The rise of a Southern Oregon sushi supper club
The Heart of it All
Six hand-formed nigiri, six curated courses, and six intimate dining seats. The tiny details embedded in Roku Supper Club (roku means six in Japanese) are delightful, enlightening, and satiating. Still, Chef Ethan Hernandez’s journey was long and winding before it led him to where he is today. Hernandez states, “Growing up in Mexico City both my mom and grandma liked to cook a lot—food was always prominent.” His mother was also a lover of sushi and an excellent cook. If you listen to Hernandez talk to guests about his mother, it’s heartwarming to hear the love and respect he has for her. “Come meet my mom,” he says, “she makes a really good shepherd’s pie.” The guests are thrilled, but you can also tell it’s not their first time enjoying their intimate, six-seat dinner with Hernandez, and this most certainly won’t be their last.
A Long and Winding Journey
Hernandez’s wandering food journey began as a child when he would go on “dates” with his mother in Los Cabos, Mexico. Sushi quickly became his favorite food. “Mom loved sushi so she took me to sushi restaurants. The chefs are right there and get to play with knives,” he says, smiling. However, he’s not afraid to admit that his first sushi memory went slightly awry when he ate a mouthful of wasabi thinking it was avocado (the group of six laughs; we’ve all been there). After falling in love with sushi in Cabo, Hernandez’s mother moved their family to Grants Pass when he was eleven. He fondly recalls, “Food was always prominent,” and he never looked back. His passion for the arts continued to grow. “I leaned towards the arts and I was in a band for a bit.” But he still had that nagging feeling to cook. He’s also an open book and talks about where it all started— “My very first job was at Sonic Drive-In [Grants Pass] flipping burgers.” He was hooked from there.
Once he knew his future was in the (edible) arts, he decided, “Sushi became my favorite food when I was little—if I am going to be a chef, it should be my favorite food.” From there he worked his way through restaurants in California, staging and studying under different chefs in Sacramento and San Francisco. He remembers thinking he wasn’t good enough to be paid to work under James Beard and Michelin Star chefs, but Chef Billy at Kru in Sacramento saw his potential and took him under his wing. Hernandez remembers he was so touched, “I went to my car and cried.” From that moment forward, he leaned into the lifestyle, working toward mastering the craft. “Sushi shokunin means you’re a master of the craft. I wanted to earn it.” He eventually moved to San Diego to his dream sushi restaurant, Hidden Fish where he honed his craft. But unfortunately, like many in the service and restaurant industry, the COVID shutdowns forced him back home to Grants Pass.
Hernandez went back to his roots and worked in a few sushi restaurants around town. However, he decided a change of pace was necessary and took the head chef position at Pomodori in downtown Medford. “I enjoyed working with classic Italian food and modifying the menu.” He is particularly proud of the updated salmon dish on the menu. Once he settled into his new role, his mind began to wander, and thinking back to his sushi days when he had a light bulb moment. “Omakase” was Hernandez’s inspiration for a sushi-tasting menu, which means, “I leave it up to you.” His goal was, and is, to take a small group of people on an intimate sushi journey where guests could experience “the purist form of nourishment—hand to hand, body to body.”
The Supper Club is Born
“I was drawn to the lifestyle of Japanese cuisine—you have to prove yourself,” and Hernandez was, at last, able to dive into that lifestyle with the blessing of Pomodori and Shoji’s owner, John Bohn. Hernandez launched the idea in September 2023 and sold out his first dinner at Pomodori in November 2023. Fast forward to April 2024, Hernandez is thriving in the intimate chef bar tucked in the back of Shoji’s.
When you enter Shoji’s, it feels like a secret you shouldn’t know as you walk past the hustle and bustle of the main restaurant. You are then greeted by two frosted double doors and enter the room as if being transported. If you catch the end of the previous service, you’ll see smiling faces, empty Japanese beer bottles, and Hernandez preparing for the next seating while still joking with relaxing guests.
Another gleeful face is also behind the bar and happy to greet you. Cue bartender extraordinaire, Topher Gomez. He somehow appears to have more than two arms as he expertly mixes eye-catching cocktails behind the bar. “I make a new cocktail menu every time, but I can make the classics, too,” he says. The classics seem pedestrian in the shadow of a drink that captures the essence of the ocean with a core of frozen pebbles and seashells in a clear highball glass and topped with “sea foam.” The flavor profile is delicate and fresh, a fun and delicious underscore to the six-course menu. “I love to use my farmers’ market connections when coming up with a new drink menu.” He strives to see how far he can take his creations. When Gomez isn’t inventing new cocktails behind the bar, he is creating beverage accouterments for his company, Craft Saint Bernard, which focuses on dried goods, including 24k gold-dipped oranges.
Once seated at the chef’s counter, Hernandez’s hands are in a perpetual state of movement. Slate boards become the canvas for his art as he places each handmade creation in front of you. And while his creations change each month, he keeps the same six menu progressions: Haiku, a three-part starter; Yasai, a salad or vegetable course; Nama, a raw, fresh course; Yakimono, a warmed or grilled meat; Nigiri the six-piece fish course; Dezato the final course of dessert. All of the courses are exceptional and well-executed, but Hernandez truly shines during the Nigiri course.
He fully embraces the art of “Omakase” with his variety of nigiri. He is careful to select each thinly sliced piece of fish, after the careful molding of the rice. Each delicate piece of nigiri is perfectly placed on top of the molded rice with a light finger press, adhering the fish to the rice. A quick swipe of a brush with a soy sauce glaze completes the creation. With each inception, you can tell Hernandez is both systematic and serene. Once placed in front of you, it’s almost too beautiful to consume, but also irresistible. The purest form of nourishment.
Nomikai
At the end of the evening when Chef Hernandez rolls up his knives, if you’re lucky, he will meet you on the other side of the counter and share a drink with you. He will continue to reflect on the love and inspiration he gets from his mother, but he also has dreams for the future. He is thrilled about the new direction of Shoji’s and hopes he can help them create a more serious sushi program. But the intimacy and curation of the Roku Supper Club is his life-source, a way back to where the dream all began as a small boy who loved sushi in Mexico.
The Roku Supper Club takes place on the first Sunday of the month with two seatings.
How to get in touch:
Contact Ethan Hernandez: [email protected]
Story by: Andrea Jacoby O’Shell
Photography by: Ezra Marcos
