This top rated Wynwood cafe just lost its visionary chef. What will come next is unsure

Dec. 21—Take absent the progressive, prize-profitable chef and the visionary restaurateur that manufactured Wynwood’s Kyu Asian barbecue cafe a hit — and what do you have still left?

Miami is about to discover out.

Chef Michael Lewis and associate Steven Haigh, who still left Zuma to start off Kyu, continuously named one of the most effective eating places in the place, have been bought out by their authentic Wynwood partners. Lewis likened the takeover to getting rid of a member of his family members.

“I would be lying if I explained there was not emotion concerned in it,” he mentioned.

Lewis and Haigh will keep ownership of a newly opened Kyu restaurant in Mexico City. And the two are not abandoning Miami. They individual and oversee Buya Izakaya + Yakitori in Wynwood and will operate their breakfast and chicken sandwich place, Laid Fresh, as a ghost kitchen with the each individual-increasing REEF Systems until finally they really feel risk-free reopening a actual physical restaurant, Lewis mentioned.

They both equally also system to open up a new Miami cafe in the up coming 12-18 months, Haigh mentioned.

“We are planning on preserving a really powerful existence in Miami with yet another, brand-new brick-and-mortar cafe extremely before long,” Lewis mentioned.

But what of Kyu — named a James Beard award semifinalist for most effective new cafe in 2017, among the OpenTable’s 2018 checklist of most effective new locations when it opened? The concept was wholly conceived by Lewis, who analyzed beneath grasp cooks Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Eric Ripert.

Lewis has remaining it in the hands of head chef Raheem Sealey, his proper-hand gentleman for the past a few decades. Sealey worked at Zuma with Lewis, qualified at his side finding out barbecue, and even opened The Consuming Pig, a roadside Caribbean barbecue pop-up in northeast Miami-Dade that has develop into 1 of the vibrant places for Miami restaurants through the pandemic. He, his husband or wife, Mark Wint, and his spouse, Yohanir Sandoval, also get the job done alongside 1 a different at Kyu.

Sealey has ideas to open up The Drinking Pig as a standalone place and if that takes place, the potential of Kyu is still left unsure. For now, Haigh stated the cafe they left guiding stays robust. Calls to the restaurant, at 251 NW 25th St., were being not returned.

“We left the cafe in fantastic arms, with a staff that has been with us considering the fact that the starting,” Haigh said. “We hope every thing proceeds to operate the identical.”