A 30-year friendship has blossomed into a business for Brian Wang and Robby Ming with last week’s opening of Uni Japanese Cuisine at 1900 Pine St.
Formerly Towne Pizza Sub shop, the 1,000 square foot corner space now offers a lineup of sushi, sashimi, noodles, Japanese omelets, and bento boxes. Across from three of the restaurant’s 41 seats, a flat-top grill fires up the menu’s hibachi-style options.
Wang, 50, and Ming, 52, first met as business students in Indonesia, where they’re both from. Their friendship has been mostly long-distance. After college Wang spent a year in Japan as a sushi chef before moving to New York City in 1996, using it as a hub between three-to-four-month stints at Chinese restaurants across the country, from New Jersey, North Carolina, and Nebraska, to Utah, California, and Hawaii.
“I was always looking for a challenge,” Wang told Billy Penn. “When there wasn’t much to learn anymore, I’d just move and learn [elsewhere].”
Seeking somewhere to settle with his school-aged kids, Wang landed in Philly in 2019, opening Nusantara grocery shop on 7th and Cantrell. Plans for an in-store restaurant, he said, were sunk by COVID.
Arriving in the U.S. six months after Wang, Ming enrolled in a hibachi course in Atlanta, parlaying the experience into employment across ten Japanese restaurants before opening his own spot in 2018, Yummy Yummy Hibachi Express, in Springfield, Illinois. A second nearby venue, Asia Garden, followed four years later.
Throughout their travels, the two remained closely in touch. After leasing out Nusantara to a friend — issues with his ankles made work at the grocery store increasingly challenging, Wang reached out to Ming last December to propose they “try something new together.”
With Ming settled in Philly, the pair scouted locations for an appropriately equipped spot requiring reasonable renovations. The refurbishments needed at 1900 Pine St., Wang explained, were minimal: new booths and tables, some ceiling repairs, and fresh wallpaper — a somewhat eclectic mix of samurai art, anime strips, and a large-scale reproduction of the famed Chinese painting, “A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.” In the corner near the entrance, are two Pennsylvania Skills machines for delivery drivers.
“They wait, there’s nothing to do,” Wang shrugged.
Much of the menu’s non-sushi selections have been pulled from the most popular items at Ming’s Illinois hibachi restaurants, centered on their shared house sauce. At Uni, hibachi options come with fried rice, veggies, salad or soup, and a choice of one or two proteins, with surf-and-turf and seafood specials available. Noodle varieties include lo mein, udon, and ramen; the latter two with a selection of possible proteins.
Also offered is omurice — a Japanese omelet, usually topped with ketchup, over a bed of steamed or fried rice — along with a trio of donburis; tonkatsu, chicken katsu, and eel tamago.
For sushi, the pair have brought on dedicated chef Tommy Chandra, initially recruited by Ming from an Illinois rival. Before moving to the U.S. last year, the 30-year-old worked at Sushi Hiro in Jakarta after a decade carving fruit — “watermelon flowers, radish swans” — for weddings and Chinese New Year festivities at a high-end hotel.
Listing his favorites of the creations he’s brought to Uni, Chandra leads with the black truffle roll and a sushi taco trio: eel, crab, or shrimp tempura served in crisp seaweed shells. There’s also a pair of “lava bombs” — tiny tobiko-topped columns of seared salmon or scallop with spicy mayo — and a fleet of gunkan options to go with the lineup of standard, deep-fried, and chef’s special rolls.
Sushi-averse patrons accompanying a friend to Uni can seek solace in a trio of spaghetti dishes added to the menu for that sole purpose, Wang explained. The same goes for a kid’s platter of fries, chicken nuggets, and beef sausage since “most kids don’t like fish.”
Besides the Uni platter consisting of nine pieces of sushi, plus a special roll at $40, lunch-specific specials will be set, Wang said, once business hours are finalized. The restaurant is currently open seven days a week but that will change when the slowest weekday is determined and front-of-house hiring is complete. There are also plans for a grab-and-go sushi fridge, as well as a range of bubble teas to add to the currently available drinks: sodas, house-made ice teas, and hot Japanese green tea. Uni is BYO.
For now, business has been steady and the response from the community positive, Wang said. One neighborhood resident even brought in a painting they’d made of Uni’s logo, which Wang is currently getting framed to hang in the restaurant.
“I think we’re going to do fine here,” he said. “I hope.”
1900 Pine St. | $6-$40 | BYO | 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily (subject to change) | (215) 986-7719 | uniphiladelphia.com
