He has come a long way since he was 16, working as a dishwasher at Salt Lake City's Mikado restaurant. But his memories were as fresh as melt-in-your-mouth sushi Saturday afternoon as he gathered with other former employees for a reunion and celebration of Mikado's 47th year.

"I got my first tongue lashing by someone in a foreign language," he remembers.

It came from original owner Yoshiko Tsuyuki - "we called her grandma," he says - before reciting the words he heard often: "Baka, baka, baka" or "stupid, stupid, stupid."

Dozens of former employees milled about the restaurant, finding old friends, sharing laughs and eating from platters of food. They remembered famous guests like William Holden, Engelbert Humperdinck and Don Henley of The Eagles.

"Who was that rock band you served that was playing at the Salt Palace?" Alice Jennings asks of her mother.

"Oh, the Beach Boys," Akiko Jennings of Taylorsville answers, after stopping to think.

Jennings ("just say I'm over 70") worked as a waitress from 1961 through 2003. "It's been a nice restaurant," she smiles, looking out at the familiar faces.

Mark Tsuyuki's grandparents owned the property and opened the restaurant in 1958, on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Though he sold it to the current owner - Gene Kwon - in 1991, Tsuyuki, 57, remembers every detail of the place.

"Over here was Frank's Dry Cleaners. And Bill's Glamour Portrait ran from here to the wall," the now investment banker says, motioning with his hands in the expanded and remodeled space.

There have been other changes. The rice paper in the shoji panels had to be replaced with fiberglass to meet fire codes. Upstairs, there used to be a hotel where many of the bus boys stayed. And the traditional kimonos, once worn by servers, have given way to the black "miso happy" Mikado baby T-shirts.

While she got used to wearing the kimono, Mitsuko Cahan, a waitress in 1987, recalls hoisting hers to move more quickly when the restaurant was especially busy.

"It was like a cartoon," says Cahan, who, when asked her age, answers: "Put 60."

"I prefer pants," she said.

But Angie Benson Vriens, 27, learned to love sushi and the kimono when she was a waitress in the late 1990s.

"Being a Caucasian in a kimono, you got great tips," she laughs.

Vriens, who frequents Mikado with her husband, can still rattle off the line she frequently repeated: "Watashi wa nihongoga wakari masin," or "I don't know how to speak Japanese."

Hundreds of employees have been on the payroll over the years. They include Tony Yamada, a prep cook turned architect, doctors and strings of siblings.

Andrew Hunt, 24, was a bartender several years ago, before he went on to become a computer engineer. He remembers being asked to help design a new cocktail menu. The owner wanted martinis, Japanese style.

"I ended up drinking a lot of sake to figure out those sakitinis," Hunt concedes.

But the work served these former employees well. In fact, Huntsman says his dishwashing experience helped him land a gig at Marie Callender's, where he worked with his now wife, Mary Kaye.

"It's where I developed a thing for her," he says.

jravitz@sltrib.com