“It’s important for me to look at every single customer and maximise their satisfaction. That’s the biggest point,” says Raita Noda. It’s a mentality that has driven the chef since he left Ocean Room to open Sydney’s first eight-seat omakase restaurant, Raita Noda Chef’s Kitchen, about a decade ago. Now, Noda is in the process of opening his next venture, a 15-seat restaurant on the edge of Surry Hills and Redfern.
Noda and his parents moved to Australia from Japan when he was 15. After finishing high school, he began an apprenticeship at a Japanese restaurant in Sydney. In 2000, Noda opened his first restaurant Rise in Darlinghurst at the age of 26. “I was running Rise for five years,” he says. “While I was running that business, I met the owners of the Wildfire Restaurant Group, and they wanted to open a seafood venue, which was Ocean Room. I sold my business and joined them.”
Ocean Room was in Sydney’s Overseas Passenger Terminal in Circular Quay, along with neighbouring restaurant Wildfire until a major renovation in 2014 forced both restaurants to close. It gave Noda the opportunity to take pause and look back at the challenges he’d experienced running such an expansive venue. “I wanted to do a large-scale restaurant, but once I started [at Ocean Room], there were so many staff members,” he says. “What I wanted to deliver to the customer could not be done all the time. With the food, it was partly about how I controlled the kitchen, but even if I controlled it perfectly, we would still experience problems sometimes. It was the biggest frustration for me.”
Noda’s next venture was the opposite of Ocean Room, containing just eight seats. Raita Noda’s Chef’s Kitchen opened in the same year and is widely recognised as Sydney’s first omakase restaurant. The compact format provided the ideal setup for the chef, who wanted “100 per cent responsibility”.
It’s here where Noda began working with his son Momotaro who trained as an apprentice alongside his father. The pair change the menu daily and operate all facets of the business from food and beverage service to explaining each dish to guests. Noda says some customers get nervous when going to high-end restaurants, so he set out to create an experience that was as welcoming and as casual as possible. “It is a fine-dining restaurant, but we want each customer to relax and focus on enjoying dinner,” he says.
The open kitchen allows customers to view everything they’re going to eat, and the service process helps combat any nerves. “Many customers give us good feedback because they feel like they’re not only eating dinner, but watching theatre,” says Noda. “Some people even say it looks like a sports match. There are many open kitchen restaurants, but you can’t see everything from your seat. At our restaurant, you can sit and see everything. Each individual dish is created right in front of you and delivered by us. The experience is a bit more fun.”
Things shifted for Noda in late 2023 when Toga Group approached him to gauge his interest in opening an omakase restaurant in the new Wunderlich Lane precinct on the edge of Sydney’s Redfern and Surry Hills. His decision to launch a new restaurant called R by Raita Noda was largely motivated by his son’s progress in the kitchen. “He’s doing really well, and he shows so much responsibility,” says Noda. “He’s willing to do this new business in Wunderlich Lane, so that’s why I decided [to do it].”
It also was difficult to turn down a Koichi Takada-designed restaurant. Noda had seen Takada at work when the new owners of Ocean Room decided to refresh the restaurant. Yasumichi Morita was behind the redesign but needed someone to take on a project management role, which led to Takada stepping up. The design was so well-received that it was entered into a competition. “Takada told me that was the point where he became famous and [it gave him] the opportunity to do more major jobs,” says Noda. “When I was leaving Ocean Room he said, ‘If you need help with restaurant design in the future, please contact me’.”
In the following years, Takada has completed numerous award-winning projects. “I knew he was very famous, and that he’s not doing small venues anymore,” says Noda. “But I contacted him and said, ‘I need to find someone to do the restaurant design and he said, ‘Of course I can do that for you’.”
Building a new restaurant from scratch was appealing to Noda, especially at this point in his culinary career. “At my previous restaurant, I couldn’t do a major renovation because of the existing restaurant, so we just did a bit of fine-tuning,” he says. R by Raita Noda has been built from scratch and is set to open its doors in February. Momotaro will join Noda as sous chef while taking on more responsibility at Raita Noda’s Chef’s Kitchen. He says the concept behind the restaurant design is inspired by a rainy day in Tokyo, with the design team creating a more cohesive space that surrounds the chef team. “The biggest difference will be the U-shape of the kitchen and the countertop for customer seating,” he says.
The restaurant will use mainly local ingredients and produce to create a Japanese menu targeted at an Australian market. The philosophy, technique, and flavours will be traditionally Japanese, even if the dishes don’t look traditional, says Momotaro.
Noda says that owning his own restaurant sets his business apart in an industry that largely depends on investors and partners. “At many other omakases, there is a business owner who sponsors the chef to run the restaurant,” he says. “If you find the right venue, have an idea of what you really want to do, and know how to spend money, a chef can become the owner-operator of the business. I want more younger people to try … but it is bit of a gamble. If you’re not going to try, you’re not going to be able to find real enjoyment as a chef.”
The chef used his experience at Ocean Room to devise a business plan with the goal of creating a “model case” for how a chef can open their own business. The philosophy is something the chef is imparting on his son. Noda didn’t want Momotaro to be a chef, “because I knew how difficult it is in this industry, but he was willing to. I told him, ‘You have to work under me first and see how you go’.” The chef hopes his son will eventually open his own business in the current location of Raita Noda Chef’s Kitchen. In the meantime, perhaps driven by having a son in the industry, Noda is considering leasing the premises to someone new. “It’s a good place for young chefs to start.”
Photography by Yusuke Oba.
This piece originally appeared in the January – February 2024 edition of Hospitality Magazine.
