Three cards taped to the front counter of Udon Sushi Bakery, 134 N. Harrison Ave., welcome its owner back from the restaurant’s half-year hiatus. “We were all losing weight. You need to feed us more!” one reads. Another customer writes, “When you guys closed, I died a little inside.”
Next to the notes, owner Yi Wang posted pictures of his restaurant’s fire-singed kitchen — the aftermath of a fire that erupted in April and closed his restaurant until last week. A cigarette thrown into a 4-inch gap that connects the restaurant to Harrison Roadhouse, 720 Michigan Ave., ignited the flames.
While Wang estimates the fire caused more than $70,000 in combined damages to the restaurant and the apartment upstairs, the blaze may have kept Udon Sushi Bakery open for the future.
“Before the fire, I had a buyer (for the restaurant) and was going to close this place by the end of the year,” Wang said. “The fire changed everything.”
Wang said he had no choice but to change his plans for retirement and continue operating the restaurant with his wife, Pat, and daughter, Juliet, a journalism sophomore.
The turnout during the first night Wang’s restaurant reopened showed his customers were glad to see him back.
“I was so surprised because I had about 120 people come in that first night,” he said. “I thought to myself, ‘Where did they come from? How did they know?’”
Most of Wang’s customers — he estimates about 90 percent — are regulars, stopping by for sushi, bubble tea and other favorites an average of three times a week.
Gaoming Zhang, an education psychology doctoral student, said the restaurant’s unique style brings students back.
“I think the reason so many people love this place is because of the culture here and because it seems like it was made just for students,” Zhang said.
Makiko Yamauchi, a music performance senior, said the restaurant is a comforting place for international students who are missing home.
“Usually, in Asian countries, there are some stores that will close at 5 in the morning,” said Yamauchi, who is from Japan. “There’s not very many hangout places around here that are open that late.”
The restaurant, which stays open daily until 3 a.m., gives students more than just an option for food.
When students aren’t watching more than a half dozen TV screens from black leather couches or an electric massage chair, they can toss darts, play video and card games, dress up with plastic masks and wigs or fiddle with rubber snakes, nunchucks and boxing gloves.
“In most restaurants, the customer sits in their seat and never moves,” Wang said. “Here, students have more freedom.”
Zhang returned to the restaurant with friends Wednesday for the first time since it reopened. Immediately after she walked through the door, she was relieved to see that a wall cluttered with hundreds of one-inch square photographs was still intact.
Wang has snapped hundreds of pictures of customers in the nine years he has owned the restaurant and pasted them to a wall next to the front counter. Taking pictures of students on their birthdays, graduations and other special days has been a way to connect with customers.
“I had a customer who had graduated and went to Japan,” he said. “Five years later, he came back to the country for work and came back to see his picture. He was so happy it was still there.”
When Wang retires from his business, he said he’ll take the wall with him.
“When I sell this place, I want to sell the business, but the pictures — I want to take those home,” he said. “It will be a great memory for me.”
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