Post #755565 by tikiskip on Thu, Dec 3, 2015 3:08 PM

Not tiki, Kinda Kahiki related.
So here it is..

Kahiki owner’s son to open ramen restaurant on Lane Avenue.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2015/12/01/1201-on-restaurants-kahiki-owners-son-to-open-ramen-restaurant.html

Fukuryu Ramen on Lane Avenue in Upper Arlington will be similar to the sleek design seen here at the original Fukuryu restaurant in Melbourne, Australia.
By Gary Seman Jr.
For The Dispatch • Monday November 30, 2015 11:26 AM
1456 52 1630
Jeff Tsao recalls some sage advice his father, a former Kahiki owner Michael Tsao, gave him.

“My father told me straight up you should never open a restaurant — the hours, the demands on your time. He regretted having to spend so much time away from his family.”

He decided to follow in his father's footsteps anyway.

Tsao, also a Kahiki Supper Club alumnus, will open Fukuryu Ramen in a burgeoning dining cluster near the Shops at Lane Avenue.

Photos: Memories of the Kahiki Supper Club

The restaurant, whose name roughly translates to the lucky dragon in Japanese, will take over 1,400 square feet of space at 1600 Lane Ave., next to Hudson 29. A mid-January opening is planned.

It’s a follow-up to the original Fukuryu (pronounced foo-kur-yoo) in Melbourne, Australia, offering a sleek design using concrete, stainless steel and wood.

“Our concept in Australia is very similar to what we’re going to be doing here,” said owner Tsao, whose experience also includes having been part of the Kahiki prepared-foods business based in Gahanna. “It’s a modern, urban dining space. It’s going to be on the loud side.”

As the name would suggest, the restaurant will specialize in ramen, the traditional Japanese noodle soup. All will feature homemade broths — tonkotsu (pork), shio (salt), shoyu (soy) and miso (soy paste) — and various toppings.

Other Japanese-inspired ramen dishes include the Red Dragon, containing spicy chili peppers, and the Black Dragon, featuring a swarthy stock made with squid ink, black sesame seed paste and a solitary black meatball.

The rest of the menu will consists of rice bowls, curry dishes and items found in an izakaya, or pub – Japanese salads, chicken karaage (fried chicken nuggets) and okonomiyaki (savory pancakes). Fukuryu will have a cold case in front so customers can grab items to go.

Some details haven’t been worked out, such as the pricing structure. But Tsao wants it to be affordable enough to attract customers there multiple times a week.

He said the goal is to bring the casual dining of Japan to a wider audience.

“There’s nothing fancy about it,” he said. “It just warms the soul. It makes you feel good.”

Tsao said Fukuryu’s ramen is an experience in aromas, textures and flavors.

“The way I can best explain it is our flavors are very bold,” he said. “You’re going to experience ramen the way it’s supposed to be in Japan.”

Noodles will be made locally by the International Noodle Co. on the North Side, which also supplies the Kahiki Foods with its egg-roll skins.

Tsao’s initial restaurant training came as a dishwasher at the Kahiki Supper Club, a long-celebrated Polynesian restaurant located on the East Side of Columbus. It closed in 2000 after nearly 40 years in business.

Tsao’s late father, one of several owners in its long history, bought the restaurant in 1988. Seven years later, he founded Kahiki Frozen Foods, now known as Kahiki Foods. Abarta, a Pittsburgh-based company, bought most shares in the Kahiki in 2007 but it remained in Gahanna.

Tsao, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America and earned a bachelor’s and MBA at Ohio State University, worked in the hospitality business but returned to the Kahiki where he worked for a period of time as director of research and development.

Tsao left in 2012 to join a business group that established a chain of ramen restaurants in Japan and Indonesia. The group financed Fukuryu, which opened last year in Melbourne. He said expansion plans are on hold in Australia.