How Two Resort Chefs Make 50 Restaurants Feel Distinct

Fantastic.

Fantastic.

Well, Ryan, you lead Kusanori, a modern Japanese restaurant.

Yes.

Tell me a little bit about your approach to modern Japanese dining and how you make that approachable in a broader resort setting.

A very great question.

You know, everybody has their kind of like their pre-notion or their kind of take on what Japanese food is, right? There's a lot of classics that everybody knows, but I think where we are very special and we try to bring uniqueness to it is how we present it and how we execute it and how you people indulge it.

I mean, people always eat with their eyes first, right? I mean, everybody sees something first and make it and you have their assumption of it and then the flavor comes afterwards.

But I think for us, what we try to do is take a dish like a classic dish and see how we could really present it in a different way and in a fun way to make it more, of course, feasible, approachable and fun for a customer that nobody else is trying to do.

Are there any, you know, examples on the menu right now of, you know, a dish that really, you know, is on that fine line of like really innovative, fresh, global, but also has that approachable angle?

Cool.

Yes.

If you think of something that's very common, like a seaweed salad, right? Everybody has seaweed salad before, either in the Asian or Japanese restaurant.

So we took it to another level of thinking, what's another comfort salad, which is a Caesar salad, right? Caesar salad, traditionally, they're made in front of you.

You know, your friend of the house comes to you, they make it in front of you.

So our Caesar salad has 14 different types of seaweeds that we cultivate into a dish.

So instead of it being just a normal bowl of seaweed salad that you would get at a normal restaurant, Our front of the house staff will bring it out to you.

They'll explain the 14 different seaweed varietals that we have.

They'll toss it in front of you, pour the dressing, explain the dressing in front of you, hit with a little yuzu, and then we'll present it to you.

So that's one of the unique dishes that we do have.

Another one that we have that's pretty fun and another one that's kind of like fan and fine and approachable is basically we have something called A Wagyu crispy potato.

Everybody has crispy rice or some form of crispy rice.

So we have two Wagyu programs here on property, which we use Tokushima, which is our Japanese program, and Blackhawk, which is actually our domestic program.

So we make that into basically a tartar and a little presentation side of it.

So...