Iza Fuses Japanese Cuisine and Whiskey

Posted on March 12, 2021

With the pandemic economy hitting Fusion Fish in Meadowmont pretty hard, just as it has the rest of the restaurant industry, and with Fusion Fish’s lease coming up for renewal, co-owner Yung Nay decided to go out on his own. He transferred his share of the business to his partner and launched a new food venture: catering and cooking privately for customers.

Then one of those customers tipped him off to a small, vacant restaurant in Carrboro with a large patio — essential while public dining rooms can’t yet open at full capacity under the state’s pandemic restrictions. Nay and his brother, a general contractor, renovated the former space of One Fish Two Fish poke restaurant in three months, and he opened Iza (pronounced EE-zah) Whiskey & Eats in December.

Nay is an aficionado of Japanese whiskey, but COVID interrupted his supply chain, so he’s researching American whiskeys and has added some to his drink menu. For the “eats,” he offers small plates of delicacies, such as thin-sliced Japanese rib-eye cooked on a hot stone at the table, grilled octopus, sushi and ramen.

Iza launched well enough that Nay’s been expanding kitchen staff, bartenders and servers. “I’m hiring, and people are enjoying my food,” he said about how it’s going with his new lease on the restaurant business.

370 E. Main St., Suite 140  |  izaeats.com

Jed’s Offers Moroccan Halal Menu

Larbi Jeddour says if customers can invest 15 to 20 minutes at Jed’s Kitchen, he’ll make it worth the wait as he prepares authentic Moroccan dishes on the spot.

Jeddour and business partner Cathy Starks opened Jed’s in December, serving food prepared in accordance with Muslim halal dietary requirements. They’ve built a menu with a broad sampling of Moroccan cuisine, such as lamb in a shawarma wrap, lamb tagine cooked with plums and honey, and chicken pastilla in puff pastry with cinnamon and sugar. Jeddour also bakes baklava, mixes smoothies and juices any number of fresh fruits as well as brewing Moroccan mint tea and Turkish coffee.

105 E. Franklin St.  |  jedskitchen.com

Bubble Tea Shop Forges Ahead

Jimmy Cheng owns an 11,000-square-foot restaurant in Hickory. He thought running a 2,000-square-foot tea shop in Chapel Hill would be easier. But, no.

With two bubble tea shops established on Franklin Street before he opened a Möge Tee franchise in December and campus in an early winter break because of the pandemic-shortened fall semester, competition was fierce.

Cheng had discovered the China-based Möge Tee while in New York scouting new trends in the food business. One taste persuaded him to invest, and his market research on Chapel Hill checked all the boxes, with an established Chinese community, a growing Asian demographic and plenty of young people who gather in casual beverage shops.

Cheng committed to Möge Tee before the pandemic arrived, but the process of finding space, negotiating a lease, refurbishing the shop and obtaining all the permits took a full year. While the economy had changed drastically by then, within weeks of the shop’s opening, students began returning to Chapel Hill for the spring semester. And while social distancing and other pandemic restrictions are still a challenge, Cheng is betting one sip of his mango tea — with its layered flavors from only fresh ingredients — will convince customers to keep coming back.

151 E. Franklin St.  |  mogeteechapelhill.com

Balloons & Tunes Stays Aloft

In November, it appeared the air had gone out of Carrboro’s Balloons & Tunes, with months of pandemic stay-at-home orders deflating the number of events calling for festive supplies. So, after 40 years of helping the community celebrate with balloon bouquets and towers, party favors, invitations and, until 2001, singing telegrams (hence, the “tunes”), owners Sharon Collins and Pat Garavaglia took the downturn as an opportunity to retire.

But Robert Bryant, owner of Avenue Gardens Florist in Wilson, saw a chance to make a dream come true. A pastry chef, he’d made his career in the party industry, including working at a balloon company in Washington, D.C. He’d acquired his 80-year-old flower shop when its ready-to-retire owner posted it on Craigslist. He discovered Balloons & Tunes in the 1980s while visiting friends at UNC and thought he’d like to have a store like that some day. When he learned on Facebook that it was closing, he turned his long-ago daydream into reality.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, he reopened the shop, hiring back one longtime Balloons & Tunes veteran and adding a new employee. Bryant is holding his breath that as the pandemic subsides and the economy recovers, more people will feel like celebrating. He’s off to a good start: Within a half hour of posting his grand reopening on Facebook, he had six orders.

208 W. Main St.  |  balloonsandtunes.com

Craft, Thrift Shops Add Online Options

After 47 years offering its handcrafted items in Chapel Hill and, more recently, Carrboro, the WomanCraft Gifts artisan co-op has opened an online shop to expand its market.

A handful of women organized WomanCraft in 1973, Paula Mattocks ’96 (MSN) among them, to sell the artwork and crafts they made and to build a creative community. Each woman used her time and talents to establish and run the operation, a business model that continues today, with more than two dozen women sharing the responsibilities. The store accepts the work of another 30 or so artists on consignment. Browse online at womancraftgifts.com.

Meanwhile, CommunityWorx, the former PTA Thrift Shop, has closed its Chapel Hill store and added online shopping. The Village Plaza store opened in 1981 and had outlasted other independent legacy businesses as Regency Centers renovated the South Elliott Road shopping plaza for a more upscale ambience. Online shopping launched at communityworxnc.org in December to showcase high-end and unique items. The Carrboro store, 125 W. Main St., remained open and expanded its hours to seven days a week.

Shows Over for Regal Timberlyne

Movie theaters took an extended intermission during the pandemic. In mid-January, the closing became permanent for Regal Timberlyne, a six-screen theater that had been a mainstay since 1993 in the Timberlyne shopping center on Weaver Dairy Road. Parkway Holdings bought the building for $2 million to convert the space into a radiology clinic, complementing the nearby Walgreens drugstore and medical offices as well as UNC Orthopaedics across the street.

— Nancy E. Oates

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More: alumni.unc.edu/around-town

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