This top Wynwood restaurant just lost its visionary chef. What comes next is uncertain
Take away the innovative, prize-winning chef and the visionary restaurateur that made Wynwood’s Kyu Asian barbecue restaurant a hit — and what do you have left?
Miami is about to find out.
Chef Michael Lewis and partner Steven Haigh, who left Zuma to start Kyu, consistently named one of the best restaurants in the country, have been bought out by their original Wynwood partners. Lewis likened the takeover to losing a member of his family.
“I would be lying if I said there wasn’t emotion involved in it,” he said.
Lewis and Haigh will retain ownership of a newly opened Kyu restaurant in Mexico City. And the two are not abandoning Miami. They own and oversee Buya Izakaya + Yakitori in Wynwood and will operate their breakfast and chicken sandwich spot, Laid Fresh, as a ghost kitchen with the every-expanding REEF Technologies until they feel safe reopening a physical restaurant, Lewis said.
They both also plan to open a new Miami restaurant in the next 12-18 months, Haigh said.
“We are planning on keeping a very strong presence in Miami with another, brand-new brick-and-mortar restaurant very soon,” Lewis said.
But what of Kyu — named a James Beard award semifinalist for best new restaurant in 2017, among OpenTable’s 2018 list of best new places when it opened? The concept was wholly conceived by Lewis, who studied under master chefs Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Eric Ripert.
Lewis has left it in the hands of head chef Raheem Sealey, his right-hand man for the last three years. Sealey worked at Zuma with Lewis, trained at his side learning barbecue, and even opened The Drinking Pig, a roadside Caribbean barbecue pop-up in northeast Miami-Dade that has become one of the bright spots for Miami restaurants during the pandemic. He, his partner, Mark Wint, and his wife, Yohanir Sandoval, also work alongside one another at Kyu.
Sealey has plans to open The Drinking Pig as a standalone spot and if that happens, the future of Kyu is left uncertain. For now, Haigh said the restaurant they left behind remains strong. Calls to the restaurant, at 251 NW 25th St., were not returned.
“We left the restaurant in good hands, with a team that has been with us since the beginning,” Haigh said. “We hope everything continues to run the same.”
This story was originally published December 21, 2020 at 1:32 PM.
