Round One Delicious with Sushi Saito, Sushi Arai in USA?

Saw this on YT and it looks interesting. Any thoughts on how this will be received in the US? They say they will open in SF, NYC, and LA first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypm03bnSjHQ

https://www.round1.co.jp/delicious/index.html

I got stuck on this:

If you come here, you can taste various genres of “authentic Japan food”. In order to provide customers with such fun, sushi, Japan cuisine, Chinese cuisine, creative (innovative), yakitori, and tempura will be one unit, and one store will consist of seven member stores.

I think that it may be that they put all their concepts under one building sort of like a food court with each space dedicated to a certain restaurant. So one place will have seven different restaurants for you to try.

Yeah. But I only counted six items - one of which was Chinese cuisine. Or maybe “fun” is its own genre?

so apparently this is still in the works to open by year end? it’s pretty wild to me.

i know a lot of big openings from Japan are slated for NY this and next year, but this is something altogether different. and the plan is LA, NY, and Vegas, then more? wow

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So saito is opening multiple locations?

No this is not really a normal branch, it’s just kind of a satellite in a food hall-like setup. All of the 18 or so participating restaurants seem to be hiring for Round 1 and it doesn’t appear that they’re necessarily sending actual current staff members from Japan. It seems like the participants will have a presence here via that food hall, but that’s not the same thing as a normal branch.

I had a brief conversation with one of the participating restaurants in Japan, but didn’t learn too many details.

Sushi Saito does have multiple branches already - Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, one in Azabudai Hills, etc. This Round 1 hall certainly won’t be “Sushi Saito LA,” but the crazy thing to me is the lineup of participants who are doing this anyway.

For some participants, this will be their first foray outside. Kataori, Takiya, etc. It seems like this will be a food hall like setup around a bar in an entertainment complex; I can’t get my head around that.

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Wow that sounds really weird and also a great way to water down your brand! But will wait to see what happens.

looks like this might be 8 restaurants coming to 8497 Sunset Blvd (cross street La Cienaga)

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