Sushi chef finds his niche at Smith's in Kalispell

Nay Myo Thu Swe, the 33-year-old owner, operator and chef at the sushi bar inside Smith’s grocery store in Kalispell, wanted to be just like his father — an engineer on a cargo ship cruising off the coast of Myanmar.

Swe, whose father died when he was 12 years old, eventually would wind up on a cargo ship, although not as an engineer. Instead he was doing, he thought, the next best thing, assisting one of the ship’s engineers and starting to learn his trade.

“So they have, like, a sewer machine on the ship,” Swe said. “It was the first week on the ship for me and I’m just hanging with that engineer and we have a schedule for cleaning that sewer machine.

“I have no idea what this means, I just went over there and he explained this to me,” he continues, making a motion mimicking a mop sliding across imaginary walls and floors.

“It’s really bad,” he adds, starting to clench his face uncomfortably. “They drain out in the middle of the sea and after that it’s just spraying out and [wiping] a wet room and, like, ‘ew man, ew.’

“They call it a wiper. I wipe everything. Just wipe it.”

More than seven years later, after being approved for an immigrant visa and moving from Myanmar to Missoula to Kona, Hawaii, to Boise, Idaho and now to Kalispell, Swe is the owner of a successful small business and a gifted chef.

His decision to swivel from the sea to sushi was an easy one.

“Honestly, I’m a wiper in a ship,” he said about the unpleasant job from his past.

TODAY, SWE spends his time in much cozier confines — behind the counter of a shiny sushi counter between the deli and the produce section at Smith’s, a space he has personally occupied since August 2015.

The kiosk is stocked 24 hours a day with handmade rolls for grab-and-go purchase, all of which are created personally by Swe. He works seven days a week, usually starting his day between 6 and 7 a.m., and leaving with the cases full, sometimes as late as 7 p.m. When he’s at the counter, he’ll custom prepare rolls on request and is often found happily chatting away with his guests.

“That sushi bar is really good-looking and I can communicate with the customer and do a lot of things,” he said.

Swe’s sushi station is a franchise he purchased from Advanced Fresh Concepts, but despite not technically being a member of the Smith’s staff he’s felt very much at home inside the store.

“They are really awesome, the people in Smith’s,” Swe said. “All of my co-workers support me with a lot of things and help me out. … They are really good, I love them.”

SWE DID not grow up a skilled chef in Myanmar (a place Swe calls Burma, which was the country’s name until 1989), saying he only occasionally helped his mother cook rice, and didn’t do it well.

“Really bad things all the time came out,” he said.

When he landed in Missoula “with $300 in my pocket,” Swe stayed briefly there before being connected with a sushi chef named Ye Myintaung.

“One of my friends knew him and he said ‘hey, I’ve got a guy who wants to learn sushi so would you mind hiring him?’” Swe said. “He gave me a try and that’s pretty awesome. He’s a good person.”

Myintaung operated a kiosk in Kona similar to the one Swe now runs at Smith’s, and taught his fledgling assistant the finer points of sushi creation. Swe said his mentor was a deliberate craftsman, taking his time to perfect each piece rather than maximizing his inventory with quickly assembled rolls.

“I can do fast, too, but right now it’s [about] going slow and make pretty,” Swe said. “I learned a lot about things like that.”

Swe spent more than two years on Hawaii’s big island, eventually moving to a full-service sushi restaurant before acquiring his first in-store sushi counter in Boise. He then swapped that space for Kalispell, where he’s found both an eager community and loads of competition.

“If you don’t do well it’s really easy to lose a customer because there are a lot of sushi bars in town,” he said. “If you make one mistake, we’ll be done in a couple of weeks. [They] will be the last people for my sushi bar.”

WHEN SWE landed in this country, one of his first interactions was with an immigration worker.

“He was asking me a lot of things but I don’t understand,” Swe recalled. “Only one word I understand is, he asked me ‘Single? Married?’ I said ‘single, but I’m going to get a lady in here.’”

It didn’t exactly work out that way, but Swe has since found love. His friends set him up with a woman in Myanmar and after first connecting over the phone, Swe and Nini Lwin were married in 2015. Swe, who became a U.S. citizen in 2014, is hoping to have his wife here with him by April.

In the meantime, Swe continues to toil at his sushi bar — a very long way from his days as a wiper halfway across the world.

“Right now I’m so happy, I make [sushi] pretty and people love it,” Swe said. “Every time they come to the market and they get the sushi and the tell me ‘you did a great job.’ I am supposed to be thanking them for buying the sushi, supporting my life and my family, but they always tell that to me and I’m like ‘oh my God, that is really awesome guys.’

“I really appreciate that. I say ‘thank you’ to them, too.”

Smith’s, at 1935 Third Ave. EN, is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Reporter Andy Viano may be reached at 758-4439 or by email at aviano@dailyinterlake.com.