The owners of Sushi Capitol and Sushi Ogawa aren’t sticking to traditional Japanese fare at their forthcoming Shaw restaurant. In fact, you may not even find sushi on the menu at Mirai, which translates to “future” in Japanese.
Like Seasonal Pantry, which previously inhabited the space, Mirai will operate as a daytime market with a handful of ready-eat items, and transition to an intimate restaurant at night.
Can Yurdagul, business partner and son-in-law of head chef Minoru Ogawa says the daytime portion will be the first to roll out in the coming weeks. Mornings will bring coffees, teas, and quick-grab Japanese breakfast and lunch boxes filled with seasonal fish and/or vegetables, tamagoyaki (egg omelette), pickles, and rice. Mirai has also partnered with DC’s Onolicious Poke for an afternoon pop-up in the space. Patrons can grab between three and four styles of the Hawaiian dish, made with a rotating selection of sushi-grade tuna, salmon, octopus, and other seasonal fish. Shoppers can also browse a lineup of specialized Japanese products, such as seasonings and vinegars, and produce items like locally grown Asian peppers.
Come evening, Mirai will convert into an eight-seat tasting menu restaurant. Chef Ogawa specializes in traditional omakase meals at his sushi spots, but the focus here will be on modern, Japanese-influenced cuisine. The team has tapped chef Kaz Shimamura, who formerly worked at Marcus Samuelsson’s New York restaurants (Aquavit, Red Rooster), to help design and execute the multi-course menus. Offerings will be anywhere between three-and-six courses and run from around $50 to $80, depending on the evening. Yurdagul says the emphasis will be on the same high-quality seafood one finds at their sister restaurants, seasonal vegetables, and items from a binchotan charcoal grill.
“It’s going to be our playground,” says Yurdagul.
Mirai. 1314 1/2 Ninth Street, Northwest.
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
