Empty unit to be sleek and stylish restaurant
AN empty retail unit in a prime location in Swansea city centre has been transformed into a sleek and stylish new Japanese restaurant.
Joyato, which business director Alice Yi said means “all-night lights,” is now open and serves a wide range of authentic Japanese dishes including sushi, sashimi and Japanese grill dishes for a set price.
The restaurant has a modern Japanese aesthetic and seats 200 people across three main dining areas over two floors with an additional semienclosed dining room on the ground floor.
All dishes are made to order and served to customers as soon as they’re ready with diners able to order up to four dishes at a time, as many times as they wish, as part of the restaurant’s all you can eat offering.
“Joyato is now open and we’re confident it will become very popular,” Ms Yi said. “We had plans for Joyato before Covid – we first started looking at these premises in 2018-19.
“We had the idea for the concept a long time ago but because of Covid we obviously had to stop our preparations.
“During the pandemic we postponed our business plans then we started again after Covid. We came back here and negotiated on the premises in 2021 and we finally got access to the site in April 2023. We’ve spent a year transforming the unit. There was nothing here before – it was just empty.”
Every aspect of the restaurant’s interior has been carefully designed and chosen, Ms Yi said.
The decision to keep the unit’s original concrete ceiling, pillars, and exposed ventilation ducting was made to give the restaurant an industrial feel while the attractive lights and pretty Japanese panels, pictures, and decorations were chosen to give the restaurant its classy and sleek, yet bright and inviting, appearance.
The sushi preparation area was designed to be partly-open so diners can see the chefs at work.
“This is the first Joyato restaurant. I am from Swansea so I wanted the first one to be here. We’re looking to open another one eventually in Colchester too,” Ms Yi said.
“Everything here has been designed by an architect – everything is simple, clean, and sleek. Joyato means all-night lights, or the lights are on all night, and is actually the name of some restaurants in Japan. Here we have as much natural light as possible.”