Restaurant Owner, 79, Helped Put Japanese Cuisine On The Map In South Jersey

COLLINGSWOOD, NJ — Chizuko Fukuyoshi, who operated a nationally recognized Japanese restaurant with her husband for 50 years in South Jersey, died Monday. She was 79.

Fukuyoshi was born in Tokyo and emigrated in 1969 to New York City, where she met and married Shigeru Fukuyoshi, according to her obituary. A few years later, they moved to South Jersey and opened Sagami Japanese Restaurant in Collingswood.

Sagami opened in 1974 — well before Japanese cuisine caught on in the Philadelphia area. But together, the Fukuyoshis developed one of the region's premier destinations for sushi and Japanese fare.

"People would see the menu, see raw fish and not want to stay," Chizuko Fukuyoshi told Patch in 2012. "After about 15 years, people began to get comfortable. Fifteen to 20 percent of customers would order raw fish in the first few years, compared to 60 to 70 percent now."

The James Beard Foundation, which doles out some of the culinary industry's highest honors, made Sagami a semifinalist for its Outstanding Restaurant award in 2017 and 2019. Shigeru Fukuyoshi was a semifinalist last year for Outstanding Chef.

Outside of her profession, Chizuko Fukuyoshi enjoyed working out five days a week at the gym, gardening and collecting antiques, her obituary says.

A widely circulated Facebook post, which has since been deleted, claimed that Sagami will permanently close. But the future of the restaurant has not yet been determined, according to Mimi Fukuyoshi, Chizuko's daughter, who spoke to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Sagami had been closed since June 23 for its annual vacation and was scheduled to reopen Friday.