Owner of Columbus sushi restaurant hopes to open new location in June to continue

Oshio, a sushi restaurant located in Grandview, plans to unveil its new carryout location, Oshio Station, in June. Photo credit: Courtesy of Jiyawn Kim

Growing up, Daniel Kim watched his parents work 12-hour shifts every day of the week in the restaurant industry. Despite initially wanting to avoid the same hectic path, Daniel Kim now runs his own sushi restaurant, Oshio, with another in the works.

Daniel Kim grew up in Dublin, Ohio, and was an Ohio State student in hospitality management before he decided to take on a similar career path to his parents and brother. Having worked as a dishwasher, server, chef and manager in the restaurant his father now owns — Mr. Sushi in Dublin — opening a restaurant of his own was not a long shot for Daniel Kim.

“I was just always fascinated with how my dad would make these dishes or my mom would be in the kitchen helping him,” Daniel Kim said. “So I guess it’s in my blood to make sushi and just cook.”

Opening Oshio, located in Grandview at 974 W. Fifth Ave., in July 2018 at the age of 25 meant Daniel Kim would eventually be able to create his own hours if all went well, he said. Now that Oshio has made it through its first three years and a pandemic, Daniel Kim said he has finally reached a point where he can step out of the restaurant and trust that his staff will manage without him.

Instead of relaxing, however, Daniel Kim has decided to take it from the top with a second location. A twist on the current, traditional sit-down sushi restaurant, Oshio Station, which will be located in the Columbus Commons in a building that previously housed Hai Poke, is a grab-and-go model of the original restaurant, Daniel Kim said.

“It’s a more condensed version of the menu,” Jiyawn Kim, Daniel’s wife who affectionately referred to him as a “restaurant kid” and social media manager for the restaurant, said. “He is changing a couple things here and there, and I think he is going to add a couple of new rolls at the Oshio Station. But I think, for the most part, it’ll be the same.”

Oshio Station, which is tentatively set to open during the second week of June, will largely cater to the lunch crowd from surrounding residential and office buildings, Daniel Kim said, and the casual nature of a carryout business will be more COVID-19-friendly than a sit-down restaurant. In addition, the second restaurant will require fewer staff members and thus be easier to manage than the current Oshio operation.

If all goes well, Daniel Kim said he would like to continue to expand and open locations similar to Oshio Station on a more regular basis.

“What we’re trying to do is open multiple,” Daniel Kim said. “We’re looking into Dublin, we’re looking into New Albany, so we’re trying to expand by at least another location once a year.”

The success Oshio was able to find over the past three years remained largely unmarred by COVID-19. Although there was some initial confusion felt at the onset of the pandemic, and Oshio was carryout-only until July 2020 after closing for about a month between March and April of the same year, Jiyawn Kim said COVID-19 has had little to no effect on business.

“Obviously, not knowing how long it was going to be, he figured it would be safer to close,” Jiyawn Kim said. “Then we slowly started opening back up — we did carryout-only, and then we did dine-in, but surprisingly, we found that sushi is the type of food where it’s the same whether you dine in or carryout.”

Daniel Kim said despite all of the uncertainty that comes with opening a restaurant for the first time and navigating the past year, the people surrounding him for the time Oshio has been in business have made all the difference.

“In our first year, it was kind of trial and error. Even with the menu, scheduling staffing, everything was a gamble in the first year,” Daniel Kim said. “But the Grandview community is great, they’re wonderful, very supportive; we lasted through COVID because all the people that lived around here loved our sushi.”