Popular San Francisco Peruvian Japanese Restaurant Joins $400 Million UnCommons Project

The popular San Francisco-based Kaiyo is opening a new location in southwest Las Vegas, joining a stacked lineup of restaurants slated for the UnCommons development. Kaiyo is primarily a Peruvian Nikkei restaurant, with a menu of dishes made using Peruvian ingredients molded by Japanese cooking techniques. In the fall of 2023, it will join the 40-acre UnCommons mixed-use shopping and dining area.

Anthony Parks & Emilio Salehi, Equal Parts Media

At Kaiyo, Peruvian and Japanese influences blend to create dishes like ceviche of salmon and white miso leche de tigre and Peruvian corn. A sushi roll marries hamachi yellowtail with smoked yam puree and crushed Peruvian corn nuts. Even the Japanese red snapper nigiri is delicately seasoned with a pisco-aged white soy. Each dish is delicately plated, with vibrant sauces, edible flowers, and fresh herbs decorating the borders of each platter.

Anthony Parks & Emilio Salehi, Equal Parts Media

The beverage menu also showcases both Japanese and Peruvian influences, with menus for both Japanese sake and pisco sours — using the grape brandy produced in Peru. Cocktails include the effervescent Prince of the Sun, with pisco, white miso, rum, and yuzu soda.

Kaiyo Rooftop

Kaiyo Las Vegas is set to be the third location for the Nikkei restaurant, following two San Francisco locations including the recently opened Kaiyo Rooftop. The owner, John Park, says that the Las Vegas menu will resemble its California counterparts, with a focus on the addition of creative new Nikkei sushi rolls and larger dishes for the table to share, like that of a whole fish. The forthcoming menu will also lean more toward highlighting Peruvian flavors.

When it opens next year, Kaiyo will join a small number of Nikkei restaurants in Las Vegas. Ricardo Zarate’s Nikkei restaurant Once (pronounce on-seh) closed at the Grand Canal Shoppes in 2020, while SushiSamba, also at the Shoppes, continues to serve its Brazilian-Peruvian-Japanese cuisine. And while Nobu Matsuhisa, the chef responsible for Nobu, opened his first restaurant in Lima, Peru in 1973, his food is still generally billed as Japanese. Kaiyo will serve Peruvian Japanese food and drink in restaurant, bar, and lounge spaces at the growing UnCommons development.

Kaiyo joins at least ten other bars and restaurants planned for the UnCommons project. Among the restaurants still to open are Nicole Brisson’s Italian restaurant Amari, a new location of the Wynn’s Urth Caffe, the West Coast boba cafe Teaspoon, and a Mexican steakhouse, J. Blanco.