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Jimi Yui,
FCSI, is the founding principal of YuiDesign, a full-service restaurant
design and hospitality consulting firm with a specialty in kitchen design.
Yui's passions for food and design-the recurring themes in his life
and work-were cultivated early during his childhood at The Guest House,
his family's renowned Shanghai and Peking-style restaurant in Tokyo.
They then took form during an education at Cornell's Hotel and Architecture
Schools, and resulted in a career spanning a quarter-century in foodservice
and hospitality design, consulting, and management.
Highly regarded for his expertise in kitchen design, Yui has worked
since 1980 as a foodservice designer, hospitality consultant, and owner/operator,
providing master plans, concept development, and front- and back-of-the-house
design for a wide variety of hospitality projects in the US, Central
America, Europe, and Japan. He founded YuiDesign in 1986.
Yui speaks the language of chefs, affording him the unique ability and
vision to create the stage upon which they perform. Some of the greatest
culinary artists in the world have turned to Yui for help realizing
their visions, including Gray Kunz, Masa Takayama, Eric Ripert, Nobu
Matsuhisa, Charlie Trotter, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, Masaharu
Morimoto, Barry Wine, Yuji Wakiya, and Kurt Gutenbrunner.
Renowned hospitality executives have relied on his expertise, including:
André Balazs, HotelsAB; Stephen Starr, Starr Restaurant Organization
(SRO); Drew Nieporent, Myriad Restaurant Group; and Katherine Klauber
Moulton of The Colony Beach and Tennis Resort who was named "Independent
Hotelier of the World" by Hotels magazine.
He also regularly collaborates with leading architectural and design
studios, including: Michael Graves & Associates (Princeton, NJ);
Rockwell Group (NYC); Christian Liagre (Paris); Tadao Ando Architect
& Associates (Osaka, Japan); the Polshek Partnership (NYC); and
George Design Studio (NYC).
In 1995, Yui was honored with a James Beard Award—considered the
"Oscars" of the food industry—for The SONY Club in New York City,
a private, five-seat dining room dubbed "the most elegant space in New
York City" by The New York Times.
His career commenced at Potomac, MD-based Cini Little International,
Inc., the largest hospitality consulting firm in the industry, where
for seven years he was responsible for winning and executing projects
in the hotel, restaurant, fast-food, institutional, club, and government
sectors of the industry. As senior associate, he specialized in concept
development, kitchen design, space planning, financial analysis, and
overall project development. He also experienced first-hand the challenges
facing foodservice and hospitality operators during six years as a founding
principal of a "design-build-operate" hotel management and restaurant
development firm that grew to include three restaurants and four hotels
totaling 250 rooms.
Yui, 49, is a graduate of the School of Hotel Administration of Cornell
University, where he also completed four years at the School of Architecture.
He is also a graduate of The St. Louis Priory and a member of The Cornell
Society of Hotelmen and the Foodservice Consultants Society International.
He commutes between Manhattan and Takoma Park, MD where he lives with
his wife, Ellen, principal of Yui+Company, Inc., a communications consortium
with a hospitality specialty, and his two sons and very serious foodies,
Zen and Yoshi. He enjoys cooking, relishing his expansive library of
culinary-themed films, cookbooks, and food literature, and embracing
the Yui family motto: "Food is love; more food is more love." |
