Our story
Twenty-five years on
Central Road.
One of West Yorkshire's first Japanese restaurants, opened in 2000 by chef Simon Gueller and his wife Rena. Eight tables to begin, hand-built from sycamore. A hundred covers within a year. Front-page of the Yorkshire Evening Post within three weeks of opening.
Chapter One · 1999
A music shop, a stack of sycamore.
The tables were Simon's first decision. He'd walked past a music shop window in the late 90s — beautiful planks of sycamore, ready to be crafted into the bodies of cellos. He bought the lot.
A year later they opened the room with eight tables, hand-built from that same sycamore. The wood is still there now, still scrubbed clean every morning. Sit at one and you're sitting on the wood that was almost a cello in 1998.
"Back in the 90s, I was walking past a music shop that had these beautiful planks of sycamore ready to be crafted into a cello. I envisioned them as restaurant tables instead."
Chapter Two · 2000
Eight tables, three weeks to the front page.
They opened with eight tables, two cooks, and a menu Simon had been quietly building for years. Within three weeks the Yorkshire Evening Post ran the restaurant on its front page. Within a year they were seating one hundred.
Simon was working hundred-hour weeks, six days through. On Sundays — the only day off the kitchen — he'd drive to London and back for fish and produce that the Leeds suppliers couldn't get him.
A couple flew back from New York and told him the room felt like Manhattan. He didn't argue.
On the record
A quiet shelf
of awards.
- 2000 Top 10 Restaurant Yorkshire Evening Post
- 2002 Top 100 Restaurants in the UK Sunday Observer
- 2003–05 Listed in The Good Food Guide Three consecutive editions
- 2003 Top 5 Restaurant Galaxy 105
- Today 12 Best Independent Restaurants in Leeds Yorkshire Evening Post
Today
Twenty-five years in,
handing over the line.
The same family is still in the kitchen. Sushi cut by hand each morning. Ramen broth simmered home-style, never from a packet. The beef driven up from a 45-minute farm — 2-year-old calves, 28-day maturation, the way Simon's been ordering it for two decades.
The next generation of Guellers is working the line now too. The tables Simon found in that music shop in 1998 are still here. The sauces are still home-brewed. Twenty-five years and counting.