At new Salt Lake City restaurant Junah, two cuisines make unlikely but delicious partners

When Utah chefs Felipe Oliveira and Hiro Tagai were brainstorming the concept for their new restaurant, Junah, they thought they would combine Oliveira’s passion for Italian food and Tagai‘s expertise in Japanese food.

Turns out, they’d stumbled onto a type of fusion cuisine that had been invented in Japan decades before.

“Itameshi” — which simply means “Italy” and “food” in Japanese — is the combination of Italian and Japanese food. According to Oliveira, itameshi emerged in Japan in the 1980s, a time when Japanese chefs were being exposed more and more to Western cuisine.

As Italian food grew more popular in Japan, chefs started incorporating Japanese flavors, techniques and ingredients into Italian dishes, Oliveira said.

“This gave rise to a unique culinary style that sits somewhere between the precision of Japanese cuisine and the boldness of Italian cooking,” he said.

Once Oliveira and Tagai discovered that the concept they were imagining was actually itameshi, they “embraced” the term, Oliveira said, and made it the focal point of Junah.

Tucked away in Salt Lake City’s Central 9th neighborhood, at 916 S. Jefferson St., Junah opened early this spring.

Oliveira has been busy in Junah’s kitchen, creating and tweaking dishes that he said Utah diners probably haven’t tasted before — think combinations like salmon roe with risotto, and steak with silky mashed taro root.

In the culinary world, he said, you don’t always have to follow tradition.

“As long as you do it with love [and] care, and make sure that what you’re serving is the best you can make for your guests, the end product will be something that will be appreciated,” Oliveira said.

A partnership begins

Originally from Brazil, Oliveira gained a deep knowledge of Italian food while working as a line cook at Per Noi Trattoria on Highland Drive and as the executive chef at Valter’s Osteria downtown.

One of his mentors was Valter Nassi, the larger-than-life Utah restaurateur and Valter’s Osteria proprietor who died in 2022. Oliveira said Nassi was a “very strict guy, but great heart and amazing personality.”

Oliveira said he met Tagai while the two of them were working for Sapa Restaurant Group, whose portfolio includes local establishments like Fillings & Emulsions, Bucket O’Crawfish, Sapa and Fat Fish.

After they left Sapa Restaurant Group, Oliveira and Tagai toyed with the idea of opening a restaurant together.

For years, Tagai had wanted to open a restaurant that served traditional Japanese ramen, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in Utah at the time, Oliveira said. Tagai even traveled to Japan to train in how to make ramen.

So in 2024, the two of them opened Koyote, at 551 W. 400 North, in Salt Lake City’s Fairpark neighborhood. Oliveira said they designed Koyote to be a Japanese restaurant that served ramen along with other Japanese foods, rather than something like a Tokyo ramen shop with a dozen seats where people sit down and rapidly slurp noodles, then leave.

Oliveira and Tagai wanted Koyote to be a “shokudo,” or a Japanese neighborhood restaurant frequented by nearby residents, and Oliveira believes they’ve accomplished that. Koyote became one of the hottest restaurants in Salt Lake City when it opened — on the fourth day, they ran out of food and had to close — and even today, there’s always a line of people waiting at the front door when Koyote opens, Oliveira said.

When it came time for the two chefs to open a second restaurant, they knew they again wanted to bring something new to Utah, Oliveira said. In Junah’s case, that was itameshi.

East meets West

Junah’s Japanese-Italian fusion can be felt not just in the food, but in the decor and look of the restaurant.

In the dining room, the sumptuous gold velvet of the booths plays off the minimalism of the canvas curtains covering the tall windows.

It’s a beautiful space, with the chairs upholstered in deep green, and hanging pendants suffusing the tables with warm, low light. But there’s also a simple counter bar, with seats that face the open kitchen.

No part of the decor is over the top or unnecessary; everything has a place and a purpose.

Oliveira said he wanted to bring his unique definition of fine dining to Junah.

For him, fine dining isn’t in high prices or the size of the portions. “Fine dining is an experience that changes you from the moment that you sit down to the moment that you leave,” he said.

And everything from the host’s greeting to the way the food is presented should contribute to that change, he added.

A good example of the artistry found in the presentation of Junah’s food is the buffalo burrata arancini ($11). In Italian cuisine, arancini (a fried rice ball with filling) is shaped like a ball or a pear, but Oliveira brings in some Japanese influence by shaping risotto like triangular onigiri.

That fried triangle of risotto is filled with buffalo burrata, unlike the Japanese fillings of salmon, tuna and umeboshi usually found inside onigiri, which is made with white rice. Ikura, Japanese for salmon roe, is placed on top along with delicate shreds of naganegi, and the whole thing sits in a rich nori dressing.

The result is an interesting interplay between creamy richness and earthy umami, the fried crispness of the arancini contrasting with the light fish flavor of the salmon roe.

Continue your meal with the tonnarelli al mentaiko ($23), which features housemade pasta. Oliveira said this dish is somewhat like Italian carbonara, but instead of making the sauce with egg yolks, he uses pollock roe, called mentaiko, combined with cream. The pasta is topped with fried and fresh shiso, and house-dried tomatoes are placed alongside.

Oliveira said he was surprised the tonnarelli al mentaiko became a popular dish at Junah, since it seems well-suited to more adventurous palates.

An excellent main dish is the tagliata di Bosco ($38), which is an Italian sliced steak grilled medium rare and served with Japanese mushrooms (shimeji, maitake and baby king oysters), truffle sauce, horseradish taro cream and broccolini.

The taro — a starchy root vegetable likely native to southeastern Asia, according to Britannica.com — goes with the beef well, acting like mashed potatoes. Make a great bite by spearing a piece of steak and using it to scoop up the horseradish-infused creaminess.

Order the sake-infused pears to end your meal on a sweet, but not too sweet, note. To make this lovely dish, a pear is poached in a blend of sake, mirin, vanilla and warm spices, then cured in its own syrup for two days. Delicate slices of the pear are arranged like a swirl and served with yuzu crème anglaise, which is enriched with orange zest and a touch of whiskey.

(Note: Junah offers several gluten-free starters, a gluten-free pasta dish that’s also vegan, and a gluten-free entree. Oliveira said he’s working on bringing in more gluten-free and vegan dishes.)

An ‘evolving’ food scene

In the years since Oliveira moved to Utah from Brazil in 2013, he said he’s seen big changes in Utah’s food scene. “It’s evolving, and it’s getting bigger,” he said.

For a long time, Utah lagged behind more food-centric cities like Denver, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Oliveira said, however, “I think we’re going to catch up pretty soon.”

By bringing in new-to-Utah food like traditional Japanese ramen and itameshi, Koyote and Junah are helping to push the local food scene forward, Oliveira said.

“We recognize that no single restaurant or group can shape the entire culinary landscape alone,” he said. “It takes a collective effort of innovative and committed professionals working together to elevate the city’s dining culture, and we’re proud to be part of that movement.”