Story
- Miya's
- Story
Introduction
In 1982, Mama opened New Haven County’s first sushi bar. The restaurant was named Miya, after her baby daughter. This restaurant was the culmination of her life’s ambition. My grandfather had owned a successful lumber company and my mother dreamed of doing business with him when she was old enough. In the 1950s, little girls from the countryside in Japan weren’t encouraged to pursue careers in business. Grandpa would sigh and compliment her, “If only you were a boy, you would make a great businessman.” She wished that things were different; it wasn’t fair being a girl.
In New Haven, cooking in a tiny apartment kitchen on Prospect Street, she put her university degree in nutrition to use by starting a catering business which would eventually become Miya’s. After almost thirty years in business, my mother is still as passionate about Miya’s as when she first began.
In our cuisine, we use the technique of sushi as a medium to explore what it means to be human. We take inspiration from a story that appears in the Hebrew Bible, the Quran, and Ethiopian folklore about the Queen of Sheba traveling from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to seek the counsel of King Solomon. Upon arrival, she gave him spices from her home to honor him. This gift was incredibly meaningful; she was sharing with him the smells and the tastes of her homeland. King Solomon had never before experienced cumin, chili, fenugreek, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice, and the Queen of Sheba offered him the very essence of her faraway home for consumption. Food creates some of our most powerful memories; it can conjure up images and feelings of country, home, friends, and family. In each recipe of ours, ingredients from disparate cultures are combined, symbolizing what is possible when people of the world live in harmony with one another.
This cuisine is indebted to my mother, who is Japanese, and to my father, who is Chinese. It is because of their differences that I adore and appreciate cultural diversity. Just as importantly, this cuisine has been molded by everybody who has ever touched me in my life. This menu is my love letter to humanity and to every miraculous, weird, and wonderful thing that lives under the sun.
About Chef Bun
Chef Bun is the sole recipient of the 2016 White House Champion of Change Award for Sustainable Seafood. 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 countless national and international media such as Time, National Geographic, Prevention, Food and Wine, Eating Well, Outside, Popular Mechanics, Vice, The New Yorker, 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 events in collaboration with Jarobi (A Tribe Called Quest) and Maya Lin (Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial).
Bun Lai is on the Council of Directors for the True Health Coalition that was founded by Dr. David Katz (Director of Yale University Prevention Research Center) and Dan Buettner (Director Blue Zones Project). 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), is the 2018 finalist for the James Beard Award.
Bun is passionate about helping people enrich their lives by helping them achieve optimum health through the most nutritious, environmentally restorative food. He offers educational, and motivational food experiences for groups, as well as dietary action plans for individuals.
Supernatural Bull$#!* Powers
Bun, Hey—you run an amazing place! You know I’m a 100% straight shooter, so you can count on it when I tell you that the VERY worst thing I can say about tonight is that I wouldn’t have served the catfish last—and I had to beat my brains to come up with even that. Every single dish was fantastic. I’d be at a loss to tell anyone what to order. My advice to friends (and I will direct as many of them as I can your way) will simply be to put themselves in the hands of the great chef. It was wonderful to see you in person, and even better to see you working in a business where you can put your supernatural bullshitting powers to work for you. When I get back to LA, I’ll break out the pencil and paper and make you something suitable for framing.
Jay Lender
Writer and Director, Sponge Bob Square Pants