Live-fire yakitori, a genuine omakase bar, and a Michelin-starred sushi chef are coming to Monroe
by Chris Jay
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Cory Bahr’s new restaurant sounds completely incredible and also totally, batsh*t crazy.
Sushi Koko (Instagram) will be located directly across the street from Parish Restaurant, Bahr’s outstanding bistro in downtown Monroe. In a vacant strip-mall storefront that previously housed a Baptist congregation, Bahr is just beginning the work of installing the kind of high-end sushi den that “looks like a place you’d see in Ginza,” he said, referring to a famous sushi district in Tokyo, Japan. The name Sushi Koko is a play on words; the Japanese character used in writing Koko, ここ, translates to English as “place”; Sushi Koko literally means “Sushi Place.”
Bahr, who is fairly obsessed with communicating the essence of a place through its food, is writing the Sushi Koko menu in partnership with head chef Shuji Hirose. Hirose is a 55-year-old sushi chef from Kyoto who has worked as chef for a one Michelin-starred sushi restaurant. Hirose’s family, Bahr said, have been in the restaurant industry for eleven generations. Bahr said that he and Hirose have “hit it off like brothers.”
The restaurant is being designed by Amanda Medsger, whose interiors for Vestal in Lafayette, Louisiana rank among the most beautiful restaurant spaces in the South. Custom furniture for Sushi Koko is being designed and built in Monroe and Houston.
What’ll be on the menu at Sushi Koko?
“No deep-fried, crispy crawfish rolls or any of that shit,” Bahr said.
So no Geaux Tigers Roll, then?
“We are gonna do alligator karaage, though,” Bahr said. “No tailpipe tuna. A real omakase bar, designed for omakase. No weird, glass windows or coolers separating you from the chef. The best rice you’ll ever taste. Live-fire yakitori cooking, Japanese A5 beef. Gulf ingredients whenever possible, but we’ll have stuff flown in from Japan twice a week.”*
Bahr seems to know that this venture will come with its own unique challenges, but that—if it is done right, with precision, respect, and attention to detail—Sushi Koko could be an incredibly special place, unlike anything else in Louisiana.
“By the time this is over, we’re going to have a world-class sushi restaurant in Monroe,” Bahr said. “Either that, or I’m going to be begging for change at the foot of the bridge.”
*“Tailpipe tuna” is tuna that has been blasted with carbon monoxide in order to continue looking bright pink or red, so that consumers can’t tell when the fish is beginning to go bad. It is served, without any kind of labeling, in many sushi restaurants.
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