Sagami, the revered Japanese restaurant in Collingswood, is being sold to a longtime friend

Sagami, one of the Philadelphia area’s most acclaimed Japanese restaurants, soon will get a new owner, with the retirement of founder Shigeru Fukuyoshi, whose wife and business partner of 50 years, Chizuko, died last summer.

Alan Su, the owner of Nom Nom Ramen, Umami Steak & Sushi Bar, and Shiso and a Sagami customer for three decades, will take over, effective Jan. 1. Many of the staff will remain, Su said, including the head sushi chef, Brian Nguyen, who has been at the six-seat counter of the Collingswood BYOB for 28 years.

Su has been working at Sagami at Fukuyoshi’s side for the last several months during a transition. When the Fukuyoshis considered retirement about five years ago, they had chosen Su to take over, but Chizuko Fukuyoshi changed her mind. After her death in July, Shigeru Fukuyoshi, 79, wanted to keep going but in the fall decided that it was time to step away.

It would be Su’s time. “This place is my wife’s place,” Fukuyoshi said Friday during a chat at the restaurant. “She was the boss and she was my brain. I lost my direction, because 50 years we were together, not only doing this place. Now I have trouble because I don’t know anything. Now I want to pass over the whole thing to him. Alan is like my son.”

Su, 48, listening a few feet away, said: “I’m really grateful that he thinks I’m the right person. I hope he’s right. Hopefully, I’ll make him proud.”

Su has been working at Japanese restaurants since graduating from Philadelphia’s Central High School.

Other than introduce online reservations, he said he plans no major changes at Sagami, a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation’s Best Restaurant Award in 2017 and 2019 while Shigeru Fukuyoshi was a semifinalist in 2023 for Outstanding Chef. Su said he would add a dish or two from his other restaurants’ repertoire but otherwise, “I really want to keep the same culture.”

Su marveled at Fukuyoshi’s stamina. He frequently works seven days a week. The restaurant is closed Mondays, but Fukuyoshi enjoys meeting delivery drivers, Su said. The restaurant opens at 4 p.m. for dinner. Su said he may bring back lunch.

While working with Fukuyoshi, Su said he has picked up some of the reasons for Sagami’s success. “I think that his style of food has a lot to do with the sourcing and the ingredients,” Su said.

“It’s very simple. There are only three or four ingredients in almost anything that is in here, whereas in other places, even in my own restaurants, the ingredients can become very complicated. But at the same time, there’s just so much balance in it because he doesn’t need all types of spices. I’m learning a lot more about that. There’s nothing complicated about it.”

Su said he also has learned about Fukuyoshi’s generosity. “Everything about him is so anti-business like,” Su said. “He’s just doing this to serve the guests and his staff. He doesn’t do any of this for profit or anything.”

The Fukuyoshis, both born in Japan on the same day in May 1945, met in 1969 while he was a sushi apprentice at the Japanese restaurant in New York City where she waited tables.

They married and their daughter, Mimi, was born in 1972.

Two years later, the family moved to South Jersey and bought an ice cream shop on a particularly challenging stretch of Route 130 South that forces drivers to make a wicked last-minute turn into the parking lot.

At its 1974 debut, Sagami — believed to be the first Japanese restaurant in South Jersey — was one dimly lit, pine-paneled room whose low ceiling vexed anyone over 6 feet tall. In 1987, the Fukuyoshis installed a separate sushi bar and in 1989, added a 30-seat dining room with higher ceilings.

The accolades and crowds never stopped.

Asked what he planned to do in his retirement, Fukuyoshi replied: “You know, that is a hard question. Everything happened suddenly, so I have to look for how I will keep going myself.”