Rice Craft

Sonoko Sakai is a Los Angeles–based cooking teacher, writer, film producer, noodle-maker and co-founder of Common Grains and the Southern California Heritage Grain Project. Sonoko teaches soba and onigiri workshops and holds pop-ups in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Hawaii, New York and London. She was born in New York and raised in Tokyo, Kamakura, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Mexico City. For 20 years, she worked in the film industry as a film buyer for major Japanese film distributors and produced a few feature films. In 2009, she left the film industry to pursue cooking and teaching. Sonoko's stories and recipes have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Zester Daily and Bungei Shunju (a Japanese literary magazine). She has appeared on both local and national television programs and public radio stations such as NPR, KCRW GOOD FOOD and SOUNDS LA. She's also the founder of Common Grains, a project to grow heirloom grains and create a sustainable agricultural grain hub in Southern California with a seed grant from Anson Mills. With local chefs, bakers and grain enthusiasts, I am working with farmers in Santa Barbara and Kern counties.