By Sarah Golibart Gorman, contributor
Foodie Q&A is a series showcasing the Harrisonburg food community. Food enthusiast and storyteller Sarah Golibart Gorman interviews food and drink makers behind the Friendly City food scene. You’ll read about their origins, creative processes, aspirations, and go-to spots in town. Fresh articles drop the second Tuesday of each month from June 2024 to June 2025.
This month, Gorman sat down with Mikey Reisenberg of Mashita to chat about his training in Italian cuisine, his beginnings as a food truck and so much more.
Gorman: Can you tell me where you grew up and about the food you grew up eating?
Reisenberg: I was adopted when I was two months old from Seoul, South Korea and I’ve lived in the Harrisonburg, Bridgewater and Grottoes area my entire life.
My parents were big on saving money when I was growing up. I have a lot of memories of eating pots of beans with cornbread. My kimchi jjigae is heavily inspired by my mom’s cabbage soup that we ended up eating a whole lot when I was growing up. And those two really seem to stick with me, mostly because those are the kinds of things that I either request my mom make when I see her nowadays for meals.
I’ve kind of gravitated back to the things that are simpler, homey, meals that I was raised on, that she still loves to cook and put in front of me. And my dad’s chili has been a big part of my life growing up too. He always loved making chili, especially around football season, so he could sit and eat a big bowl of chili while he’s watching his games. And I remember eating chili with him that was so spicy that I was crying and ate a half a loaf of bread with it.
Gorman: When did you begin cooking and who taught you?
Reisenberg: So right around 15 is when I started to have a real interest in food in general. I realized how much effort my parents put into cooking when I was young. Also, right around that age is when I decided I wanted to go out and get jobs, and I started working in different restaurants as a busboy and dishwasher and I was around restaurant quality food.
It was my dad actually, even though my mom was the one that cooked most of the time when I was growing up, my dad was the one that taught me a lot of the foundations of cooking, and encouraged me to make mistakes and to learn by doing. So I refer to my mom and my dad both for showing me the initial ropes of cooking and being in a kitchen.
Gorman: When did you begin exploring Korean cooking?
Reisenberg: The Korean influence came into effect when I hit my high school years and really had some trouble with my cultural identity. I was actively seeking out different types of Korean food, Korean cooking, and people with Korean experience and Korean knowledge, so that I could learn a little bit about who I am deep down.
I wanted to learn more about noodles and found myself in Italian restaurants and catering companies and all sorts of other different small businesses that had a knack for creating their own food from scratch. I really cherish those memories of learning how they make pasta and marinara sauces or whatever else. Those were things that pushed my culinary learning forward time and time again.
And now the style that we do at Mashita is very interesting because it brings in the Italian element for making egg pastas, but then we change the way that we finish the dish with different sauces or garnishes that have more of a Korean feel to it, I suppose. But at the heart of it, the dish is still an Italian dish.
We’re standing on the shoulders of those that came before. We really like to try and be innovators and creators, taking a current trend and flipping it on its head, or taking flavor profiles that we’re really interested in that aren’t necessarily Korean, but are still delicious, and trying to figure out a way to spin it in such an angle that it makes sense on our menu.
Gorman: Can you share about a place you worked that had a lasting impact on who you are as a chef?
Reisenberg: I give a lot of credit to Mark Newsome and Tom French of the Joshua Wilton House. Mark used to be one of the owners and Tom is still the executive chef. They really encouraged me to read culinary literature and to expand my knowledge. They were my tutors, talking to me about food, tasting the things that I made whenever I brought them in, and giving me feedback on them. That was the first real professional feedback that I ever received.
And I was a server at the Wilton House, so I never actually was a cook there. I was a partner in my dad’s business in the morning and then served tables in the evening. But there were a lot of times I went in earlier so that I could see what was going on in the kitchen. I’d offer to help just to see what they did and how they put things together. And I asked a bunch of questions. I’m sure that I annoyed them at different points.
Gorman: What’s kept you in Harrisonburg?
Reisenberg: I’ve always wanted to start a family here. I’ve always loved living here. I’ve always thought that our town has the capability of growing and progressing quickly with the influence of JMU, EMU and Bridgewater College. Having people from other areas aggregate here for you know, like eight months out of the year brings a fresh perspective and a fresh influence.
I currently have a son and am expecting a daughter along the way in the summer, and I wanted my family to be involved with my family. I wanted to create a restaurant that was in an area that I knew and provide something new that I thought would be exciting for Harrisonburg. We could do the same menu as the other guys that are wildly successful and have national chains, franchises and the like, but we wanted to be that kind of down home restaurant with a familial feel, and I felt like it would be more advantageous for my staff to walk the journey with us and to grow in a small town and hopefully become big fish in a small pond.
Gorman: What inspired you to open your food truck?
Reisenberg: I was 27 when we opened the food truck in 2013. I was working at the Wilton House after college, and in the back of my mind, I had always said, I’m going to own a restaurant one day. In college, I hosted dinner parties, mostly to meet people and to socialize and such, but it was also a chance for me to play around in the kitchen, try out creative things. It got to the point where I was hosting dinner parties for almost 20 people in my tiny townhouse. I started charging people at the door to come in and eat and I thought, “I’m on to something here.”
After the Wilton House, I thought I needed a nine to five job. I actually went out and applied and did a bunch of different kinds of interviews, and I decided all of this stuff seems so crappy to me. This is not really what I want to do. And now looking back, I sometimes wish I had walked that path. I wanted to serve people, I wanted to make people happy. I thought that the food was a really good way to do that. So that’s what kind of pushed me to open the truck.
A friend of mine was a mechanic and an amateur metal worker. I asked him if he would help me build the food truck. So I bought an old Cintas step van and we converted it ourselves with a little bit of help from other people who were better at plumbing and electrical, tying in our gas lines, our water lines and our electrical system in such a way where I felt confident that it wasn’t going to explode. I put together the food truck on like a hairpin budget, where it was right under $30,000.
The food truck engine actually exploded in the second year of us being in business, and that almost caused us to be non-existent because the cost of replacing the engines, being in shops, doing everything else, the money that we lost during that period was significant. So we’ve always had to work our butts off to get to where we are, and then work even harder when the obstacles present themselves.
Gorman: When did you know it was time to open a restaurant?
Reisenberg: We were working through the hot summers and the super cold winters, which really caused us to be like, it’s time to open a restaurant. I wanted to have more opportunities for the people that work for me. So that’s been a big motivator and stimulus behind everything that we do. Our late night events are another example of where we’re trying to create more opportunities for staff. And it’s all with its own levels of risk. You know, because everything every hour that we are in operation costs us money, and if we’re not bringing in dollars during the times when we’re operational, then it makes it very hard to sustain those things, but we still have to try and try new things to stay relevant, to stay in people’s minds, and we’re always going to try and put our staff first and foremost because I can’t do it without them.
Gorman: What aspirations do you have for the future? What’s next for you in your food journey?
Reisenberg: So we’ve always tried to figure out what the full potential of the business is. We’re established caterers in the area. Our daily restaurant operations seem to do fairly well now we’re trying to expand on our late night offerings. We’re also trying to expand on our weekly event offerings, and to try and create a reason to visit Liberty Street, which for us is kind of a challenge, because we exist in a space that’s kind of like an island.
There’s not much retail around us, mostly professional business services and the like. So we have to create a draw for folks to come to us. We’ve always envisioned our space as a fun, hip and kind of trendy area, or kind of environment for folks that just want to have fun and enjoy really great food.
And that’s what we’re trying to grow now, offering more options for a bar menu as an example, and expanding on our happy hour offerings and really just trying to see what the business can do for us, mostly to provide more opportunities for my staff. The more that we can capitalize on a six day work week as opposed to a seven day work week, we can have leave Sundays closed for my cooking classes, whenever I can schedule those in my busy schedule, but then also to give us time to spend with our families and our loved ones, so that it still feels like a family business.
Gorman: What are some of your go-to spots in town to eat or drink?
Reisenberg: We really love the Wilton House. I used to work there along with my sous chef for multiple years before opening Mashita and our buddy, Tom French is still the chef over there, and he does such a wonderful job. In my opinion, they make some of the highest quality food in Harrisonburg.
We also really love the international restaurants and the minority owned businesses. We think they do a really great job. Thien-An Pho are wonderful people. Thai Flavor is wonderful. I love El Sol’s tacos. We go to Tacos El Primo all the time to kind of remember where our roots started, as a food truck. And Sushi Jako is also definitely our most often and frequented haunt.
We don’t get out that much anymore, though. We focus on family life and trying to make homemade meals for my son at the moment, and we’re still guilty of ordering a bunch of takeout right now just for convenience. But you know, parenting life can be kind of tough in the early years.
Gorman: Who would you love to cook for? Anyone in the world who you admire.
Reisenberg: Oh, man, I try not to be a fan boy, but we’ve actually had a couple of folks from Momofuku come down from New York. They stopped in, primarily because they saw a similar style menu of what Momofuku Noodle Bar was doing back in the day. They had such wonderful things to say and it made me feel kind of giddy.
I guess I’d love to serve anyone that is one of the top level movers and shakers in the Asian community, especially in the restaurant world. I’d love somebody to sit down with and have them try my food and just destroy it and tell me what I’m doing great and tell me all the things that I’m doing wrong.
So David Chang would be one of those folks. Roy Choi, I would really respect and appreciate if he came in. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Charles Phan, who just passed away unexpectedly. The big movers and shakers in the Asian restaurant world are the people that I put onto a pedestal, because, just like I said before, they’re the giants that stood before me and have helped pave the way for the food that we do. I’m proud to provide something that people want and open people’s eyes to the wide breadth of Asian cooking and ingredients and all of those kinds of things that are massively popular now.
Oh, and the folks from Anajak Thai in California. I would love to meet those folks. They’re doing absolutely killer work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Check out Mashita’s specials and events on Instagram or Facebook. Visit Mashita at 105 N Liberty Street Monday-Thursday 11am-9pm and Friday-Saturday 11am-1am.
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