Seigo Nakamura lives his life by ningenmi—a Japanese philosophy he interprets as “self-betterment in service to one’s community.” Certainly, the experiences provided by the restaurateur’s Aburi Group—made up of four restaurants in Toronto and three in Vancouver, including the original, Miku, which opened in 2008—have enriched lives. Just ask anyone who has tried his empire’s signature flame-seared aburi oshi sushi.
This April, Nakamura is introducing a new concept: Aburi Market, a 375-square-metre paean to the best of Japanese culinary culture, located in West Van’s oceanfront Ambleside neighbourhood. “We’re creating something that’s new to the Canadian market,” says Nakamura, who was born in Miyazaki, Japan, and now lives on Vancouver’s North Shore. “It’s not a simple grocery store, nor is it a restaurant. It will sell restaurantquality products that can be brought home and enjoyed.”
The idea follows Aburi Group’s 2021 launch of two downtown Vancouver Aburi To-Go locations: restaurant-adjacent shops that offered takeout options when the pandemic shut down indoor dining. They helped bring in an additional 15 per cent in revenue for the company during a challenging year. The new market is something of a cross between the to-go concept and a gourmet food hall similar to Eataly.
Customers will find a wide selection of dry and fresh Japanese groceries, chef-created meal kits from an on-site kitchen, sliced-to-order Wagyu beef and sushi-grade flounder, mackerel and hamachi imported from Kagoshima Prefecture, just south of where Nakamura began his career by taking over his father’s sushi shop at age 22.
“In Japan, there’s a big emphasis on eating fish and vegetables that are in season; that’s part of our food culture, and we want to operate the same way by focusing on the best seasonal food,” says Nakamura. For vegans, the emporium will offer a line of plant-based products named after the traditional shojin ryori cuisine eaten by Japan’s Buddhist monks.
Aburi Group enlisted interior design firm Chad Schmuland Design to bring the elevated-grocery concept to life. Schmuland used a subdued palette of soft greys, browns and whites to evoke the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which embraces simplicity and natural imperfection.
The market will also be the base for the company’s new e-commerce strategy, which will see Aburi Market products available for rapid delivery throughout the Greater Vancouver area via a proprietary app, set to launch upon opening. It also represents a conceptual blueprint the group hopes to emulate elsewhere—likely Toronto next.
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