New location for Sakaya Kitchen - downtown
Call it Sakaya Kitchen, the sequel. Fans of the 3-year-old Midtown location can now get their fix for yummy Asian-inspired dishes in a newly opened, bigger downtown location.
“I didn’t expect Sakaya to be as successful as it was,” says chef-owner Richard Hales.”Now I’m looking to expand even more.” He’s already had offers to bring his fast casual concept to New York, L.A., Canada and South America, but lucky for us, he wants to keep it in “his back yard.”
What sets SK apart from other Asian joints? “We’re a little on the funky side,” says the Tampa native. “We use seasonal and organic ingredients, we play rock and roll music, we write our menu on the wall.” Most of the dishes have an accent on Korea, one of Hales’ favorite places to visit and a top inspiration.
Expect the same, reliable, made-from-scratch food from classically trained Hales, formerly of Azul and NYC’s Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Anyone who has a sense of culinary adventure will get addicted to house specialties like The Cracklin’ Duck sandwich with black plum sauce; “Dirty South” Korean pulled pork sandwich with kimchi slaw; and the melt in your mouth Angus beef short rib taco. And the ginger garlic chicken atop greens is still one of the most reliable things you can order. With are least 10 strips of moist, deliciously marinated fragrant white meat, is great for sharing or another nosh down the road. One minor complaint is with the Bulgogi (Korean grilled) burger: too rare.
Hales uses the expanded downtown space as his workroom/lab. All sauces, marinades, pickling, curing and roasting goes on there. The father of two young girls is getting all the back and forth down to the science.
“It’s like a seesaw. I’m always chasing something,” he says. “It’s like that old joke, I need a clone.”
A notable difference at the new spot is they sell milkshakes in appropriately unique flavors like chocolate with a hint of bacon and key lime with blueberry. Other smoothies are geared for the morning crowd, containing local roaster Panther Coffee. Hales says within a month or so they’ll start serving breakfast with grab and go items like seasonal fruit cups and muffins baked by Hales’ wife Jenny, who is busy testing recipes. Hot brunch could be in the future as well, he says. Sakaya’s new place also has a bigger oven, so Jenny can bake her famously monstrous cookies (sugar crusted red velvet, oh my) and transport them over to the old Midtown spot. She has no background in cooking, just being a mom. No wonder they taste so good.
Find locations for Sakaya’s food truck on Twitter. @sakayakitchen. Every second Saturday the truck is parked in Wynwood.
This story was originally published May 1, 2012 at 8:05 AM with the headline "New location for Sakaya Kitchen - downtown."