Chef Sunny Bertsch is moving on from his embattled ghost kitchen concept. On Sunday, August 30, he closed Kaisen Sushi and will soon replace it with two more affordable concepts.
Like Kaisen, the ghost kitchen sushi restaurant that earned a Best New Restaurant nomination in the 2026 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards, Bertsch's new projects, called Chefs Bowls and Three Fish Bowls, will both be ghost kitchen concepts that operate in Third Ward’s Blodgett Food Hall. Bertsch explains that new concepts reflect the lessons learned from operating Kaisen for just over a year.
“Ghost kitchens are really designed for a particular kind of business, which is essentially lower ticket average QSR food,” Bertsch says. Kaisen, where a standard order could run $60 or more per person, never did enough business to be sustainable, an issue that Bertsch spoke about regularly on social media.
“Long story short, I didn't know what I was getting myself into by trying to put a really super nice concept in that my particular location. It was really difficult to overcome,” he says.
Bertsch acknowledges that his inexperience in the restaurant business also played a role in the decision to close Kaisen. For example, he says he pays his staff more than traditional restaurants, but Kaisen doesn’t generate the same revenue a brick-and-mortar restaurant does due to factors such as its lower prices and lack of alcohol sales (among others).
So he’s pivoting to two new concepts that will be more similar in price with the other concepts at Blodgett, roughly $15-25 per person. Although they’re similar and operate out of the same kitchen, listing them separately is necessary, because delivery platforms limit the radius of raw versus cooked concepts, Bertsch explains. Both are expected to launch the week of September 7, after Bertsch completes renovations to his space at Blodgett and gets the menus uploaded to third-party delivery services like Uber Eats and DoorDash.
Courtesy of Sunny Bertsch
Chef Sunny Bertsch recently closed Kaisen Sushi.
Chef’s Bowls will serve rice bowls topped with proteins such as chicken teriyaki, salmon teriyaki, and steak, which will be cooked sous vide and seared to order. Bertsch hopes to stand out with a little more attention to detail than his competitors.
“We've had access to rice bowl concepts that operate within our vicinity, and we see the kind of food that's being put out,” Bertsch says. “I want to see if I could do better. I'm not saying I am better, but I think there are some intangibles that are missing with the rice bowl space. I want to make my honest attempt at seeing if I can provide food at a lower price, and see if we can just make something from scratch that's of quality.”
That same spirit will power Three Fish, which is named for the three proteins that are the top sellers at every sushi restaurant — salmon, yellowtail, and bluefin tuna. Bertsch intends to use the same fish that he used at Kaisen, just prepared differently. Using bluefin will differentiate Three Fish from similar concepts that use less expensive yellowfin tuna, Bertsch explains.
“I'm really not a personal fan of yellowfin tuna. It's tasteless, and you’ve got to do a lot of dressing up of yellowfin tuna to make it taste interesting,” he says. “I'd rather have bluefin tuna. We've been testing it in the kitchen here and there when we have time, and it's so much tastier. Tuna should taste like tuna.”
As for Kaisen, it could come back in the future. Bertsch says he’d like to find a brick-and-mortar location that would allow him to serve both dine-in and to-go customers. For now, he’s focused on making Chefs Bowls and Three Fish as successful as possible.
