Raw Talents

In a tiny slice of Coolidge Corner, wedged between a laundromat and a dentist's office, is a huge taste of what next-generation restaurateurs are bringing to the Boston area. Gari-Japanese Fusion restaurant looks, sounds, and smells like a trendy sushi bar on a precious piece of Tokyo real estate. That it is packed with gutsy dishes and design panache is no accident - Diane Chung and chef Gary Huang, the newlywed owners, who first met at a club 10 years ago, love technology, avant-garde lighting, and black, white, and things that sparkle.

In spite of limited space in their restaurant, or maybe because of it, they wanted drama. Architect Michael Kim, principal of Michael Kim Associates in Brookline, was skeptical at first. At 425 square feet, the place seemed impossibly small, but then again, some architects live for challenges like this.

His initial drawings were studies of the canopy that became the centerpiece of the design. "When I go to a sushi bar, the chef is the main attraction," says Kim. "So I proposed that we put Gary on stage." The curvaceous backdrop of Masonite and wood was, as Kim puts it, built with "a hundred dollars in materials and a lot of cursing in Chinese."

For big splashes of color to complement the bar, Kim created an abstract supergraphic of a calla lily. "At that scale, we needed a very high-resolution image," Kim says. "So Diane, my 2-year-old daughter, and I rushed downtown, picked out a calla lily and ran it over to the photographer, who shot it in 4-by-5 [inch] format. A billboard manufacturer printed it on wallpaper."

Along the back of the room, white textured panels are glued to the wall, which, like everything in the space, seems to glow.

After a decade at Ginza and Fugakyu, both in Brookline, Huang, whose unassuming demeanor hides an Iron Chef soul, wanted to break out of the classic sushi milieu. He may just have invented sushi comfort food: One of his signature maki dishes is a roll of rice stuff ed with fresh fried squid under a slice of silky whitefish and avocado, topped with gold caviar and crackling hot olive oil. Served in this fusion of bold design and intimate setting, it's another reason why Gari customers may never view sushi the same way again.