Denver Poke Company
In the 1980s, following the Vietnam War, the Nguyen family along with infant, Anh Nguyen traveled across the ocean by boat to America.
Raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Anh grew up in a city, rich in culture. His mother worked as a chef at a hotel in downtown New Orleans while his father ran a crab and shrimp boat. The both earned enough money to then open a small convenient store with a kitchen cooking hot plates for the surrounding neighborhood. From there, Anh gained his skills in cutlery.
Anh got his first start in a sushi restaurant while working as a sushi prep chef and going to college. Initially, it was a job to get half price sushi because Anh acquired an expensive plate and had not that much money. He didn’t care what the duties were, started out cooking rice, scraping tuna, flatten sharpening stone in 100 degree blazing hot sun outside, whatever it took to get sushi in his belly. Anh became quite fond of the craft of making sushi, that after graduating from college, he pursued bigger dream and moved to a bigger city, Dallas. He tried out a couple of sushi restaurant out but his big break came when he landed a job at Kenichi, an upscale Japanese restaurant that started out in Aspen, Colorado. He quickly moved up the ranked and became Sushi Sous Chef and Manager. Training under Executive Master Sushi Chef, Kiyomi Sano and Executive Sushi Chef, Yuki Hirabayashi, Anh began creating his own style along with the tradition Japanese traditions. While doing consulting work on the side, helping build sushi restaurants around Texas and Oregon, Anh finally decided to settle down in Denver when he got a call from Toshi San of Sushi Den to come work for them.
Realizing his passion of one day owning his own little shop, Anh left Sushi Den after 7 years there and went to help his friend, Corey Baker of Sushi Ronin/Izakaya Ronin open his restaurant while developing his own concept of what he wanted to share with Denver. After traveling to Hawaii, he knew what he wanted to do. The influenced of his knowledge of fish and the love for making people happy guided him to opening up his first poke shop. Nowadays, all he can think about is his family and how he came make them as proud of him as he wanted to make everyone that he met at the sushi bar enjoy his presents.
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