Andonis Drakoularakos, owner of minuscule sushi restaurant Sushimou, dreams of one day, owning a smaller establishment! This unconventional chef wasn’t always a sushi enthusiast. In fact, all he ever wanted was to open his own bar restaurant. Floating around the food scene after he graduated from culinary school in 2006, he went from one job to the next but nothing really stuck. His professional life lacked excitement and he knew it. That is, until one day when he came across a sushi school in Japan and decided to take the leap. Once he was done training in Tokyo, he made his decision to set up his own business in Athens, something small and intimate that would break down the barrier between the chef and the customer.
Andonis Drakoularakos, photo © Nikos Alexopoulos.
Sushimou started out as a blog documenting his sushi training in 2014 and morphed into a brick and mortar location in the Fall of 2015. A couple of years down the line, things haven’t really changed. Despite being named among the world’s 100 top chefs at the Chefs World Summit, Drakoularakos has no intention of expanding his modest, 12-cover establishment. If anything, as his sushi skills improve with the passage of time, he would like to reduce the number of available seats and he still refuses to open his place on weekends. He claims it helps him live a more balanced life and, as a result, his customers get to eat better sushi. And if you’ve ever had the pleasure of spending an evening at Sushimou you would have to agree.
Photo © Nikos Alexopoulos.
Photo © Nikos Alexopoulos.
Photo © Nikos Alexopoulos.
