Coral Gables’ Michelin-starred destination Shingo is a 14-seat restaurant with $275 seasonal tasting menus and an interior that was built in Kyoto before being dismantled, shipped and rebuilt to its final destination in Florida. Shingowhich specializes in omakase featuring ultra-premium nigiri and signature items like eel with caviar, has established itself at the pinnacle of Japanese fine dining in Miami.
But for their next restaurant, chef Akiku’s neck and the partner Kenzie Motai aim for something much more attainable. stay, which will debut its daytime service in Coral Gables on Thursday, June 4, is a 24-seat cafe focusing on sandos, bento boxes and shio pan alongside matcha and coffee.
“When you grow up in Japan, café culture is so big, and those bakeries are in every neighborhood,” Motai, who was born in Tokyo, tells the Observer. “I grew up going to bakeries. And in any kind of Japanese house, you have shokupan, Japanese milk bread, inside the house.”
For Osaka-born Motai and Akikuni, Stay it’s about going back to their roots and the food they love to eat day in and day out.
“It’s always been a part of us,” Motai says of his and Akikuni’s love of the Japanese cit’s good. “We were trained in fine dining, but as people, we’re pretty casual. We wanted to create something that was more accessible. Shingo is expensive and not necessarily a concept you can go to every night. So our goal is to continue to create more Japanese food concepts and introduce more Japanese food and our culture to people in Miami. We just celebrated a nice neighborhood for a couple of years with Shingo we can have sandos, onigiri and bento for lunch.”
Stay, who will also have its own private label matcha from Japan and private label coffee from Guatemala, while offering specialty drinks such as matcha with strawberry puree, is inspired by both Japan’s kissaten culture and its convenience store fare. But this new restaurant is certainly taking a chef-driven approach to its daily food.
The chef Lania Andradewho was most recently Shingo’s pastry chef, is leading a team cooking his shokupan at home. Research and development for milk bread was an arduous process. Andrade, Akikuni and Motai traveled to Japan last summer and enjoyed various shokupan. Motai, who spent the latter part of his childhood in New Jersey, also got some help from his parents.
“I’ve had a friend ship from ACthat’s what I grew up with,” he says. “In New Jersey and New York, there are a lot of Japanese people and Japanese bakeries and cafés There’s something very authentic there, too.”
After six months of testing to perfect the Stand pillow milk bread, Motai is convinced that the Stand shokupan is just as authentic. Shokupan at the Stand is the base of sandos topped with egg salad, chicken katsu, wagyu and other options. of café also has toasties filled with flavors like pizza and sweet potato.
And Stand is using the same dough for shio-d-go (salted bread with butter) casserole with options including chocolate, sausage and curry.
“Curry is a staple in Japanese households, and curry pan is something I probably ate every day growing up,” says Motai.
Beyond Stand’s take-out and to-go options, which also include onigiri, the restaurant offers made-to-order sandos, salads and bento boxes (with seasonal protein, sides, rice and miso soup). The Stand is keeping things accessible with shio pan starting at $3.50, sandos starting at $12 and bentos available for less than $20.
“It seems like interest in Japanese food is at an all-time high,” says Motai. “We feel a responsibility to give people the most authentic experience. We’re really excited and happy to be able to share that cuisine in an accessible and affordable way. We feel like we’re kind of the Japanese ambassadors here in Miami. It’s about having those authentic products that we grew up with and really enjoy eating every day.”
The Stand is starting as a daytime walking destination. The space will add dinner service, with reservations available, in the fall. This will be in the form of a dimly lit izakaya with a menu to be determined, which may include Japanese food such as karaage and ramen paired with sake, beer and wine.
“We’re bringing in a chef from Japan for the night concept,” says Motai. “I think izakaya allows us to explore a lot of different types of food. And if something takes off and becomes really popular, we can look at it and say, ‘Hey, maybe we should open something based on that.'”
The booth is located at 98 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables, FL 33134 and will be open daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
