Go’s Mart

Daily fish, one fixed address

Tsuyoshi Kawano buys fish for the day, then returns to the counter as Chef at Go’s Mart in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, where the work narrows around what should be cut, dressed, torched, or left alone. Tsuyoshi Kawano, known to regulars as Chef Go or Go-san, has held this address since 1997, with his wife Chiemi Kawano part of the daily rhythm from market sourcing to tea service and clearing plates. The public shape of his career is unusually concentrated: one restaurant, one strip mall, one sushi counter, revised over time by the hands at it. Go’s Mart began with a grocery side, selling dried noodles, chips, premade rolls, vegetables, bottled matcha, and Hi-Chew candy alongside sushi. Kawano and Chiemi gradually cut away that older form and left the sushiya. The lineage here is not published as a chain of named teachers or houses, so the clearest apprenticeship is the restaurant itself, accumulated through repetition. That matters because the room gives him little to hide behind. The fish arrives daily, the board changes, and the meal moves by his judgment rather than a printed script. Guests ask what is good today. Kawano answers from the bench.

A dry-erase board and the chef’s sequence

The method at Go’s Mart is chef-led without ceremony. There is no printed menu; a dry-erase board carries daily specials, and the counter works best when Kawano sets the order. The progression can begin with cold plates, then move through white fish, tuna, shellfish, grilled pieces, hand rolls, and richer endings such as ankimo. He often serves nigiri in sets of 3-4, then checks the room before continuing. Around 15 pieces, the question may become direct: full?

The white fish plate explains the discipline. Kanpachi, matoudai, idoubai, and kelp halibut may sit side by side, dressed in ways that make texture and fat read against one another rather than disappear. Kawano uses citrus zest, shiso, sea salt, nori, torching, truffle oil, caviar, and 24k gold leaf when they serve the bite. Shirako can arrive bound in nori. Santa Barbara uni is treated as its own material, not an accessory. Crab becomes a hand roll with frill and warmth. Abalone sashimi, toro, live scallop, and seared beef sushi appear within the same grammar: the fish or shellfish first, the garnish as pressure, the rice as the measure beneath it.

Fluorescent light over the counter

The room keeps its plainness. Go’s Mart sits in a Canoga Park strip mall, and inside the counter has more authority than the decor: fluorescent lighting, white tile floors, orange walls in some accounts, minimal ornament, and a quiet closeness that makes every plate visible. The old grocery memory lingers in the restaurant’s bones even after the shelves gave way to the sushi bar. Chiemi Kawano moves through the room with hot green tea, keeping the pace clean while the chef cuts and assembles at the station.

Nothing in the space strains toward polish. That is part of its usefulness. At the counter, the guest sees the small sequence of decisions that make omakase feel less like a format than a conversation: what the market yielded, what the board can bear, which bite should follow the last. If the night ends on ankimo with sweet plum sauce, scallion, sesame, and goji berry, the close belongs to Go’s Mart.