Photograph by Catherine Viox
Editor’s note: After we went to press on the March issue last month, Hideki Harada announced that Kiki would be transitioning from its College Hill location. The last day of service will be on March 21. “From the start College Hill welcomed me and the restaurant with open arms,” he said on Instagram. “Thank you for being there for us. I will miss having a business here but I plan to raise my family here for years to come. Kiki is not going away. I believe that we’re just now getting started.”
Kiki and The Aperture bring fresh dining concepts to evolving neighborhoods, and Hideki Harada and Jordan Anthony-Brown discuss how they’ve adapted to their communities.
Anthony-Brown: Were you born in Cincinnati?
Harada: Raised here.
Anthony-Brown: “What neighborhood?”
Harada: “Sycamore Township. So, I’m Cincinnati-raised.”
Anthony-Brown: It’s funny because Kiki is in the neighborhood I grew up in.
Harada: That’s right, yeah.
Anthony-Brown: The barber shop I used to go to is right down the street. What’s it like? You wouldn’t normally put an emerging concept like that there. I know that’s where you live, too.”
Harada: Yeah. I was taking a tour of College Hill years prior to leaving Kaze. My friend bought me lunch and I walked around. After that, my partnership went a different direction, and I took the tour again, and I thought, _Let’s start the conversation. I realized College Hill is a very tight-knit community. And the neighborhood definitely supports the businesses there.
Anthony-Brown: Yeah, it’s a lot of people who’ve lived there for a long time. There’s kind of a pride in that neighborhood. And geographically, it’s isolated. It’s hard to get to.
Harada: I am very appreciative of guests who come in from Kentucky or up north.
Anthony-Brown: “Well, it’s intentional. If you’re going to go there, you’re going there.”
Harada: “It’s a destination, yeah.”
Anthony-Brown: It’s worthy of it. There aren’t a lot of places like it. I can’t think of any that are homegrown like that, especially that have that type of concept.
Harada: I think that’s what a lot of the community is hungry for. Something different. We’re trying to provide a unique experience that is still familiar for the locals but gets foodies excited. And that’s a tough balance.
Photograph by Catherine Viox
Anthony-Brown: It really is because you need both. If you’re going to be in a neighborhood, you need to respect the neighborhood and be loyal to it, but also have an experience that people want to come for. One of the things about Kiki that I think is great is you’ve managed to do that at a good price point. The product you use is not cheap, and keeping that balance is pretty impressive because it keeps both sides satisfied.
Harada: We try to keep everything under the $25 market. It’s hard. Same question: why Walnut Hills?
Anthony-Brown: I was a bit of a prodigal son. I left Cincinnati when I was 18, went to college and grad school, thought I was going to be a lawyer, and followed my friends to New York. My dad died in a car accident, and that was when I realized I wasn’t happy. I went back to cooking full-time. Coming back here was interesting. My sister has always lived here. We would come back and visit, my wife and I. My sister wanted us to move back, and it took her four years to get the job done. We went to Kaze, Senate, the Eagle, and tThe sleepy town I thought Cincinnati was when I left was really getting some legs. A friend pointed me towards Walnut Hills, and my brother-in-law said I had to take this space.
Harada: Corner spot.
Anthony-Brown: Yeah. Historic building, and wide open. The only things I have to deal with are these three columns, including the one dead-center of the kitchen that I have to deal with every day.
Harada: We had one in Kaze, too. Old buildings always have that support beam that you have to keep.
Anthony-Brown: Sometimes I realize I’m talking to the wall and have to lean around the corner to call the pasta guy. But yeah, the church I used to go to is right down the street, and I didn’t realize until I drove right past it. But like you said, the neighborhood has really embraced us. A lot of people have been here a long time. It’s cool. We have hyper-regular guests from the neighborhood. They bring us clips of newspaper articles about what this place used to look like. That’s informed the way we go about things. We want to pay respect to that, and we pay homage to the people who support us. It’s all about the story we tell.
Harada: But it’s still developing, right?
Anthony-Brown: “Yeah, several places opened in the past few months, and there’s more to come.
Harada: And you start your roots a little bit, right? At Kiki, we’re seeing some growth. Our roots are deeper. It’s creating more for the community rather than just being a destination point. That’s what my goal, and hopefully College Hill’s goal, is—to create more of a neighborhood.
Anthony-Brown: I think humility is important. There were some things we tried that weren’t right for the neighborhood or the destination.
Harada: Yeah, there are so many dishes that, like, I love this dish personally, but—
Anthony-Brown: We opened with an uni pasta dish, and it was—
Harada: I would’ve crushed it.
Anthony-Brown: Well, it was funny because there were people who knew. But trying to explain when there’s no visible protein—
Harada: But the ingredients are all prize items.
Anthony-Brown: Yeah, but you can’t see them. So that was the first opening dish we realized might have to go. But we’ve found a good balance. Like there’s a dish right now with striped bass and a mussel chowder, but we also sell rib-eyes, and you really need both. I was expecting the 40-something P&G crowd. We have that, but we also have older Boomer guests, and I didn’t see that coming. It’s flattering, but we definitely made some adjustments. The phrase I tell my staff is: Our creativity is irrelevant if it’s unsustainable. How do you stay inspired?
Harada: Honestly, family. That umbrella has expanded to the people who work with me. They’re not just there to work. They’re there to create, and they want to do something new and exciting. I don’t think what we make would be as special without the dialogue.
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