Meet Jeffrey Ozawa of Tenzo in Los Feliz

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeffrey Ozawa.

Jeffrey, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in a small Quaker town in New Jersey. My dad is Japanese and my mother is from Philadelphia. Food was always a special thing for us because it was able to make sense of the weird combo we were as a family. I never really thought about any of this as unusual until I left home for college, and I realized the stuff I grew up with was impossible to find anywhere.

I started cooking on my own, trying to recreate the tastes I grew up with and the new ones I fell in love with around the world.

My partner Jaimie and I moved to LA and started a catering company called Gorumando which was Japanese-inspired but rooted in California’s wonderful local produce. We met Saehee as neighboring vendors at the Echo Park Craft Fair. She was doing a concept similar to ours and also came from a background in the humanities (poetry in her case). We all hit it off and would collaborate on projects and events before reforming as Tenzo, which would incorporate our cooking along with our curation of tableware and cooking supplies we picked up along the way.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In the conventional sense there are constant obstacles to running a small business in a town like LA, but this business is such an extension of who we are that I don’t really notice them. Tenzo is very much the three of us making sense of our lives, our various interests and skills. Occasionally with work we find ourselves in these completely ridiculous situations, careening down some canyon with our little cars loaded with food and ceramics. If I really think about it, it can’t be described as anything but a pain the ass, but we’re laughing and having a good time.

Please tell us about Tenzo.
Tenzo is a business to do with cooking and enjoying food. We do a mix of catering, cooking classes, dinners, but we also have our storefront in East Hollywood and our website shoptenzo.com where we sell kitchenware and home goods and run articles and recipes and all kinds of food-related content. In that sense, we’re unique, as we combine a lot of different things under one umbrella.

Contact Info:

• Address: 1709 N Kenmore Ave Los Angeles, CA 90027
• Website: http://shoptenzo.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @shoptenzo

Image Credit:
Jaimie Lewis

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