KC’s new ‘elegant but trendy’ sushi restaurant focuses on comfort, freshness
A couple seated at Peter Hoang’s bar on Wednesday trekked three hours from Omaha to try his omakase-style sushi.
Another announced that they’d made the hour climb up from Warrensburg. Hearing this, Hoang excitedly threw his hands up around his head.
“You asked me why I do this,” he said to The Star while standing behind a mound of chopped tuna. “The sacrifice and all the tears and the hard work ... This is what fuels us.”
His new spot, Akoya Omakase, opened inside Hotel Phillips almost two weeks ago at 106 W. 12th St. downtown. Omakase (roughly translating to “I’ll leave it up to you”) describes a type of cuisine where the chef serves a variety of sushi courses based on what’s fresh and in stock that day.
Hoang said his chefs at the sushi bar (Glen Schongar and Jay Yiampanich) will tailor their dishes to customers’ preference as well. Meanwhile, several tables around the space offer full service dining where visitors pick from a menu and are waited on.
He won’t tell you exactly where, but he spent more than a decade at high-end restaurants in New York; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; and beyond. It’s partially a humility thing — “how I got this far in life is being humble,” he said — but he also doesn’t want to ride on the coattails of someone else’s restaurant.
He will, however, talk about his father, who was a sushi chef for many years. The younger Hoang grew up busing tables and scrubbing dishes in the family business.
“It was a necessity,” Hoang said of his father. “It wasn’t a glamorous job. He did it because he had to.”
Necessity or not, Hoang found he enjoyed being in the kitchen. But to be serious about being a chef, he had to work in some of the best restaurants in the U.S.
Years after spreading his wings, he’s returning home to Kansas City to be closer to family. He and his wife have a baby girl.
Hoang joked that his second baby was Akoya.
“What we do is way too hard and way too time consuming to be not really caring,” he said.
To ensure the fish’s freshness in landlocked Missouri, Hoang uses two trusted vendors he’s known for several years. Every day, they send a list of that day’s catch.
Six days a week, he drives to the airport to pick up the fish. (The aquatic cargo is flown in a carefully controlled environment, of course, to preserve taste.)
On Wednesday, he sliced whole fish and explained from behind the counter that his bluefin tuna comes from a farm in Mexico. He hand grated a wasabi plant and explained that most wasabi available at restaurants isn’t the real deal — wasabi itself is expensive and loses its taste less than an hour after it’s chopped. Akoya, however, uses real wasabi and mixes it into a paste with other ingredients.
His products, which include A5 wagyu beef, are tagged, so Hoang knows where each item is sourced, what the animal ate, etc.
And he’s not knocking cheaper, more fast-casual sushi options in town, either. He’s simply hoping to provide another option for those who are looking for something else.
“It gets people just a little closer to the authentic experience,” he said.
A $55 omakase sushi experience gets a customer eight pieces of nigiri, temaki and miso. Omakase options with a varying number of courses run up to $175. Diners can also order options a la carte: hirame (olive flounder), ikura (zuke salmon roe), kinmedai (golden eye snapper) and more.
The space has low ceilings and seating for fewer than 50, most of which is available at tables. Bonsai trees, marble tables and paintings of Japanese cityscapes fill the room.
He described his restaurant as “elegant, but trendy.” As for the food, Schnogar piped up that it’s “whatever you’re looking for.”
While Hoang enjoys the act of piecing together flavors to create the perfect dish, he’s even more concerned about the customer experience. Many equate an omakase restaurant with stuffiness and outrageous prices.
“I honestly just want to have an establishment that brings people together to make memories,” he said. “Here I want everyone to feel they are welcome, and to be comfortable.”
There’s only one other omakase restaurant in town. That’s Sushi Kodawari in the Crossroads, which opened last year.