Kenta Asazu (Photo by David Brendan Hall)
Kenta Asazu has been making onigiri for most of his 17-year-old life. Not just while working in the kitchen at his family s restaurant, Sa-Tén, but since he was a kindergartner, in fact. He describes onigiri as sort of a Japanese version of the American peanut butter and jelly – a comfort food that you learn to make very young. My great-grandmother and my grandparents would make them for me every day as a lunch when I would go to school in Japan every summer, Asazu says. The New Orleans-born and Austin-raised teen decided to channel that long-developed culinary skill into the small onigiri pickup and delivery service Samurice.