How Kawa-Ni is indiviualizing the Classics, American-Izakaya style

Westport's Kawa Ni has given food the right to a personality. Kawa Ni is a nontraditional and playful take on a Japanese Izakaya, inspired by Chef Bill Taibe’s travels and love for food, located right on the Saugatuck River. Read on to learn how it personifies the traditional.

Pictured above (left to right): Shaved Broccol Korūdo, Spicy Miso Ra(men)

photo credits— Kawa Ni Website

Chef Bill Taibe of Kawa Ni proposed his team with a challenge: How do we make a chicken parm, Kawa-Ni style? The ubiquitous chicken parm of New England then began to be dissected and reinvented by the rest of the Kawa Ni crew until they were finally able to take something so traditional and spice it up, literally. Now, months later, the Japanese-inspired restaurant features a very unexpected chicken Parmesan—only spiked with kimchi marinade, sesame rayu, Thai basil, and Korean chili paste. “It is one of those dishes that makes you smile, because it is so familiar and so delicious but also such an abstract taste,” Kawa Ni’s culinary operations head Ben Freemole states. “It’s a flavor bomb of two cultures coming together and represented in one chicken cutlet.” 

Challenges like this do not faze the Kawa-Ni team. With an ever-evolving menu and an emphasis on seasonality, they are always wondering, How can we Kawa-Ni-ify squash, noodles, [insert any kind of food]?Or, in other words, how do we take a dish and make it work with the structure that Kawa Ni is? How do we stay true to Japanese traditions and methodology, make things feel not too stuffy but still indulgent, and give people an experience they are going to want to come back for? "We're not a copy-and-paste restaurant, and that's what makes it special," Freemole says. "Just because you see a dish in a cookbook or on TV, you can't just take that and carbon copy it at Kawa Ni— it has to undergo some sort of process, some sort of individuality to make it here.” Every dish has its own personality. 

photo credits— Kawa Ni Website

Kawa Ni is Japanese for “on the river,” which makes sense considering all of this happens on Westport’s Saugatuck River. From the outdoor entrance, you can already see the low-key nature of the restaurant, almost as if you just happened to stumble upon it while walking through town. Inside, the small space feels like you are having a family meal in your dining room, only with 50 other strangers. The servers are enthusiastic about the menu and their zeal is infectious. 

The chef Bill Taibe continued his gustatory takeover of Westport with Kawa Ni’s opening in 2014, and since gone on to open up a Denver location. In addition to Kawa Ni, Taibe has two other restaurants— The Whelk and Don Memo. Inspired by his travels and love for the Japanese culture, Kawa Ni has become CT’s most local example of what a Japanese riff/American-Izakaya fusion is: The word Izakaya in Japanese is made up of three kanji (居酒屋) with the meaning, “stay-drink-place.” A spot to grab a drink, settle in, and get comfortable. The menu focuses on dumplings, noodle bowls, rice bowls, and a small sampling of raw fish. 

Although the restaurant is globally-infused, Taibe still makes an effort to root its ethos in the local community of Westport: the food is locally sourced from the Westport farmers market that the team attends 52 weeks of a year, and a handful of other local farms that bring fresh produce, eggs, mushrooms, stinging nettles right through their back door. “It is all about serving the community,” Ben says. “We want to support the people that make our job a lot easier.”

And support them they have, because the nitty-gritty’s of the menu plate all the local community has to offer. The classic crowd pleasers are the Pork and Garlic ramen, the Pork belly Bah Mi sandwich at lunch, and the addictive cabbage. Ben claims the most representative dish of the Kawa Ni community is the Tofu pocket: marinated tofu skin, stuffed with rice, a yuzu tartar sauce, pumpernickel bread crumbs, and an orange zest. It’s a super-fun dish, yet also an “elevated, casual, flavor forward-punch of food that is so inviting, warm and unassuming but still delivers on so many levels” he raves. 

My family and I have been going to Kawa Ni for three years now and are blown away each time by the individual experience we have between the service and the food. My go-to line up is the shaved-broccoli to start— which combines burnt and crunchy but light shavings of broccoli and ham in a miso-twist. I balance it out with pork dumplings or the tofu pockets to share. As for the mains, I have tried a few… but my favorite was the Spicy Lamb Dan Dan (a dish I forced myself to overcome my fear of spice for). I am warning you it is heavy, but leaves you feeling warm and full when you’re finished. To end I go for, of course, the mochi.

Kawa Ni is located at 19A Bridge Square Westport, CT

At the end of our call, Ben gave me a behind the scenes look into what it is like to work at Kawa Ni. And after being in the industry for over thirty years, he is so impressed with the amount of all-in the Kawa Ni staff has, specifically. He says, “Everyone is up to do any sort of task, no one is above anything… the general manager sweeps the floor, the chef breaks down boxes… it is not this big machine, but a small team of dedicated individuals who work to make it happen day in and day out.” 

Kawa Ni’s philosophy is a stab at appreciating the individuals in this world that make people love stuff like an American-Izakaya chicken parmesan. A representative of the individuality of every human being, plated-food-style.