Raku
The west side of Woodmont Avenue between Bethesda Avenue and Elm Street is radically transformed from 20 years ago. Every storefront has changed but one: Raku. A glance through the restaurant’s large windows invariably reveals a packed house of animated faces displaying a wide range of chopstick skills.
Observing the sweet signs of success, it is hard to imagine that Raku almost perished in its infancy. It opened in Bethesda in 1997 under the direction of Mark Miller, a restaurateur known locally for Red Sage, a hip Southwestern eatery in D.C. near the National Press Building. Miller had financial support from local philanthropist Diana Goldberg, and conceived Raku as an Asian diner. The menu was quick food, prepared early and elsewhere. Diners didn’t bite. On the verge of shutting down, Miller’s share was acquired by Marcel The and Masaru Homma, two guys who’d been working at Sushi-Ko in Glover Park. Goldberg remained as silent backer and partner. Without her, says The, Raku’s revival would have foundered.
The Indonesian-born The (pronounced “tay”), the son of a chef, changed the food concept to a Japanese fusion-style menu featuring sushi, fresh main dishes and hot noodle bowls. This was unlike many Japanese restaurants—and it found a niche. “We still struggled for a while,” says The, but Goldberg stayed the course. In 2000, Washington Post critic Phyllis Richman gave Raku a rave, and the restaurant saw a huge bump in business. The paltry kitchen was renovated and expanded, and Homma and 10 line cooks and sushi chefs were able to turn out quality meals for some 400 diners a night in a 90-seat restaurant. The genial The was on the floor a lot, chatting up customers and offering free desserts. Fresh seafood was flown in. Instead of offering a menu that was 80 percent sushi—which hadn’t yet caught fire—Raku went 50/50 with “kitchen food,” as The calls it. Asian sandwiches, such as banh mi, didn’t catch on and were scrubbed.
Diners at Raku are accustomed to sitting cheek by jowl, making friends (or not so much) as they share one another’s conversations. “I was asked by Federal Realty multiple times to expand to a vacancy next door [where Tandoori Nights is now],” The says. He notes that former neighbor Levante did very well for a time, then almost doubled its space and slowly, inexorably went out of business. “Size matters,” says The, adding that he plans to reduce the number of seats in a future renovation. Table spacing “is the biggest complaint we get,” he admits.
In dollars per square foot, the Raku in Bethesda is the most profitable when compared with larger branches in D.C.’s Cathedral Heights and Dupont Circle. In Japanese, one meaning of Raku is “comfortable,” a word that sums up the look of folks leaving the restaurant.
