Chef Genji Sato never thought that taking a day off work would turn him into a national treasure, but his post on his restaurant’s Instagram Saturday—and the sign he left on his restaurant door—nearly broke the internet.
As he does every year in honor of his son’s birthday, he closed his restaurant Sasabune in Glendale, California to take Daiki, now 7, to Legoland. Nearly immediately, the post picked up steam, and a tweet of the sign from the restaurant already has 40,000 retweets and nearly 560,000 likes.
Sato, who has been a chef for more than 20 years, told TODAY he and wife, Kaya, began the tradition when