Long Beach's first, proper izakaya space, Homareya, opens this week

Homareya—taking the storefront right next to Milana’s New York Pizzeria—will be a rarity for Long Beach when it opens on Friday, Sept. 12 at 5:30PM. It promises truly traditional izakaya from one of our local masters: yakitori and sushi chef Yoya Takahashi.

With it, he brings a newly minted love for proper, forthright, uncomplicated Japanese food executed at a high level. Here, there are no bowls of miso soup accompanying your decadently dressed roll.

homareya izakaya long beach yakitori sushi chef Yoya Takahashi — Black mussels layered with sake, yuzu, and koji-butter from Homareya. Photo by Brian Addison.

Instead, you’ll find yourself hovering over a bowl of sous vide chicken livers—insanely tender, cooked to pâté softness—layered with hyper-subtle hints of sesame and salt before being topped with translucent slivers of onion. Or devouring perfectly fried squid chunks paired with potatoes and a cool salad of asparagus and tomatoes. You’ll find plates of nigiri that allow the fish to speak for itself with just a subdued, seasoned rice and a bit of fresh wasabi. A potato salad that refuses to be drenched in salt—like much of Chef Yoya’s food—and instead lets cucumber and fried onion bits punch up the starch while a koji-joyu marinated onsen egg sits atop it.

It’s wonderfully Japanese—not Japanese-American, not Nikkei, not Japanese-adjacent. (Well, maybe a few things like his “Japa-dilla” he makes with a Sonoratown tortilla.)

Yakitori and sushi chef Yoya Takahashi of Homareya. Photo by Brian Addison. — Chef Yoya Takahashi lets charcoal, smoke, and fire define Homareya. Photo by Brian Addison.

The legend behind Homareya

There is something deeply compelling about Chef Yoya. Charming, loquacious, and genuinely gifted in the art of Japanese cuisine, he’s widely respected throughout the community. The team behind Tokyo Noir wanted him to lead their sushi program, but Yoya’s Homareya project had already taken priority. And it has rightfully garnered hype.

That hype isn’t just smoke: his Smok Moc Yakitori pop-up has proven it, with marinated skewers—beef, chicken oysters, meatballs, and vegetables—kissed by charcoal and perfumed with that unmistakable, gentle ash.

For Chef Yoya, “home” has layers, especially through the lens of Japanese language.

“Simply put, it means that you can enjoy my space, my kitchen, my home,” Chef Yoya said, noting that he also shares the name “Homare,” an ancient Japanese word tied to honor and reputation—an apt note for a chef who came to Long Beach by way of Kyoto. “Kanji are Chinese characters—and my name is 誉也, and that first kanji character, 誉? This is ‘Homare’ in Japanese.”

Why this matters for Long Beach

Long Beach’s Asian food landscape often speaks multiple dialects at once. Much of our pho comes through a Cambodian lens (see the beloved Pho Hong Phat, which has changed hands and lost a bit of its essence). Many sushi bars tilt Thai (think Sushi Mafia and Sushi Studio), with the exception of Kihon and Sushi Beluga. The handful of the traditional Japanese-leaning spots beyond sushi frequently carry Korean influences (like Te-Buru in Bixby Knolls).

None of this is a ding on “authenticity”—a word I loathe when used as a cudgel. It’s a reflection of immigrant cooks adapting to local palates. The byproduct, however, is that rigorously traditional Japanese cooking has largely remained a Gardena specialty.

In that context, Homareya is a welcome two-for-one: it gives a chef of Yoya’s caliber a stage to show Long Beach what izakaya really feels like—and, just as importantly, it opens his home to ours, letting us claim a little bit of that Kyoto-to-Fourth Street magic as our own. The space itself feels like Japan, for those lucky enough to have visited, where he brilliantly covered the front-facing windows to lock guests inside with its intimacy.