Kingston Bake Shop: Innocent Bakery or Mafia Secret

In the center of the the Crown Heights neighborhood their is a bakery. Walking along the newly paved streets and sidewalks of Kingston ave. its easy to pass by it on your day to day routine without taking much notice as I did. One day however as I lazily exited the Kingston ave. subway station and made my way through the Hasidic Jew neighborhood on Kingston, when I noticed something that was a bit off.


Kingston Bake Shop at 380 Kingston ave. is a blatantly extraneous established for one reason. Taking a close look of their store front you can see that this bakery happens to have a second entity living inside of it and that would be the Kingston Sushi bar, that comes equip with its own brochures with a tag line claiming to be the best sushi in town. With only three shops within the Crown Heights neighborhood it resides selling sushi, and it being the only one with a genuine sushi chef wrapping sushi per order its not a wild claim to make.

While a Japanese Sushi chef in a Hasidic Jew neighborhood in Brooklyn is initially out of place the mystery only deepened upon entering the shop that seemed small on the outside but opened up to reveal seating for nearly a dozen people. The Jewish patrons initially turned to give silent stares that created an aura of unfriendliness. One man couldn't help but gander at me from the second I walked in to the moment I left which deepened concern when I finally got around to asking the man in charge at that moment several questions. Questions he refused to answer stating that any interviews, pictures, or comments would have to be authorized by the shops owner. He declined giving me his name, and suggested I don't even attempt talking to the sushi chef.



Testing my audacity I did ask the sushi chef several easy questions ranging from how long he's been working their to, how he ended up being hired in a place like this. I was politely declined on almost all accounts except for the sliver of information that he'd been working there for about one and a half years. This coincided with the info the manager gave me stating that the shop first opened three years ago and that the sushi bar opened one and a half years ago.

It seemed the fear of the wrath of whoever owned this shop kept its employees tight lipped, which makes you wonder who can have such an influence on the lives of others. Kindly asking if I could take pictures I was informed that I couldn't take any from inside but they certainly can't stop me from outside. Upon exiting with my Hawaiian Roll and butter croissant in tow I was reminded by the manager. "Kingston Sushi Bar has the best sushi in town".