaurant nearly every day. 

The neighborhood had not yet been devoured by gentrification, so truly there were only a few shops on a street where there are now dozens – a record store with listening stations, a Vietnamese restaurant, and a lone clothing store. But it was something. 

My favorite restaurant had a pair of window seats on either side of an alcove where one of those fairy tale doors that were split in half lived. When it was hot they would open up the top of the door and leave the bottom closed. It made me think of Hansel and Gretel. Thinking on it now I am not so sure if I am making this part up. I am forgetting it now even as I am trying to mourn it. 

It was dark in there and everything glowed under red lights. The menus and specials were written on faded construction paper and taped to the walls with amusing little cartoon illustrations. There were Japanese knickers knacks here and there and what must have been a giant kite or wind sock of a carp on the ceiling. It must have been there for 10 years or more. The sun just leeched out the color. The restaurant was lined with mirrors on one side so that if you saw someone you fancied you could catch their eye in the reflection. If you were young, you could shoot a few looks at yourself and admire your radiant youth. Youth is gorgeous. In the 25 years I went there I would eventually stop trying to catch my own eye and preferred to avoid having to look at myself. Instead I would admire the little creature I had made as he learned to eat his own avocado sushi. The gateway drug. But I am getting ahead of myself. 

The reason I began to go there was that, in my poverty, it was the only meal I could afford and basically the only time I could treat myself and go out to eat when I had finally had it with the Mission Burritos. It was called the Early Bird Special there and there was a happy little shrimp on the illustration. It was an obscene amount of food. Was it $7? Or was it $10. Let’s call it $10. Miso soup, seaweed salad, and two rolls and some tea. You could be poor and miserable as fuck but a nice little meal out could restore your dignity. It became my favorite place.

I had a boyfriend. An Irish guy with giant blue saucers for eyes. He was in the prime of his beauty with long brown scraggly student hair. I couldn’t believe I could have him. It was as if I had come across a rare flower and had plucked it in mid bloom. The petals had not even stopped moving. 8 years older I felt a bit like Mrs. Robinson schooling him in the fine cuisine of Japan. Really I was just schooling him in the fine cuisine of the Early Bird special because let’s face it, I really knew fuck all about Japanese food. Ah but you see, he had been working the beginnings of the dot com parties and this little twerp informed me that the sushi was really so much better at this other fancy ass place called Blowfish. I remember being incensed. Where in the hell did this little twerp get off telling ME, a sophisticated woman with a worldly palate, what constitutes good sushi. It hadn’t occurred to me that I never really knew, nor would ever know, what that was like. I would always be a denizen of hole in the walls that were more ambiance than flavor. Not by choice. More-so by birth.

After two years of covid, hanging on by a razor thin margin of error there it was, windows covered in paper that said “Take Out Orders Only”. I phoned to find out if they were open now that the mask mandate had been removed. I was giddy to find out that they had made it and ever giddier to know that we could go sit in that wooded, mirrored and darkly lit room to sit colliding elbow to colliding elbow at those tiny tables. 

When we got there we were greeted by an older Japanese gentleman and his wife, both in traditional attire. It was the owners who had to come out of retirement to take the reins once more during this unprecedented pandemic. And everything was just gone. 

I asked her, “Where did everything go?” They were beaming with pride at the job they had done refurbishing it. Everything was gone. All of it. The carp, the old paper signs, the dark lights, the wood, the tiny tables stuffed into a small place. It was just gone. 

I wanted to run out when the first wave of heartbreak hit. But I didn’t want to hurt them. They were so pleased with themselves and I didn’t know how to explain to them how they had torn out everything I had ever loved. But I didn’t have the heart to leave and my son was worried and I didn’t want to embarrass him. So I stuck it out. I put on a tight little smile and kept my voice high and frantically pleasant and just soldiered on. And the shitty thing was the food was so much better than it had ever been. Really. Truly delicious. But how to explain to anyone else that I wanted the middling food with the old wooden floors and the sign above the toilet of the back of a hobo dribbling urine into a toilet with instructions for the men to take aim. When I went to the bathroom in search of the old 50s painting with the line of cartoon poodles and bulldogs waiting to use the fire hydrant it wasn’t there. I used to sit on that toilet and study the little dogs one by one and chuckle to myself. 

We walked back to the car and I was sick with nostalgia. My son tried to comfort me and even then I tried to keep it light and frothy. The food was really great. And it will get its own personality again. And isn’t it good that they survived the pandemic. And we should try to go again to make sure they survive. That mom and dad who had run that business for 34 years. Who knew the neighborhood even as it disappeared around them. Parents with children who were raised on those rolls and then left the city never to return again. 

But to be honest. I am not sure they will make it.

We piled in the car. 

My son who is mostly private on matters of girls owing to the fact that he is only in middle school told me that it was strange. That at school the boys and girls in his class were starting to date one another. Liam was going with Kathy Jo and Matteo was dating Frankie.

Frankie hates everybody. The boys joked that she just hates Matteo less.

And this my friends was when I broke.

Nothing ever stays the same. Everything moves. Everything changes. 

So I sat down and wrote this little love note to the restaurant that broke my heart. The one I am mourning even as I forget.

This was written during the pandemic but is especially poignant now that WeBe Sushi has closed forever.