3: Yami is the sole restaurant on the Peninsula to serve Guamanian food. Recently, he received a photo on WeChat of bowls and baskets overflowing with Buddha's hand citrus for donors to pick up. He picks up a box of surplus produce weekly, so the menu changes based on what's available. The temple's vegan followers, Chen said, transformed a 20,000-square-foot yard into an organic garden that provides 80% of Yami Grill's vegetables. 2: Yami Grill gets the majority of its produce from an organic farm run by a Buddhist temple in Fremont.Ĭhen donates to the Maitreya Buddhist Institute and is good friends with the monk who leads it.
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(Fun fact: He is believed to be the first person to directly translate a Hebrew novel into Chinese, according to a 1996 article in the Cornell Chronicle.) He returned to China for some years, where he got into real estate investing, started software companies and a think tank on Middle Eastern policy and became director of the Institute for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at his alma mater.Ĭhen also loves to eat, and said he opened Yami Grill out of a desire to have a space to gather over healthy, quality meals with friends and family. 1: Chen, a native of China who lives a few minutes from Yami Grill, studied Hebrew as an undergraduate at Peking University, then came to the United States to pursue master's and doctorate degrees in Near Eastern and biblical studies at Cornell University. Yami Grill is unusual in a number of ways. Time and word of mouth are Yami's best form of marketing, Chen said.
"After long deliberation myself, I understand this is the only way to do it, to be running as a family restaurant." That way he can control costs while preserving the quality. "I see restaurants come and die," he said. On a good lunch service, they see 10 diners total - and Chen is fine with that. The restaurant's staff totals just three people: Chen, his chef and his chef's father, who waits on the seven-table dining room. After 8:30 p.m., the kitchen will only take to-go orders - preferably through Yami's own online ordering platform, which Chen built, rather than third-party delivery apps that take a 30-35% commission. Yami Grill is open for two hours for lunch and three for dinner. When he notices diners who are struggling to figure out what to order or he overhears their kids asking for French fries (which are no longer on Yami's menu), he happily suggests they might find something more to their liking on Castro Street's restaurant row. He believes he's found a way to survive the tide of economic pressures facing local restaurants in the Bay Area, from rising minimum wages to third-party delivery costs - he's keeping things exceptionally, almost unbelievably, small. Yiyi Chen might hold the title as the sole restaurant owner in the Bay Area who regularly turns customers away.Ĭhen opened the unassuming Yami Grill in a small neighborhood shopping center in Mountain View in 2016. Chef Brian Perez prepares pork adobo at Yami Grill in Mountain View.
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