Koyoté, a Japanese ramen and izakaya restaurant in Salt Lake City that’s surged in popularity since opening in late 2023, is ready to expand. The second location from business partners and chefs Hiro Tagai and Felipe Oliveira will open in October in Kimball Junction. It’s pure luck that the restaurant was just Michelin Recommended in the state’s first inclusion in the Southwest Michelin Guide, Tagai said. The expansion of Koyoté has been ruminating for a while now, but the chefs knew it had to be the right location.  Tagai said Park City was on his radar not just for its chef connections, like Briar Handly of Handle and John Courtney of Chop Shop Park City, but also from existing diners at Koyoté’s Marmalade location.  “We always were looking at Park City, in a way, but were always kind of hesitant because property and all that is ultra expensive in that area,” Tagai said. “To make it work we’d have to raise prices and we didn’t want to stray away from our DNA too much.” So the pair signed the lease when the former Hana Ramen Bar location in Kimball Junction became available in late spring at the right price and with fewer renovation demands. Unlike their second restaurant opening — Junah, a Japanese-Italian concept in Central Ninth that was designed around the location — the Kimball Junction spot will hold true to Koyoté’s existing menu and strategy. The Japanese restaurant first opened at the end of 2023 after Tagai returned from ramen school in Japan. There, he fell in love with Tokyo-style ramen, which is especially popular in the country and known for its clear broth style. “This concept was brewing since like 2016, 2017. That’s when I moved to Japan to study ramen,” he said. “It just made sense to bring that clear stock to America. … (It had been done) but it just wasn’t the focal point of any of the restaurants. So it was partly running against the grain, and partly that I really love that style of ramen.” Ramen is the heart of Koyoté, but ultimately the restaurant is Tagai’s attempt to deliver a high-quality, authentic Japanese eatery. The menu includes less common Japanese dishes like a chashu-don, shioyaki saba and gyoza, plus chef creations like a whipped tofu appetizer served with scallion pancakes.  A whipped tofu appetizer served with scallion pancakes is one of the most popular dishes at Koyoté. Ordering is done on QR codes embedded on the tables rather than through servers, which helps eliminate tipping pressure. Credit: Photo courtesy of Jordan Turner Tagai was born in Japan before moving to Utah as a child. He said that for a while, the state’s Japanese options were more caricatures of the nation’s cuisine. Most of the options were sushi and American-style ramen using a thick pork-based tonkotsu. With his own restaurant, Tagai wanted to highlight the depth and variety of Japanese food. “Koyoté was mostly for me to set a baseline for Japanese food in Utah, in a way,” he said. “I just wanted to bridge that gap, where it’s like, ‘Oh, this is what it should taste like.’”  Tagai said he wanted to open something he was very proud of. “Especially for the Japanese people that come, I wanted to make it feel like a restaurant that would exist in Japan,” he said. Another unique feature of the restaurant is its lack of servers. Ordering and payment are done through QR codes at the tables. Tagai said the decision to structure the business that way was partly a nod to ramen shops in Japan, where ordering is done on a tablet, diners take a ticket to their seat and give it to the chef.  It also sidestepped the issues with tipping culture that followed the COVID pandemic, Tagai said, and ensured that the most dedicated, skilled staff would have higher pay. “I’ve worked in many restaurants, I’ve been every position possible, and I feel like the servers usually get paid the most. How we do it, the cooks end up getting paid the most,” he said.  Koyoté was “an instant success.”  It was never planned to open multiple Koyoté locations. But Tagai said he and Oliveira felt it was ready for expansion after seeing exponential growth. “The amount of people that especially come visit us during the colder months really signaled that we should open another one in a colder destination,” Tagai said.  Right now, the Kimball Junction spot is slated to open next month, but it depends on how the buildout goes. The interior design will have a similar feel to the Marmalade location, but it won’t be a copy-paste version. The new Koyoté location in Park City will have a slightly different design from its Salt Lake City location, pictured. Credit: Photo courtesy of Jordan Turner “We don’t want to be lazy and just recreate. I think it’s important to level up,” Tagai said. “Trends change, so we wanted to be up to date, or maybe a little further than that.” To match Summit County, Tagai said the space will be slightly fancier, but the prices won’t be much different from the existing menu. “We want to make a place with high-quality ingredients, high-quality food that doesn’t cost that much. That’s why we had to really find a place (where) the overhead wasn’t too crazy and the rent wasn’t crazy, so we didn’t have to raise the price,” he said. “I believe the price from here to there might be acutely different, but pretty much the same.” Initially, the menu will be the same across both locations, but Tagai expects that will evolve as they learn more about the specific demands and interests of Park City-area diners.  “We’re really excited to get to know everyone up there and find out what kind of stuff they like, and really be part of that community,” Tagai said. For more about the restaurant, visit koyoteslc.com. The post Koyoté will showcase authentic Japanese cuisine at new Kimball Junction location, chef says appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less