Photo by Stephanie Breijo
Restaurateurs often have a very clear vision of what they want their eatery to be. Sometimes, despite their best efforts, that vision goes a bit astray.
Chef John Maher (Photo by Piet E. Jones)
Take Yaki, Chef John Maher’s second Richmond restaurant. The concept of his dream was simple: a Japanese izakaya — small, intimate, with great cocktails and amazing bites of food. Ideally, the food should be prepped and cooked in front of the guests on a super-hot grill while the chef interacts with the diners, tailoring the food and drinks to the customers and featuring interesting ingredients the restaurant was able to procure that day.
The space on Broad Street where Yaki opened in June this year is small, but not the kind of intimate setting that Maher had envisioned.
“It was a great opportunity, but [due to] the size of the space and to meet ABC liquor ratios we had to grow the menu outside the concept of the izakaya,” says Maher.
So, despite the popularity of Yaki, Maher has decided not to renew the lease on the Broad Street space. That’s not to say that come February, there won’t be skewers of meat grilled over the white-hot binchotan. Maher is on the hunt for a new space and plans either to open a second iteration of the restaurant immediately after the current Yaki closes its doors or very soon after.
“Somewhere in The Fan or Museum District,” according to Maher. “[We'll] do a complete build-out to do Yaki the right way instead of modifying it to fit the space.”
It’s a return to his original vision for Yaki.
In the meantime, expect some interesting things to come out of Yaki 1.0. Chef Maher is going to be cooking on Mondays — the first time he has cooked in Richmond since his Spoon pop-up days, back before he opened The Rogue Gentlemen — experimenting with new dishes that will form the basis for Yaki 2.0.
His return to the kitchen is what excites Maher the most about a reenvisioned Yaki. Once construction is complete, he’ll be there, cooking full time. Leveraging his classical training, he plans to push the edge of that hot little grill, cranking out skewers and other little bites like bone marrow or dry-aged meats slowly rendered over the coals. The cooking techniques will be mostly Asian, but don’t expect everything to be recognizably Japanese.
“It will be yaki as a verb, not a noun.”
