Tani Sushi Bistro

One of the things we like most about being food bloggers is getting to meet the people behind the food. Chefs, bartenders, and culinary creatives throughout St. Louis have captivating stories about how their restaurant began, how they ended up in St. Louis, and what inspires them. We’ve met some really cool people through The Newlywed Chefs and we think you should have the opportunity to meet them as well. So, we’ve made it a point to include more interviews in our posts, featured under the “St. Louis // Who to Know & Where to Go” tab. Our hope is that knowing the people behind the dishes can make your restaurant experience more meaningful and personal.

Tani Sushi Bistro has been in Clayton for TEN years now and continues to deliver the highest quality products to its customers. Husband and wife team Eric and Jenny Heckman have poured their hearts into this place, and it shows. Eric was gracious enough to sit down with us and chat about Tani. He even was super patient when I realized that my camera battery was still charging on the wall and Neil had to run home and get it. They’re great people with a great story producing great food in a great part of town. Enjoy!

Stan the Man Roll

How did Tani start?

It started with my wife, Jenny, and I meeting. I met at her brother’s sushi restaurant when I was working there while finishing graduate school. My wife wanted to really get her own restaurant and I thought with my background in the operations side and her background on the chef’s side, we just needed to go to a different market because her brother had his restaurant in Springfield and we didn’t want to be competing. St. Louis is close to her family, close to my family in Chicago, just right in the middle and so we moved up here in 2006, found a location and opened up in 2008. We moved to our current location on Forsyth in 2015.

Where was the original location?

The original Tani was on Bemiston. It took a really long time to find a location, we did all the market research and everything was pointing out west, but Clayton was love at first sight. Just had to negotiate a deal and we got it!

What do you think keeps you in Clayton?

This neighborhood has been really good to us. We’ve been here for 10 years next month. Our big focus is the quality of food. We are known as the most expensive restaurant in the city, so we’re not cheap, but we try to bring in the best products as possible and in this area. I found out that a lot of these people travel or go into other cities for business or vacations and they’re eating the best of the best, then they come back to their local market and they’re looking for something to replicate what they had in the major markets. I think we’ve kept up as best as we could with products, creativity, and presentation. It’s really hard to be consistent with top quality products for such a long time, but I work with all of our food brokers, especially our fish broker. We’re always going back and forth with what’s on the market, what’s new. They’re based out of Chicago, but she sends me messages and pictures of what’s fresh in Japan. We try to keep up with market trends. My wife visits Korea twice a year to see what’s going on over there, and we’re always trying to progress. We want to keep some of the basics with what people really love, but we always want to be progressive and on the top of our game.

Spicy Chirachi Bowl

What does Tani mean?

Valley.

How did you pick the name?

My father-in-law speaks Japanese and does a lot of business in Japan. Trying to name your restaurant is like trying to choose a name for your baby; you go through long lists and think of meanings. I was born and raised in Missouri. Small town, USA. I told my wife that we need something that’s easy for American’s to say. We can’t do all these great Japanese names that are going to get butchered. Tani even gets butchered. My father-in-law gave us a list of ten names and Tani was one of them. Four letters, the first is a T, it’s easy to pronounce so we went for that.

How do you decide what goes on the menu?

We start with a traditional sushi base: California rolls, tuna rolls, and then we grow from there. When we create new things we have everybody taste it, we work on sauces, and try to create something that’s a little bit different. Sushi should be simple and you should let the product speak for itself. If you do too much you might as well have steak and rice. My wife makes the final call. The key to our sushi is the sauce. The same sauces on everything will make things taste the same, and then you can’t justify the cost. It’s an extensive process, but the true test is the market.

Stan the Man Roll

What’s your favorite dish on the menu?

That’s a tough question, but I always go back to our Yellowtail Jalapeño Carpaccio. We also have a new dish that’s a Spicy Chirachi Bowl. It’s light, we put a ton of tuna and hamachi inside with a cream based spicy sauce, and there are a ton of vegetables in there. In terms of the rolls, the Oh My God Roll is the most popular. That was one item we brought up here from my brother-in-law’s restaurant. I’ve been eating roll that since 2004 and it’s still the most popular roll in Missouri. We are making a ton of them and sell 20,000 a year. It has crab mix, shrimp on the inside, sushi shrimp and avocado and then three different sauces on top. It comes out on fire!

Another popular roll is the Stan the Man Roll: I’ve never been a big fruit inside sushi kind of guy, but this one has fresh mango inside and also has a cool story. One of my friends is the grandson of Stan the Man and ran his company. He was on vacation and sent me a text one night while on vacation and said that we have to get this roll at our restaurant. I was hesitant because it has mango in it, and trying to find a source where we could get fresh mango all year round was hard. But we found a source that can get us that fresh mango all year round so we went for it. So the actual creator of the roll was not us, it was Stan the Man’s grandson on vacation.

The Tale of Two Fish Roll is also a popular roll. That has salmon and avocado wrapped in soy paper with tuna on top, and the two fish are like a play on the book title.

Oh My God Roll

Do you serve cocktails?

Yes, we are revamping the cocktails, wines, and sake menus right now. We can’t get all of the sakes we want to in Missouri. A few years ago what we were serving was cool and new but now you can find it in grocery stores. So the market is ready for new stuff, and I’m excited to see if we can get it.

Do you like to cook at home?

Yeah, we cook when we can. It’s primarily Asian food. Sushi is hard to make at the house. When you make rice, you have to make a TON of rice. We can’t just go to the store and buy just a small tuna block. My wife cooks a lot of great Korean food and Chinese food. The sauces she makes are unbelievable. Every sauce we have here are homemade, except for one or two of them. Primarily all the salad dressings, etc. are her recipe. I like to cook, more American style steaks and chicken in the oven or on the grill.

Tempura Shrimp with Sesame Sauce

Are there any restaurants around St. Louis you’re excited about?

I’ve been working so much we haven’t gone out a whole lot recently, but if we do go out, we like to go on Olive Street to the authentic Chinese restaurants. There are a couple restaurants off Grand we like to go to as well. I was excited when Capitol Grille opened up, they are really knowledgeable.

What are your plans for he next few years for the restaurant?

I want to continue with the brand. At the old place we had a cool lounge spot with music and I didn’t think it would go that direction but it did. We moved here because we knew a lot more growth in Clayton would happen. I didn’t want to be naive and think that a major sushi brand wouldn’t come into Clayton or around us, and if that happened we’d get beat out of the market share, so that was big motivation to move into a big space like this. In the next three years, we want to continue to grow somehow, but I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like yet. Not to this scale- we’ve created a destination here. People travel here from St. Charles, Farmington, etc. I do see some kind of a growth or expansion plan in the next few years, and like the idea of having a second, more intimate location.

Tani Sushi Bistro

Tani is open for lunch on weekdays between 11am-2pm, and for dinner Monday-Thursday 4:30pm-10pm, Friday 4:30pm-11pm, and Saturday 5pm-11pm. 7726 Forsyth Blvd and has FREE garage parking with ticket validation.