If you haven't been to the Sakura Noodle House in a while, you can expect the same friendly service and quick, inexpensive food. From food to employees, the Tamuning restaurant tucked away on Gov. Carlos Camacho Road thrives on consistency -- decades of it.
This week, the restaurant celebrated 40 years of service on island.
Employees and owner Saburo Miwa credit their success to having a family-oriented environment that makes both workers and customers feel like they're at home.
The restaurant first opened on March 12, 1973, as part of the Tamuning Shopping Center -- in the same location in continues to occupy -- home of the first Duty Free Shoppers store, Miwa says.
（28歳くらいでしょう？ 若き日の三朗です）
Just off the corner of Marine Corps Drive and Gov. Carlos Camacho Road, another Sakura restaurant served teppanyaki while Miwa made noodles for the not-as-successful noodle house.
"There were very few Japanese restaurants then and the food was not popular yet," he says. "The owner said don't go home for two years. That's why, for four years, it was a really hard time. We didn't make money. I only had two T-shirts and two jeans. I was really poor and I only eat the restaurant food and stayed in a small motel."
Two years into the operation, however, the owners completed their contract, giving Miwa the opportunity to buy the noodle house. Its teppanyaki sister closed its doors while Miwa continued to make Japanese soba, white noodles and the yellow Chinese noodles popular in pancit.
The noodles
While attending St. Francis Catholic School in Yona as a youth, Miwa didn't care for the noodles the school prepared for pancit. He was urged by the nuns to bring back noodles from his father's noodle factory in Japan.
"She said, 'Why you don't make noodles here?'" he says. "I'm not thinking about noodles, I just bring them."
Despite his father not supporting his decision to move to Guam and make noodles, Miwa fell in love with the island, easily snagging the job at the Sakura Noodle House.
The original concept for the Sakura restaurants was to cater to Guam's then-new, bustling Japanese tourist industry.
Guam hadn't yet caught on to noodles and, as owner, Miwa decided to change up the menu.
"We changed for a local style -- what local people like," he says. "Now, 99 percent of my customers are local."
While still being called Sakura Noodle House, the restaurant began serving items like Shanghai lumpia and chopsteak, both of which still are featured on the menu.
Noodles, however, are still a big share of the restaurant. Some 15,000 packages of fresh Chinese style noodles are sold to different restaurants and stores for island favorites such as pancit and yakisoba.
Today, you can get a combination plate featuring rice, proteins like yakitori and fried shrimp, and the salad bar for less than $10. It's been more than a decade since the salad bar was added to the restaurant and customers come in droves to eat the fresh croutons and house dressing the Sakura Noodle House is known for.
Familiar faces
Sakura manager Ligaya Evarola says the creamy and garlicky dressing keeps customers coming back year after year, but not the only reason.
"But maybe it's the way we treat our customers," she says.
Evarola began working for Miwa in 1982 and took a decade-long break in between to raise her children.
Even though she's worked 20 years combined at the restaurant, her years of service are not unique. Of 15 employees, eight have worked there for more than 10 years, Miwa says.
Manning the kitchen in the back, Evangeline Galiendes has been tending to the restaurant's stove for the last 29 years.
"I was 32 only when I started and now I'm almost 60," she says, laughing. "The dishwasher is the only one that changes here."
She's one of the reasons the food and service have been so consistent through the years, her boss says.
On the floor, Ronnie Velasquez has put in 17 years serving customers.
"The most amazing experience I've had since working here is that people know me at a lot of places," Valasquez says. "Like Kmart or Ross, or if I go to Macy's, they tell me, 'Hi Sakura, how are you?' They identify me because of the restaurant."
The reason employees stay is because Miwa treats them like family, the three say.
"The best part is them," Velasquez says. "I've never been treated like an employee. Do you think we would stay that long if they didn't treat us this way? I think that's the secret."
It's become a second family to most of the employees Evarola says, having watched Miwa's three children grow up.
"He's like our brother -- the way he treats us," she says.
"We've seen people grow -- families and children," Velasquez says. "This place is a landmark already."
Pastry business
Miwa also helped springboard his daughter Shizuka Louboutin's French pastry business, which in turn has brought in new customers to the restaurant.
You will need to bring cash to pick up delicate French macarons and overflowing cream puffs, among other treats, at her Patisserie Parisco display case