City’s top chef opening new Japanese restaurant and bar

Chef Grey Hwang made waves in the San Antonio restaurant scene when his sushi hot spot Shiro Japanese Bistro took the No. 1 spot in this year’s Top 25 San Antonio Restaurants.

He’s following up on that success with a new restaurant called Yozora Sake & Wine & Listening Bar in the Dominion Ridge shopping center on the Northwest Side. The restaurant, taking over the former home of the coffee shop Cuppencake, will open in phases in the coming weeks, with a grand opening planned before Christmas. Hwang said he’ll post updates on Yozora’s Instagram page, @yozora_satx.

Yozora — the name means “night sky” in Japanese — will take a path different from Shiro, focusing on grilled yakitori dishes, seafood crudo and teriyaki rather than sushi.

There are two driving forces behind that, Hwang said. One is that he wants to expand the city’s palate for Japanese food.

“Sushi opens the gate for the Japanese experience,” he said. “But I want to give people a broader sense of what Japanese food is about.”

The other reason is more practical: It’s a tactical challenge to hire and train sushi chefs who can operate at the level he’s cultivated at Shiro, Hwang said.

A preview of the menu includes crispy pork gyoza dumplings, chicken karaage, yellowtail crudo, tuna tartare, grilled chicken yakitori, pork belly

yakitori, hot-rock beef tataki and charcoal-grilled Chilean sea bass. The sake menu reads

like a curated wine list, with more than 30 labels from regions across Japan joining a bar program that includes wine and sake cocktails.

Yozora seats about 78 people inside and out, with mellow wood-paneled walls and midcentury lighting. The beating heart of the decor revolves around a sound system dominated by a McIntosh tube amp, an old-school Marantz tape deck, a Denon turntable and speakers that can do justice to both bossa nova and Japanese atmospheric pop.

The restaurant, at 22211 Interstate 10 W., Suite 1111, occupies a ground-floor space in the same shopping center as two more of San Antonio’s best restaurants, Aldo’s Ristorante Italiano and Silo Terrace Oyster Bar.

Once fully open, Yozora’s hours will be 5-11 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 5 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.

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Mike Sutter/Staff Yozora Sake & Wine & Listening Bar, opening near the Dominion, is from Grey Hwang, the chef behind Shiro Japanese Bistro.