For two decades, Raymundo Cortes was a fixture at Geisha Japanese Restaurant, working his way from the dish pit to the manager’s office. When a fire tore through the restaurant in March, that long-standing career effectively ended, leaving Cortes and a team of veteran staff without a workplace.
In September, Cortes and his business partner, Daniel Sanchez, opened Fenixa Breakfast & Sushi at 2623 41st Avenue in Soquel. The business functions as a hybrid culinary space, merging the breakfast experience Cortes learned in American kitchens with the Japanese techniques he mastered during his twenty years at Geisha.
A Culinary Bridge Between Morning and Night
The decision to operate a dual-concept restaurant grew out of both necessity and experience. The space they occupied on 41st Avenue had previously served as a breakfast venue, and both founders possessed extensive backgrounds in that style of cooking. By adding their professional expertise in sushi, they created a business model that utilizes the same infrastructure for two distinct dayparts.
The menu reflects a personal history for both owners, who grew up cooking traditional Mexican food taught to them by their mothers. While the restaurant serves American breakfast staples like scratch-made country-fried steak and various pancakes, the influence of their upbringing is evident in items like chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, and the use of homemade salsas. This fusion extends to the sushi side of the menu, where ingredients such as jalapeño and cilantro are incorporated into rolls.
Before we took over this space, it was a breakfast place and both Daniel and I had previous experience cooking breakfast, so we thought that would be a good idea. And since we already had the space, we thought why not offer sushi too, because we were so familiar with it from our time at Geisha. — Raymundo Cortes
Expanding the Fusion Concept
The current menu includes a range of sushi offerings, from traditional sashimi and nigiri to signature creations like the Home Ruler, which features spicy albacore, avocado, cucumber, and cilantro topped with yellowtail, jalapeño, and ponzu. The restaurant also caters to vegetarian diners with the Spiced House roll, combining tempura eggplant, yam, carrot, and baked tofu with yellow curry.
Cortes and Sanchez have already outlined plans for the next phase of the restaurant’s growth. They intend to further blur the lines between their culinary influences by introducing fusion dishes, including plans to add salsa to sushi rolls and eventually experimenting with rolls featuring carne asada and al pastor. Currently, the beverage program focuses on espresso and loose-leaf tea, with plans to introduce beer and wine in the near future.
The transition from a total loss at their previous place of employment to the launch of Fenixa represents a significant recovery for the staff involved. By pooling their resources, the team behind Fenixa has managed to retain their professional community while shifting to an ownership model on their own terms.
