Richard Ly did not set out to become a sushi chef. He arrived in Lamesa, Texas, at age five – a refugee from Vietnam who grew up near Dallas. His mother cooked Vietnamese food, including Bánh cuon – rice cakes with ground beef and onions he still has not been able to make.
“I still miss that,” Ly says. “I’ve tried multiple times.”
Cooking became a career by accident. Ly worked with computers before turning to the restaurant industry. In 1999, at Kampai Sushi and Grill in Addison, a sushi chef quit and Ly was asked if he wanted to learn.
“I don’t know how to cook,” Ly remembers telling him. “I know how to cook instant noodle.”
Chef Kazuaki Miyagi changed that. Ly trained under Miyagi, practicing on cucumbers between lunch and dinner service. He moved to Oklahoma in 2013 to help open Café Icon in Edmond, later at P.F. Chang’s and Jimmy B’s, before spearheading OKC’s Awaji Izakaya in 2023.
“When I first came here, it was a fried roll, a cream cheese roll – mostly cooked rolls,” Ly says of the food landscape in Oklahoma and diners’ comfortability with sushi. Kaizume, he believes, would not have worked here ten or 12 years ago.
Kaizume opened in early May at 1501 N.W. 23rd St. as a seafood restaurant rooted in Japanese craft. Its name combines kaizen, continuous improvement, with me, “the eye.” For Ly, that means refining something familiar until it becomes
his own.
Sea bass shows the process. Ly started with an idea in a cookbook from a closed Paris restaurant, but did not want to reproduce it. He returned to a broth learned from one of his senseis, adding shiitake and shiso. He reshaped the shrimp component into a dumpling and sake-marinated the sea bass before pan-
roasting it.
On the plate, a caramelized crust gives way to succulent sea bass, carrying notes of sake and soy before settling into a rich, savory dashi with shrimp dumplings, shiitake, carrot and shallot. Shiso provides an aromatic lift that keeps the broth from becoming heavy. After finishing the fish, I picked up the bowl and drank the remaining broth.
His sushi training remains visible elsewhere. Madai crudo pairs snapper sashimi with Fresno chile, tomato and pomegranate ponzu, while spicy smoked hamachi noodles combine sesame oil, sambal, angel hair pasta and chives. Both draw on the precision of his training while showing how far his cooking has moved beyond it.
That philosophy extends to A5 Wagyu: six thin strips, two ounces total, seared by diners on a hot stone with ponzu, sea salt and togarashi. Ly first encountered the presentation in Dallas and wanted to offer it in Oklahoma at a more approachable price.
“I just want people to be able to enjoy it without having to go to a fancy steakhouse,” Ly says. “Now people can actually say, ‘Hey, I’ve had A5 Wagyu before.’”
For Ly, the reaction is what matters most.
“When somebody tells me, ‘Oh my God, this is like one of the best things. I will be back for it,’” he says, “that completes me.”
