Team from Michelin-starred restaurant opens new Japanese café in Coral Gables

The team behind the only Michelin-starred restaurant in Coral Gables is opening a new café on Miracle Mile.

Chef Shingo Akikuni and partner Kenzie Motai, who operate the elegant omakase restaurant Shingo in the historic La Palma building, are now opening Stand, a Japanese restaurant and coffee counter.

Motai said that creating Stand, which has 24 seats and opens June 4, was a “full-circle moment.”

“Stand is really a reflection of how Shingo and I grew up and the places that stay with us,” he explains. “Some of our earliest memories are in Japanese cafés — quiet intentional spaces where everything from the coffee to the food to the atmosphere, felt considered. We’ve been wanting to recreate that feeling in our own way.”

Inspired by Tokyo’s kissaten cafés, Stand, like Shingo, pays homage to Japanese tradition. Running the kitchen will be chef de cuisine Lania Andrade, who most recently worked as the pastry chef at Shingo.

Her menu will include breakfasts featuring toast on Stand’s homemade milk bread as well as a bacon-egg-cheese sandwich with a jammy egg, cheesy miso caramel and nori flakes. Coffee and matcha are a big part of the breakfast menu as well.

The ever-popular Japanese sandos are also made on milk bread and made fresh every day, with choices like a double-stacked chicken katsu, wagyu filet mignon and Japanese egg salad.

The café will also serve onigiri (rice balls), pizza with roasted tomatoes and mozzarella, and bento boxes that come with rice, miso soup and three sides and proteins like karaage (fried fish), salmon and thinly shaved yakiniku beef.

For now, the restaurant will remain a breakfast and lunch destination. But later this year, most likely sometime in the fall, the Stand team plans to add an evening component, transforming the lunch spot into an evening izakaya. The dinner menu will feature small plates, with sake, wine and beer, and a different soundtrack that will shift to music more suited to nightlife.

Stand

Where: 98 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables

Hours: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. daily

Opening: June 4

More information: standstandstand.com