Chef Avishar Barua’s pair of new restaurants are as much about being out of the kitchen as in it.
The heralded Columbus chef has a pair of eateries in the works: daytime café Joyas, coming soon to Worthington, and Agni, which could open in the Brewery District, near German Village, as soon as later this year.
It’s a double shot of new businesses strategically split to allow him to be at one for breakfast and lunch and the other for dinner. It also switches him from employee to employer, from chef to restaurateur.
“This forces me to be a business owner,” he said.
After years in the kitchens of others, including Wylie Dufresne’s Michelin-starred WD-50 and Mission Chinese in New York, Barua returned to Central Ohio. He first worked at Veritas when it was in Delaware and then served as executive chef at Service Bar from 2017 to last year. He also competed on the Bravo TV show Top Chef.
Service Bar still hasn’t reopened since closing early in the pandemic — owner Middle West Spirits has a sizable expansion that’s been taking its focus.
Service Bar didn’t want to hold Barua back, and the chef was ready for the challenge of going out on his own.
“I wouldn’t be here without them,” he said of his former employer.
Joyas in Worthington
First up is Joyas, which is taking the former Sassafras Bakery space in Old Worthington. Visitors to the Worthington farmer’s market got a preview of the café last weekend, but Barua said he doesn’t have an official opening date yet.
He visited the Sassafras space after it closed, not because he wanted to move into it but because he was thinking of buying its coffee equipment. And even when he was standing in the space and realizing it was bigger than he expected, a café wasn’t his first idea.
“I’d been doing some consulting, some private dinners,” he said. “I saw the kitchen here and thought this could be my creative space, my office.”
He signed on and started using it as his R&D kitchen and operations hub.
“People kept knocking on the door,” he said. “Everyone was so friendly. I realized a daytime, neighborhood café would make a lot of sense. At some point it seemed silly not to open here.”
Joyas, named for Barua’s mother, will have both the expected — coffee, tea, pastries — and the unexpected — like fried rice.
“It’s the type of place where I’d like to go in the morning,” he said.
The menu will incorporate his family’s Bengali roots as well as personal tastes, like that fried rice. Not only is rice a common breakfast item in other cultures, but between late nights in college and his years in the restaurant industry Barua said there have been plenty of times he’s pulled leftover fried rice out of the refrigerator for the morning meal.
He’s still working through the final menu and even when it opens, expect changes. Barua is prepared to go where the customers lead him.
“We’re going to see what works, what doesn’t,” he said. “If they like something we’ll keep it.”
The team will be doing as much in-house as possible, including baking the bread. He sought a potato bun with poppyseeds, but when he couldn’t find it, he devised one himself.
Agni in the Brewery District/German Village area
Though Joyas will open first, the chef has actually been working on what will be Agni longer. He hopes to open that restaurant later this year.
Midwest barbecue is what he calls it, though that is more of a mentality than a cuisine. The idea is to evoke a homey afternoon in the backyard with grilled food and good conversation.
It’s also a descriptor that’s intentionally loose. Barua expects to have some smoked meat on the menu, but he isn’t running a barbecue joint. Similarly, while a live fire grill will be used, he doesn’t see Agni as that increasingly popular style either.
“Will most things be touched by fire? Yes. But the grill is just a piece of equipment that produces food,” Barua said. “No one says I’m opening a sous vide restaurant.”
He expects some items will be finished tableside bringing an added level of service and hospitality to the experience.
Renovations to the 716 S. High St. space, previously home to Ambrose & Eve, are underway.
Barua said he likes the synergies of having a breakfast/lunch place and a separate dinner spot, both of which High Street but at opposite ends of the city.
Two separate restaurants will allow he and his team to be creative as well.
“We’re in the hospitality business,” Barua said. “We want to fit into these neighborhoods and make people happy.”
