Ru San's Nagata eyes new steak-seafood concept

Nation's Restaurant News, Dec 9, 2002 by Jack Hayes

ATLANTA -- The group that operates the four-unit Ru San's Japanese chain here is developing an upscale steak and sushi concept called Ran, which will feature Kobe-style steaks and high-end seafood creations in an exclusive, 30-seat space tailored for "open-minded" dining.

Named after the movie by famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, the intimate Ran is scheduled to debut in Atlanta next summer following the launch of the fifth Ru San's Japanese Cuisine, Sushi & Seafood unit, near Nashville, Tenn.

"I have the staff trained and a manager waiting for this opportunity, so it's just a matter of time" before Ran opens, said Wataru Nagata, whose creation of Ru San's, which features rock music, cemented his reputation among Atlanta operators as the father of "nontraditional" sushi.

Nagata debuted Ru San's in 1991, modeling it after the restaurant California Beach Rock N' Sushi, a fixture in the Los Angeles suburb of Hermosa Beach, which was one of the first to popularize "Americanized" sushi in a casual environment.

A protege at the late Shoin Umemura, who opened nearly a dozen Holiday Inn properties in Japan in the 1970s, Nagata said he sees Atlanta's "casualized" sushi segment as nearing saturation. One reason is the popularity of such Nagata creations as Fire Cracker Maki, which combines red and white tuna in a flash-fried sushi-rice crust.

"It's been a sushi tidal wave since the first Ru San's opened," Nagata said. "There are easily more than 200 sushi restaurants around the city. Everybody is doing what we do."

Nevertheless, Nagata still is grossing nearly $2 million per location at his 3,000-square-foot restaurants, which were opened for an estimated $250,000 each. The average Ru San's each week serves some 1,300 dinners and 700 lunches, with typical checks of $22.50 and $12, respectively. Seating averages 120 inside and 50 outside.

Nagata, a hands-on operator who works the sushi line five nights a week, is believed to have trained a majority of Atlanta's sushi chefs. He landed in Atlanta in 1990 with a six-month contract to open Nickiemoto for the Buckhead-based Cartel Restaurant Group. He then opened and ran a traditional sushi bar called Plums.

A restaurant and hotel management graduate of Rikkyo University and Michigan State University, Nagata owned and operated for 10 years a popular Los Angeles teppanyaki and sushi operation called Tachibana, after he left the Holiday Inn group.

"Ru San's took shape when I finally found a vacant space in midtown" Atlanta, Nagata said. "The idea was to have everything in the open and easy to understand and to create a lot of energy." First-time customers are surprised and appear delighted when they walk through the doorway and hear Ru San's host, chefs and service staff shouting welcome in Japanese.

Ru San's menu includes 50 "Original House Sushi Roll." They are priced from $3.50, for the French Connection, a combination of escargot and garlic sauce, to $17.95, for the O-Tsunami Big Tidal Wave--steamed whole lobster tail, asparagus and baby carrot with flying-fish roe. Those items and 22 other Ru San's menu selections are trademarked.

The top-selling sushi plates are the Fire Cracker Maki, $8.50; the Rising Sun, with tuna, smoked salmon, cream cheese and avocado, $8.95; and Sesame White Tuna, $8.45.

The restaurant features 33 yakitori-skewered--selections; 26 tempura choices; and 12 kushi-age offerings, which are either breaded, marinated or sesame-coated. In addition, there are nearly 60 different Japanese dinners and specials, such as fried red snapper, $13.95; pork katsu don over rice, $11.45; and chicken fried rice, $4.95.

Ru San's menu also showcases such Pacific Rim specialties as lobster batayaki, $25.95; wasabi-potato-crusted prawns with hot chili-oyster sauce, $16.95; curry-blackened mekajiki swordfish, $16.25; and non seaweed-wrapped salmon with black bean-lime sauce, $16.95. All are served with miso soup, house salad and steamed rice.

The Nashville Ru San's will mark Nagata's eighth opening in the Southeast since his Atlanta debut in 1991. Three of those restaurants have been urchased by their former unit managers, who made down payments using accumulated monthly bonus earnings. The new owners renamed two, and one still operates as Ru San's.

Three years ago Nagata opened a Ru San's in the Charlotte, N.C., area and met with the same success he found in Atlanta more than a decade ago. He said there are many opportunities to open Ru San's in other emerging Southeastern markets, such as Raleigh, N.C., but added that his choice is to develop the Ran concept in Atlanta first.

"Ran will be very exclusive but not restrictive," Nagata explained. "There will be nothing stuffy about it; 'open-minded,' I think, is a word that most accurately describes the feel of the concept. We'll combine the best steaks in the world with my seafood creations."