About our sushi restaurants

About Juliana

It’s very easy to see when talking to Juliana that she lives, breaths and sleeps food . 

Being brought up in a tiny town just outside San Paulo and taking on the family cooking at a very early age .

Making recipes and playing chef was her passion as a child and her ambition as a teenager and entering  college of chefs  “ of Senac University of Gastronomy was a natural path to take . 

Her first restaurant wasn’t far away . On qualifying with flying colours she took on little restaurant in the beautiful town of Santa Teresa .This was a great success and a career path set .

Juliana wanted to travel and learn the cuisines of the world. Travelling through The Americas , Asia’s  and Europe she settled 17 years ago in England ( lucky us ) . 

Never stopping watching and learning, she came to Ely ... the smallest city in Cambridgeshire and the third in Saffron Walden smallest in England. Her desire to cook was ever present and in fact grew as she traveled the continents. 

Always cooking for her family and trying new things I think it’s safe to say that the restaurant was very much a kitchen table idea .Sitting around the table the planning began , dreams to be fulfilled and a restaurant to be built. 

Juliana set about creating the menu.. a huge and never ending task if ever there was . Burning the midnight oil , cooking , tasting  , creating ,the menu was coming together . 

Ely was the only place to open her first restaurant having fallen in love with place from the very first moment she arrived. 

Her goal was set and now to put all the ingredients (excuse the pun !) together. 

Find and secure a spot was the first part of the plan . This was realised on a stroll through the alleys and passages of the centre of the city with her family.

Burrows book store had just relocated leaving a gorgeous little shop just begging to be converted into a restaurant. SUSHI was no where to be seen in Ely and so drawing on her experience (San Paulo is home to over two million Japanese residents) so Sushi to Juliana is like fish and chips to us . So Sushi it was and Sushi it is .. Sushi and Salad to be more precise.

 One BIG problem. . . COVID! . .  How do you open a restaurant when the world has shut down ?

Juliana had been making and indeed teaching her family fun of making Sushi at home (as we all were in the spring of 2020 )  and so had fine tuned her skills in the Japanese culinary art form. 

The restaurant was put together along with her partner William with passion and a desire to create something different. Inspired by the Sushi bars of the late fifties and early sixes ,the way the Japanese copied the US burger bars but just ever so slightly missing and inadvertently creating a style of their own was the way forward. 

Designing ,decorating the restaurant and making the tables , “borrowing” the chairs from a certain Gordon Ramsey ( a hilarious story to ask Juliana to tell ) sourcing to artwork and artefacts from Japan ..the pots , bowls and plates imported she was ready to open a “TAKEAWAY “ 

The restrictions of Covid dictated that she could only operate as a takeaway. . All the planning , the dreams and hopes were on hold and a new plan had to be quickly put together. 

The opening night was upon her and the doors opened with fear and trepidation. 

The doors opened and in came “Terry” her very first customer of Sushi and Salad and beautifully an ever present customer since that day . 

The restrictions being lifted little by little the “takeaway “ became a restaurant like the butterfly breaks out if the cocoon . A restaurant that has not stopped developing and growing since her first idea around that kitchen table . 

Her executive team have been with her from the beginning , developing and fine tuning the menu , a truly never ending task if ever there was . 

Sushi and Salad has grown . 

The rest as they say. ..