Yeah, you read that right. Ayaka Ito opened a ramen shop to sell sake.
In the U.S., most people see sake as the drink you balance on a pair of chopsticks before you bang on a table to drop it into a pint of beer. Japanese-born, Ayaka sees sake differently—it’s as nuanced and sophisticated as wine. She fell in love with sake while working as a long-term volunteer in Japan after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and since then she has made it her life’s pursuit to champion it.
Ayaka doing what she does best…serving sake at her first BESHOCK location in San Diego, CA.
Back in Japan, people told her sake was too niche and that no one drinks good sake with ramen. She opened BESHOCK anyway.
Right before Christmas, I sat down with Ayaka and heard the version of this story that doesn’t show up on Instagram: the doubt, grind, and initiative it took to build something from scratch as an immigrant. Oddly enough, she didn’t grow up “in restaurants” and I think if she knew the perils of opening and operating a restaurant her fears may have stifled her willingness to act. Here’s the cleanest way to quantify the tailwind Ayaka was building into: exports of Japanese sake to the U.S. rose meaningfully in the same era BESHOCK was teaching San Diego how to drink it.
2016: ¥5.2B (≈ $48M)
2024: ¥11.4B (≈ $76M)1
That’s the wave she was paddling into—before most people here even knew what good sake tasted like.
BESHOCK opened in 2016—right as sake was starting to move from “unknown” into something people could actually learn, order, and return to. When I asked Ayaka to reflect on the leap, she didn’t romanticize it:
“If I really understood how hard the restaurant business was, I might not have started this big—or maybe not started at all.”
I’m not sure she’s right—because sitting across from Ayaka, there was this warmth and passion in her approach to service. She walked me through a guided tasting the way she’s taught thousands of guests: start with what you already drink, translate it into a sake style, serve, then adjust. The experience was totally different than what you’d expect from someone at the top of their game. No pretentiousness—just guidance, then adjustment.
Had it not been for sake, I think Ayaka would’ve ended up at the same destination: building a place and community that takes care of others and meets them where they are.
So here it is: the story of a Japanese woman whose conviction carried her through the hardest parts of building a restaurant in a foreign country—just to give Southern California a better way to drink sake. Make it to the end…Ayaka’s graciously shared a hit BESHOCK recipe and sake tips.
