Chef Bun is the recipient of the 2016 White House Champion of Change Award for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Award nominee. His family restaurant, Miya’s (founded by his mother, Yoshiko Lai, in 1982), is the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya’s specializes in sustainable seafood-based sushi; plant-based sushi; invasive species-based sushi.
Described by The New York Times as “the mad scientist of the sustainable sushi movement,” Bun Lai has been featured in national and international media such as Time, National Geographic, Prevention, Food and Wine, Eating Well, Outside, Wired, Popular Mechanics, Vice, The New Yorker, The New York Times, CNN, FOX, PBS, CBS, NPR, and a wide range of international publications and television.
Bun Lai is an educator who has been published in Scientific American and Harvard Design Magazine. He has spoken at The White House, Google, The American Fisheries Society, World Wildlife Fund, Culinary Institute of America, Johnson & Whales, Yale School of Management, Harvard School of Public Health, and at Monterey Bay Aquarium where he is a Blue Ribbon Task Force member. He has curated many events in collaboration with people from other disciplines, including with Jarobi (A Tribe Called Quest).
Bun Lai is the former Director of Nutrition for a non-for-profit that serves low income diabetics.
His movie, made in collaboration with Eric Heimbold (Who Let The Dogs Out) and Ryan Knighton (Cockeyed), was the finalist for the James Beard Award.
He is currently working on educational experiences on his farm, planning on taking Miya’s on the road post-COVID, books, television, and bringing Flaming Cock, the world’s first furiously spicy sake liquor, to market—which will sponsor the work of people who fight for social and ecological justice.
