Michelin-Starred Husband-and-Wife Team Bringing Speakeasy Sushi Spot to Larimer Square

“Growing up in L.A. in the late ’80s, early ’90s, the sushi bars are where you sat,” reminisces chef Phillip Frankland Lee. “Everyone had their hairstylist, their tattoo artists and their sushi chef.”

It’s that memory, vibe and irreverent attitude that Lee plans to extend to Denver with the opening of the latest location of his omakase-inspired sushi concept, Sushi by Scratch Restaurants. The sushi empire, created by the season thirteen Top Chef contestant and his wife, Margarita Kallas-Lee, has outposts in California and Texas as well as Miami, Seattle, Chicago and New York. The Montecito, California, location earned a Michelin star in 2021.

According to Lee, Denver was on the shortlist for expansion for some time, and now its doors are set to open at 1441 Larimer Street on December 31. “When we’re looking for cities to go to, we go to cities that we have an affinity for and we have a love for. Denver is one of those cities,” he says. “With Michelin coming in and the level of cuisine rising, it’s just where to be and where we want to be.”

Exactly where the restaurant is located, though, takes a bit more explanation. One of Lee's other concepts — the burger chain NADC Burgers, which is co-owned by pro skateboarder Neen Williams — is opening at the same address, the former TAG space, on December 13.
The sushi restaurant, Lee explains, will be accessible through the burger joint by way of a secret door that guests will be directed to once their sushi reservations are confirmed. From there, diners are led down to a small, speakeasy-style whiskey bar and the ten-seat omakase room.

Once inside, guests will be treated to a seventeen-course tasting menu served by three chefs and a bartender. Lee notes that the experience is inspired by the chef’s-choice style of omakase service, but it is not the traditional sushi omakase diners may have experienced elsewhere. That's something Lee has caught flak for at other locations, but he has no apologies. In fact, he leans into it.

“We run this like a world-class tasting-menu restaurant,” he says. “The vehicle for the tasting menu happens to be sushi. A lot of people look at what we do and they think it seems a little weird, or at least non-traditional. But the most traditional thing I could do is not try to tell the story of someone who grew up in Tokyo...but tell the story of someone who grew up in Los Angeles.”

Pressed further, Lee talks at length about sushi’s evolution in great and granular detail, from its origins as a fermented product to the nuances of the different regional styles of sushi and to his own discovery of sushi as a child. All of which is to say that he thinks an awful lot about sushi and is excited to share it with others.
“Sushi has been my passion for pretty much my entire life,” he notes. “By five years old, sushi was the only thing I wanted to eat. By seven, I only wanted to eat sushi at the sushi counter. And at thirteen is when I bought my first book on how to make sushi and started going to the fish market on my skateboard and making sushi at home. So that's the thing that I'm the most passionate about.”

Diners can expect an eclectic mix of dishes among the seventeen items on the tasting menu. Some are consistent across the restaurant’s many locations, such as hamachi (yellowtail) glazed with sweet corn pudding; roasted bone marrow; crispy unagi fried in bone marrow fat; and a seared albacore with crispy onions and ponzu. But other items will vary based on the location.

For the opening, Lee says the Denver menu will look much like those at the most recently launched locations in Austin and New York, primarily because they are the most current. But over time it will evolve to take on what he calls “Denver sensibilities.”
“When you’re looking at Seattle or Montecito, you’re looking at a lot of local seafood,” Lee says. “When you’re looking at Austin, you’re looking at local beef and vegetables. There’s a lot of really, really awesome things that we’re doing that I think the people in Denver are gonna enjoy.”

That includes making nearly everything in-house, as indicated by the Scratch Restaurants philosophy. Think housemade soy sauce and yuzu and freshly shaved raw wasabi. Sushi by Scratch even mills its own brown rice and uses the separated husks as a thickener for the soy and housemade tofu. The seafood is flown in directly from Tokyo’s renowned Toyosu Fish Market.

The experience will set diners back $195 plus tax and a 20 percent service charge. Beverage pairings are an additional cost, as well. So to get the most out of it, Lee strongly recommends that guests arrive half an hour before their seating time to enjoy the “complimentary pre-dinner experience” with welcome cocktails and canapés. These apps consist of Canadian spot prawn sashimi with housemade tofu, a chawanmushi egg custard topped with caviar and crispy wagyu and more.

“At the end of the day, we're just super, super, super excited to get into Denver.”

Sushi by Scratch Restaurants is located at 1441 Larimer Street and will host three seatings nightly at 5, 7:15 and 9:30 p.m. starting December 31. For more information and reservations, visit sushibyscratchrestaurants.com.