Chef
Billy Kong
- Discipline
- Chef
- Based in
- San Francisco, California, United States
i. Biography
Edo Mae-style sushi depends on repetition more than display: rice held at the right temperature, soy seasoning blended for depth, marinades timed, and handrolls served before the nori loses crispness. At Saru Sushi in San Francisco, Billy Kong works inside that register as operator, treating Japanese cooking as a living practice that can adjust only when its center holds. Sushi preparation begins before service. At Saru Sushi, Kong’s care is visible in meticulous rice preparation, calibrated seasoning, and sauces made in house rather than treated as convenience items. The method favors discipline over flourish: intervene when needed, wait when the ingredient requires it, and let the simplest move carry the weight when it is the correct one.
Formation
Training across San Francisco, Kanazawa, and Kyoto gave the work its Japanese frame, while bakery work and food delivery supplied the practical base. In Kong’s case, the path into sushi came through labor that teaches stamina, pace, and the habit of starting where the work is available before a point of view can sharpen. Sushi bars teach by repetition and exposure. Kong worked as a sushi chef at a variety of sushi bars, then at Sushi Sam in San Mateo, California, moving deeper into fish, rice, knife work, seasoning, and the small margin between properly prepared and merely assembled. The craft rewards precision and reveals shortcuts quickly; the habits become the identity of the counter. Restaurant work now carries that same language across several formats. Billy is the chef-owner / operator of Saru Sushi Bar, operator of Ken, chef-owner / operator of Saru Handroll Bar, and culinary projects leader of Bentoville. The roles differ, but the working vocabulary remains Japanese cooking, seafood, handrolls, sauces, rice, and the control required to make service feel clean rather than forced.
Current Practice
Classic preparation at Saru Sushi Bar in San Francisco includes ponzu, miso, fish and unagi sauces made in house under Kong’s direction as chef-owner and operator. The sauces function as structure, not garnish: acidity, sweetness, salt, and depth measured against the fish and rice. He has said that unagi takes 10 to 13 hours to prepare the Japanese way, and that fish marinates for two hours in an in-house miso sauce. Those timeframes make the point without decoration: some parts of the work cannot be compressed without changing the result. Seafood sets the range of the menu. Kong concentrates on seafood and carries more fish than other restaurants, using that breadth for preparations such as the Hamachi truffle: yellowtail with truffle oil, ponzu, garlic chips, and scallions. The build places yellowtail at the center, with richness, acidity, aroma, and crunch arranged around it. Roll construction shows the same concern for balance under a different set of pressures. The N.V. Roll is made with deep-fried prawn, eel, snow crab, masago, avocado, and sweet soy glaze. Its success depends on layered texture, controlled sweetness, rice, temperature, and a roll architecture that holds. The same attention to sauce, rice, seasoning, and temperature carries into private omakase parties, where the sushi-making sits closer to the guest and the timing is immediate. Project work extends the discipline beyond the sushi counter. As culinary projects leader at Bentoville in Bentonville, Kong applies precision and care to a performance-based dining format, with dishes workshopped, tasted, and signed off by him. “I want a warm, cozy restaurant.” Billy has said.
Career - chef-owner / operator — Saru Sushi Bar, San Francisco, California - operator — Ken, San Francisco, California - chef-owner / operator — Saru Handroll Bar, San Francisco, California - culinary projects leader — Bentoville, Bentonville, Arkansas - bakery worker - food delivery worker - sushi chef — variety of sushi bars - sushi chef — Sushi Sam, San Mateo, California Education: San Francisco, Kanazawa, and Kyoto
Signature
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