Before the drywall was hung at Noko Yaki, owner Jon Murray spent hours walking through the unfinished building, one of Nashville's most talked-about restaurant openings this fall.
When his partner, Mary, called and asked if he was still there alone. The answer was almost always yes.
"I'm just in it," Murray told her. "I'm just feeling it."
Within minutes of entering the empty former home of Tin Angel on West End Avenue in midtown, Murray said he knew this was where his next restaurant belonged.
What he couldn't have known was how hard the building would make him work for it.
Nearly two and a half years after Murray and his business partners signed the lease, Noko Yaki is finally nearing completion. The nearly 150-seat Asian-inspired steakhouse is expected
to open in the fall at 3201 West End Ave. with Japanese tabletop grills, a wide-ranging steak selection and a menu that riffs on familiar steakhouse dishes.
Along the way, though, the project has run nearly $2 million over budget and behind schedule.
A collapsed clay sewer line took months to replace. Crews excavating beneath the dining room for the restaurant's downdraft ventilation system hit limestone. Then water began seeping through the concrete around the newly buried ductwork. Even plans the city had already approved ran into new questions once construction was underway.
At one point, Murray, managing partner Wilson Brannock, executive chef and partner Dung "Junior" Vo and an investor sat down to consider whether they should walk away.
Murray kept returning to how he felt when he first saw the space.
"We're already this far in. We can't abandon it now," he said. "I went back to that gut feeling of, 'This is where you're supposed to be.'"
Now, after what Murray calls "a test of patience and a test of our investors' pocketbooks," Noko Yaki is counting down the days until its debut this fall.
What's on the menu at Noko Yaki? Here's what to order
Noko Yaki will offer domestic, Australian and Japanese cuts, including authentic Kobe from Japan. It will be the only Tennessee restaurant registered with the Kobe Beef Marketing & Distribution Promotion Association.
Beef will be cooked tableside by Noko Yaki staff on built-in Japanese Shinpo grills, rather than leaving the work to diners as many Korean barbecue and yakiniku restaurants do. Other entrées, including a half chicken, market catch and vegetable plate, will come fully prepared from the kitchen.
Dry aging will be handled outside the restaurant. The team explored sourcing beef closer to home, meeting with three farmers within roughly two hours of Nashville, but Murray said none were confident they could consistently supply the volume required for a restaurant approaching 150 seats. Locally raised meat could still appear as specials.
The rest of the menu is still taking shape, as Vo and the culinary team spend every Monday testing dishes before the leadership team tastes them the following day. Some won't make the final cut.
Among the dishes being considered is a play on a loaded baked potato designed to be eaten with chopsticks. The team also tested an A4 Japanese beef sando after deciding a richer A5 wasn't right for the texture they wanted.
Other ideas ranged from a wedge salad with chili crisp and a slightly sweeter blue cheese dressing to balance the heat to onion rings seasoned with furikake and yuzu kosho.
Shrimp cocktail has also been up for debate. Murray initially told Vo and the culinary team they didn't need to serve one simply because steakhouses typically do. Then he tasted their version.
"I was like, 'OK, we could have that on the menu,'" Murray said.
Not every idea will survive the development process. Murray said dishes are being dropped if they're too difficult to execute consistently or simply don't work once they're on the plate.
He has only a few requirements for what ultimately makes the cut.
"It needs to be affordable, and it needs to be craveable," Murray said. "It's our restaurant. We can do whatever we want."
What will Noko Yaki look like?
In the dining room, much of the building's original brick remains, warmed by low lighting and natural materials.
A 12-foot tree inspired by the Japanese black pines found in the gardens of Tokyo's Imperial Palace will anchor the space.
Most of Noko Yaki's tables will have built-in grills, with four grill-free high-tops near the bar reserved for walk-ins. A 12-seat table will accommodate larger parties, while a private dining room for 10 to 12 can be opened to a larger area and closed off with sound-dampening curtains for events of about 50 people.
Murray spent years photographing small design details he noticed while traveling and bringing the ideas home. The results are woven throughout the restaurant as tiny, almost imperceptible, comfort touches.
Along the booths, for example, an elbow-height ledge Murray borrowed from a restaurant he visited while traveling doubles as a place to rest an arm and a clever way to conceal some of the restaurant's ductwork.
"Warmth is a word that I love," Murray said. "And warmth isn't just visual. Warmth is the way you make someone feel."
Noko Hospitality will more than double its workforce
Noko Hospitality's expansion started small in an East Nashville strip mall, adding a 14-seat omakase bar next door to Noko’s 80-person dining room in 2024.
Now, Murray, Vo and Brannock are going bigger.
When Noko Yaki opens in the fall, Noko Hospitality will more than double in size. The company currently employs about 50 people across leadership and operations in Noko and Kase, and it is hiring 55 to 60 more this year.
For Murray, those employees are at the center of the mission at Noko Hospitality.
“We work in the best industry in the world,” Murray said. “We want to show people that you can be successful in this business without killing yourself over it.”
He got into restaurants in 2011, and by 2019, he was the chief restaurant officer at Indigo Road Hospitality Group, which owns spots like Oak Steakhouse and O-Ku in Nashville.
Burnout and a skewed work-life balance have long been common occurrences in the hospitality industry, which often demands long hours and little paid time off, but in 2020, Murray saw a swath of friends and colleagues hit their breaking point.
That’s when he realized something had to change, and then, he opened his own restaurant.
Noko employees can access a slew of benefits that are rare in the industry: one week of paid vacation every six months, complimentary therapy and gym memberships, four-day work weeks and an annual travel stipend.
“Of course, we prioritize treating the customers well, but we really prioritize treating our people well,” he said. “We measure our success by the turnover rate, which was 14.6% last year.”
With the major expansion on the horizon, Noko Hospitality is prepping for the growing pains that come with any new venture, but one thing that Murray said won’t falter is the standards by which they treat people.
And other restaurant groups are welcome to take note.
Murray still spends the occasional evening wandering through Noko Yaki as it comes to life, but he added a new element to his routine too. Every morning, as he starts his day, he meditates and asks the universe to help him make a positive impact on Nashville and the hospitality business as a whole.
The restaurant and shifting industry he's imagined are both closer to fruition than they've ever been.
"It feels amazing," he said. "It doesn't feel forced. It just feels good."
Mackensy Lunsford is the senior dining reporter at The Tennessean. Reach her at mlunsford@tennessean.com. Hadley Hitson covers business news for The Tennessean. She can be reached at hhitson@tennessean.com. To support their work,subscribe to The Tennessean.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Inside Noko Yaki, Nashville steakhouse nearly 3 years in the making
