While working at Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto’s restaurant Nobu in San Jose, Bradley Gallego learned some of the hard-edged discipline of making sushi.
“He would come by and check out your knives,” Gallego told San José Spotlight. “He’d go up to a random station and chop some stuff to see if they were good. And if he didn’t like the knives, he’d throw them in the trash and walk away.”
Sharp knives are critical to the profession, particularly when making Toro Toast, a signature dish at the newly opened Trifecta where Gallego is a co-owner. The dish — originally created for an Oscars party — is a ping-pong-sized mound of finely minced bluefin belly topped with a creamy mentaiko aioli and roasted jalapeño truffle soy and served balanced on brioche toast.
Gallego had already undergone a trial-by-fire initiation into the craft in 2010. He was fresh out of high school when he received an emergency call from his older brother, Ryan, who needed help.