Beloved Japanese restaurant is closed 'for the foreseeable future' due to co-owner's death

COLLINGSWOOD — A nationally recognized and locally loved Japanese restaurant here is closed, at least temporarily, due to the death of one of its co-owners.

And the future remains uncertain for Sagami, a dining destination for 50 years.

The restaurant's website says, “We will be closed for the foreseeable future due to the passing of co-owner Chizuko Fukuyoshi.”

Chef Shigeru Fukuyoshi and his wife Chizuko opened the restaurant in 1974. Sadly, Chizuko, 79, who managed Sagami, died on July 15.

A social media post had stated that Sagami was permanently closing, but Mimi Fukuyoshi, their only child, said that’s incorrect and it’s too early to say.

“We haven’t decided on the restaurant’s future yet,” she said in an email to the Courier Post.

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Sagami, which is at 37 Crescent Boulevard, was a semifinalist in 2017 and 2019 for the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant.

Chef Fukuyoshi was a semifinalist in 2023 for Outstanding Chef.

James Beard Awards are among the highest honors in the culinary world, often called the “Oscars of the food world.”

The obituary for Chizuko said she was born in Tokyo and married Shigeru after moving to New York City in 1969.

They came to South Jersey in 1974 and opened Sagami.

They opened the restaurant in a wood-paneled ice cream parlor on the Camden border, according to Sagami's website.

It didn’t take long to become a favorite sushi restaurant in the region.

Chizuko, a Haddonfield resident, had interests that included "working out five days a week in the gym, gardening and collecting antiques," he obituary noted.

But it said, “Chizuko’s life revolved around Sagami and the customers, working six days a week to provide the best food and service. Some of these clients became her best friends and almost like family and she would do anything for them.”