new from neo
Award-winning Houston chefs roll into Upper Kirby with new Japanese restaurant
The team behind one of Houston’s most acclaimed omakase restaurants will soon open a new sister concept with a more affordable price point. Comma Hospitality, the restaurant group known for its luxurious sushi restaurant Neo, will open Kira in Upper Kirby’s Shops at Arrive River Oaks development this July.
While Neo is known for its multi-course tasting menu that combines nigiri and hot dishes, Kira will be a more casual restaurant devoted to hand rolls (temaki), Japanese rice bowls (donburi), and Japanese shaved ice (kakigori). Those items will be paired with a beverage program centered around highballs, sake, champagne, and seasonal cocktails made with Japanese spirits.
“We wanted to do something that’s a little more approachable and fun, more everyday. A place a consumer can go on a daily or weekly basis,” Comma Hospitality managing partner Jeremy Truong tells CultureMap. “It combines our interest in music and design into a restaurant.”
Japanese record bars provided much of the inspiration for Kira’s design. Truong notes that Comma Hospitality chefs Luis Mercado and Paolo Justo have made multiple trips to Japan as well as to establishments like Mexico City’s Tokyo Music Bar. An ultra high end McIntosh turntable will power the restaurant’s soundtrack, which will draw upon a carefully curated selected of Japanese vinyl that includes jazz and other genres.
“We want [music] to be a reason for people come in,” Truong says. “You come for the hospitality, you come for the design, you come to hear this Japanese vinyl you’ve been dying to hear.”
While Kira’s a la carte format will be different from Neo’s set progressions, the restaurants will use similar ingredients. At the more affordable end, diners will have options such as hand rolls made with ingredients such as ocean trout and scallop or donburi made with ocean trout and ikura. At the more luxurious end, signature Neo ingredients like Norwegian blue lobster and caviar will be utilized for hand rolls, while a donburi might feature toro and uni.
Similarly, the kakigori will be made with an imported Japanese ice machine and will be topped with seasonal fruits.
Chefs Mercado and Justo, who won Chef of the Year in the 2024 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards, will oversee the menu’s development and assist with sourcing, Truong says, but the restaurant will be led day-to-day by chef Mark Wong, who worked with Mercado at Uchi. “We thought he’d be a super good addition to the team,” Truong says.
At just 15 seats, it will still feel intimate, just as Neo’s location inside Montrose’s Glass Cypress clothing boutique does.
Kira isn’t Comma Hospitality’s only project under development. The group has been quietly transforming a house in the Heights into a location for another omakase restaurant. “We had plans of that being the follow up to Neo, but working with the City of Houston has delayed it,” Truong says.
More details on that restaurant will be released once it’s closer to opening. For now, Upper Kirby diners have an intimate new eatery to look forward to.