‘Top Chef’ Star Shota Nakajima Is Closing His Seattle Restaurant Taku | Eater Seattle
"Announced on Instagram on Tuesday, March 11 that a temporary closure (since January) will become permanent; the temporary January closure wasn’t necessarily connected to the final decision — "January is a slow month anyway," and the jump in Seattle’s minimum wage added to costs — but the chef also cites his blossoming TV career as a major factor: “With my career trajectory changing, I really haven’t been able to be at the restaurant,” he says, noting he didn’t have a business partner to pick up the slack and that "it was starting to turn into a business that I wasn’t running the way I want to run." He adds, “If I can’t do something that’s not up to my standard right now, I need to not do it, because it feels half-assed.” The spot was an Osaka-style fried-chicken restaurant on Capitol Hill covered in Japanese pop-culture memorabilia (much of it from the chef’s own collection) that served fried food, party food, drunk food; when it opened in 2020 the chef told Eater Seattle, "I want to see drunk people at the curb outside at 3 a.m., eating the Fuckit Bucket, knowing they may regret it later." The menu’s kushikatsu (skewered fried food) dishes were accessible and affordable, and many guests might not have known the joint was run by a famous TV chef. The closure will be marked by blowout farewell dinners: a "Farewell Dinner, Volume 1" on Friday, March 21 and Saturday, March 22 with fellow Top Chef alum Luke Kolpin (a $300 event that has already sold out), and a second set of parties on Friday, April 4 and Saturday, April 5 that the chef says he’ll announce on Instagram and for which he’ll be “flying some people out.” He expresses deep appreciation for the city: “I have all of the gratitude towards Seattle and the people in Seattle,” and frames this as a pause rather than a full exit from restaurants as he plans to be more deliberate going forward." - Harry Cheadle
