Columbus, Ohio USA
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Paul Liu's Pioneer Spirit Thrives on High Street
by Cindy Bent Findlay
June 2004 Issue
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Paul Liu | photo by Gus Brunsman III • 2004
Paul Liu kicks back in his chair, and lifts the glass of Pinot Noir.
He has gathered his friends and business associates at Haiku, his flagship property on High Street, to toast his newest endeavor -- an Asian-themed restaurant in Union Station Place, still in the planning stages – and hopefully, to find a name fit to christen it.
This is the part I love best,” he says, passing around a plate of Haiku’s excellent sushi. “The most fun part of opening a new restaurant is the brainstorming in the beginning.”
Liu has plenty of experience on which to base that opinion. By his own count, when he seats his first customers in the new place some time this fall, he’ll have opened his twenty-fifth restaurant. Restaurant watchers and compatriots in Columbus agree, Liu’s creativity shines in a town increasingly thick with dining choices.
Short Northies are familiar with Liu’s brand. Haiku, at 800 North High Street, has been a hot spot in the neighborhood since its opening in 1999. Almost two years ago, Liu opened Bento Go-Go in the Ohio State campus area at 1728 North High, and it’s quickly become popular with the campus set.
The as-yet unnamed establishment on the Cap over I-670 (as Union Station Place is known) will be Liu’s third along High Street. The buzz on the street has already begun. What will Liu do next?
Restaurants are in Liu’s blood. Born in Korea to a family of restaurateurs, Liu has been steeped in the food industry his entire life. Together, he, his father and five siblings have perhaps a century’s worth of industry experience among them.
Liu says he has learned much from his father, who built one of the largest chicken farms in Korea in the 1960s and ’70s. The small empire grew from one building to five, and then in 1970, disaster struck.
One night,” Liu says, “all the chickens died. A disease just tore through them all. There was not as much knowledge of vaccines, then. The farm had to be sold off."
His mother, he recounts, had always wanted to come to America. So the family changed course. His father emigrated to the West Coast, and three years later, when Paul was 12, the family followed.
Almost right away, the Liu family dove into a very traditional path for Asian immigrants -- they opened a Chinese restaurant. Paul grew up at the Great Wall, the first among many for the family, near the Atlanta airport.
Decades of bussing tables and washing dishes convinced the young Paul Liu that his future lay down a different path.
I was going to be the doctor in the family,” he remembers with a laugh. He enrolled at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, pre-med. But somehow, the restaurant business sucked him in again.
A friend of the family convinced Liu to help him open a Chinese restaurant in Greenville even while Liu attended classes. He did; the venture was a success, and the friend offered to buy Liu out after a year.
Liu took the money and ran -- to a vacation in Asia. “I took the money and bought shitaki mushrooms in Taiwan, and sold them here. At that time, in the 1980s, that was a hot market for those. I paid my tuition with them for the next two years,” he says.
From then, the die was cast. Family members around the country continued opening Asian restaurants, first in Atlanta, then Phoenix, and Liu was always on board. Then, twelve years ago, Liu scouted out Columbus as his next frontier, partly because there was family here, but also because of the city is known as fertile ground for new restaurants.
The economy is so stable here, there’s great disposable income in town and a low cost of living. Everywhere is only 15 minutes away from downtown… and it was a good city to raise a family,” he says of his bet on Columbus.
His first move in Buckeye country was China Gourmet, at Stoneridge in Gahanna with family members. That was a resounding success. He sold his interest in the restaurant (it’s still popular in the area) and the rest is history.
On the eve of his first endeavor, in his teens in Atlanta, his father told him if he were smart, he’d do something else. Nine out of ten restaurants fail in their first year, he pointed out. The hours are long and the work hard.
Twenty-four restaurants later, though he’s not sorry he took his father’s advice, he admits the going can be rough.
I was once told by a wise man that I have that pioneering spirit in me. Then he says, ‘You know, Paul, who have the most arrows in their backs? Pioneers!’” He laughs. “I think I have a lot of arrows in my back.”
SuLan was one. Though he does not disclose figures, Liu concedes that the unique Eurasian bistro in Bexley was a money loser. That restaurant, which some observers say suffered from lack of parking, was open for less than four years. Liu sold it to another area restaurateur, who will remodel and reopen under a different concept this summer.
But Haiku and Bento Go-Go hum along happily, and Liu’s reputation for serving up a great meal have not suffered.
I have Haiku on my list as one of the top ten Asian restaurants in the city,” says Doral Chenoweth, the Dispatch’s august restaurant writer. “I had SuLan on there too, and I’m going to have to take it off. I liked the food, the atmosphere, the architecture, the décor, everything.”
Chenoweth praises Liu’s creativity in coming up with new concepts and dishes.
He's an entrepreneur in the industry, no doubt about that,” Chenoweth says.
In some ways, Liu’s style is akin to a serial high tech industry entrepreneur, a seasoned businessman with a talent for dreaming up cutting-edge ideas and putting expert execution in motion. He may hold on to a good idea, but in general will move on in a few years and try to turn the concept over for a profit.
He's not a flipper in the true sense, he doesn’t buy junk properties and give them the ‘Oxydol’ treatment,” says Chenoweth. “He builds quality from the ground up.”
Dan Reese, Liu’s former director of operations at Haiku, says Liu’s talent is as a big-picture person who also has a talent for collaboration and delegation. Balance, says Reese, is Liu’s trademark.
“He’s extremely bright, he has imagination and creativity with the best of them,” says Reese. “Paul is ultraprogressive, he writes with broad strokes. And what one of Paul’s great abilities is, he can maximize the talents of the people he surrounds himself with.”
The flowing wall fountain at the former SuLan, the bright urban design and saketinis (flavor-infused sake martinis) at Bento Go-Go, the concept at Haiku Poetic Food and Art, all are examples of that ingenuity.
On the other hand, it’s not all about business - Liu is also a passionate chef. He’s holding information about the new restaurant close to the vest for now, but he will say he’ll be back in the kitchen himself for the first time in a few years, and he aspires to continue his tradition of presenting Asian dishes in a new light.
“I try to come out with pure dishes, not mutated. Our kitchens are more like French restaurants’ set ups – the food is made to order, is more volatile, not all premixed scoop and use,” says Liu.
Liu points to the example of tofu, storebought versus fresh.
“No one knows what fresh tofu is, it’s lost. If you make your tofu homemade, the flavor is so much more intense, fresher, more unique,” he says.
“There is about a ten percent difference between excellent and mediocre wine. But that ten percent, you have to work twice as hard to achieve that, and I think that’s the same no matter what field you work in. That ten percent is what we strive for every day. That’s the difference that makes life that much better, that makes the air seem fresher and the flowers brighter.”
So what will Liu do next? The wine in the bottles is gone, as are a few Sapporo Wind beers. Only stray grains of rice remain on the sushi plates, but the laughter of the party is still ringing around the table.
Liu is toying with a list of possibilities drawn up over the long evening. He folds the paper up, grins, and sticks it into his pocket. If he’s settled on a name, he’s not telling. The new restaurant will have to remain unchristened, for now. And High Street is just going to have to wait a few months and see.
Paul Liu would like to invite Short North Gazette readers to try and name his restaurant.
Editor's Note: Liu Pon-Xi opened on February 19, 2005 at 8 East Goodale Street on the Cap and closed March 2007. Haiku closed December 2016.© 2004 - 2019 Short North Gazette, Columbus, Ohio. All rights reserved.
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