“You don’t sound good,” he would say. “I send you . . .” and the last word would be miso soup, or powder to make the Japanese fish stock known as dashi, or edamame, or pickled ginger.
That’s the way a conversation with Hisashi “Taki” Takimoto usually went — even if you were perfectly healthy. He was worried.
Takimoto, who died Feb. 9 at age 62 of natural causes, was known for his “flu shot in a bowl,” a zippy, flavorful ginger miso soup that he began serving in 1990 at his Golden Bowl restaurant on East Colfax Avenue, which later moved across the street and became Taki’s Golden Bowl at 341 E. Colfax Ave.
Takimoto, who wanted everyone to call him “Taki,” probably could have turned his Golden Bowl concept into a local chain, gone corporate, but that’s not where his heart was.
“You get too big, you sacrifice quality,” he said when I interviewed him in 2001, when I was at Westword, for a story about his work with Colorado soybean farmers. He was starting up a wholesale food-distribution company to package the ginger miso base, along with edamame, dashi and other Japanese ingredients, an endeavor that he continued on a small scale until his death. “People will know you just want to make money.”
Taki’s aims always were much higher, meticulously researching the healing properties of the food eaten by Japanese people — particularly those in Okinawa, whose residents live longer and healthier than anyone else in the world — and trying to figure out how to get the people in his small part of Colorado to try the same dishes. He was, by the accounts of friends, obsessed with taking care of others, often at his own expense.
“If you are sick, you should eat miso soup,” he said in the Westword story. “If you smoke or drink too much, you should eat miso soup. If you are having female problems, you should eat miso soup. Really, there is no time you should not be eating miso soup.”
He put his money where his mouth was, and put food in others’ mouths whenever he could. He was famous for giving away as much, if not more, than he sold — if you walked into Taki’s with kids, you were handed a container of edamame free, every day. If he recognized you as a regular, he often added something to your tray — a piece of sushi or an extra pile of pickled ginger. When he saw that a customer was in need, he waved away attempts to pay, and he hired anyone he could.
It also was telling that in an industry known for its turnover, many employees had been with him for years, and some, such as Tony Bosser, have been there from the start.
Bosser was there on Friday, holding down the fort with Patty Coutts, a decade-long employee, now the manager and planning to keep it open. As usual, there were regulars in the joint who knew the two of them by name, people who won’t leave after their meals until they’ve thanked one of the duo personally or until Bosser waves goodbye.
Taki’s clientele has always been a cliche of the melting pot — a businessman with his tie flung over one shoulder to keep it out of the noodle soup sits next to two foreign-exchange students sitting next to a homeless woman wearing a giant set of headphones counting out pennies and talking loudly to no one about how she’d really like a beer. Employees of both major daily newspapers frequent the place, often meeting their sources for cheap, convenient meals. Lobbyists and legislators squeeze in with street people and families.
Taki loved that. He usually worked 12-hour days, and as his longtime neighbor, Maureen Hartman, points out, that left little time for himself. “When it snowed overnight, sometimes I would see him drive away in the mornings with just a little hole cleared off in his windshield, in a hurry to get to the restaurant,” she says. “Sometimes I would try to run over before he got out there, to clear off his windshield for him, but that was hard to do, he was always up before everybody else.”
When her mother died, Hartman says Taki left boxes of food outside her door. “He never said anything, just quietly put the things there and left,” she says. “That was just his way. He didn’t require anyone to make a big deal about it.”
A few years ago, Taki found out I had cancer, and he sent me a box of food, too, bags of “Taki’s” dashi from the commercial operation, containers of edamame from the restaurant, containers of ginger miso. I called him to say thank you, and told him he couldn’t send any more, as it was against our ethics policy. A week later, an employee from The Denver Post called to say that food had arrived with my name on it, a shoe box full of Ziplocs, tidily arranged and labeled in marker, with no return address or card. Inside the Ziplocs: dashi, edamame, ginger miso.
I called Taki. “You weren’t supposed to do that,” I said.
“I do not know what you are talking about,” he said. “Someone must care about you. You go get better now. Bye-bye.”
Kris Browning-Blas often writes in this space about how it is the nature and the destiny of chefs to take care of others. As we come out of a period in history that felt like it was all about people taking from others and head into a time when we’re going to need to reach out, Taki’s way provides a pretty good model for emulation.
“Taki had that giving spirit that we could all use a little more of,” Hartman says.
I take comfort in the idea that when the world gives us a Bernie Madoff, it also gives us a Taki.
Kyle Wagner: 303-954-1599 or travel@denverpost.com
