Sum It Up

BY JAIME LEWIS PHOTOGRAPHY BY LILY WOLFE

When I open the door to Oki Kohi Espresso Bar in San Luis Obispo, Jon Yeh walks around the counter holding his keys. “I need to take my kids to school,” he says. “Order a drink and I’ll be right back?”

This is the perfect introduction to a man doing excellent work making dim sum and other Asian delights with a skeleton crew. While he’s out, I grab a cappuccino and study the menu.

“The day-to-day of the restaurant business is hard,” he says upon his return. During the course of our hour-long conversation, it’s clear that the recent closure of his first restaurant, Oki Momo, is still a tender topic. Located just across the parking lot in The Village At Broad Street, Oki Momo opened in 2016 and closed last year; Yeh counts the labor shortage, inflation, and an unsustainable business model as culprits.

“It’s labor intensive to make little dishes,” he says of Oki Momo’s generous menu that included noodles, meats, sauces, rice, salads, and other veggies. “It’s not that we didn’t have customers out the door every day.”

He hadn’t planned to open another eatery, but when the restaurant space across the parking lot came up for rent, Yeh decided to open Oki Kohi as a sister business: a little coffee shop with espresso drinks, dim sum items, simple dishes, and a mini Asian grocery. The coffee shop’s name means “big coffee” in Japanese. >>

Before I even taste the food and drink at Oki Kohi, it feels familiar. The space is bright and friendly, with a steady stream of cheerful soft jazz playing in the background and a cartoon sun motif throughout. This little graphic—the sun with a cute crooked smile—does a good job of summing up everything Oki Kohi is about: vibrantly-flavored little dishes and a healthy dose of caffeine.

Of course, dim sum refers to a specific dining style that includes servers bearing carts stacked high with steamer baskets, ready to offer guests whichever small bites strike their fancy.

“Dim sum translates as ‘little bits of heart,’” says Yeh. “The fun part is picking from the server’s selections. They’re constantly coming through, so it’s like, ‘What fun treats are coming next?’”

When he conceived the idea to offer dim sum dishes at the coffee shop, Yeh wanted to be clear with guests that it wasn’t the traditional dim sum dining arrangement. “There isn’t much demand for authentic dim sum here,” he says, “but I’ve seen old newspaper clippings of dim sum places in SLO from the past.” His graphic designer suggested “dim sun” instead of “dim sum” to tie in the sun motif and establish Oki Kohi’s version as its own thing. The idea stuck.

As Yeh and I talk, manager Ferdinand Kho brings over several dim sum dishes for me to try, including shumai pork dumplings, sticky rice dumplings, egg rolls and char siu bao. Everything tastes clean and fresh while offering the sustenance of homemade comfort food. In particular, I fall for the Taiwanese beef noodle soup, which is spectacularly tender, umami and bright with spices. “My dad used to make this a lot for us when we were kids,” Yeh says. “It’s always been something I crave.”

Oki Kohi also serves breakfast pastries like croissants and morning buns, as well as desserts like the decadent and spongy Butter Mochi, a traditional Hawaiian dish that leaves me speechless for a moment. Though Yeh is Chinese-American, he doesn’t feel the need to adhere to any single style or origin of cuisine.

“It’s a little bit irritating that when you try to make any kind of ‘ethnic’ food, everyone comes out of the woodwork to tell you how inauthentic it is,” he says, citing a diner whose negative review of Oki Momo claimed that Yeh’s bahn mi sandwich wasn’t anything like the one they’d eaten in Bangkok. “I feel like people sometimes try to pigeonhole us based on what they perceive we should be. That really cuts down on the ability to innovate and do interesting things. I’m not trying to do Chinese food or traditional Korean food. I’m just making things I like to eat, so we have a little bit of everything.”

Making the food he likes to eat is more a function of Yeh’s cravings than a deep, long-standing passion for cooking. In fact, Yeh is an attorney by trade who became dissatisfied with his work and simultaneously missed his favorite foods. After growing up in eastern Tennessee, studying at the University of Georgia, and practicing law in Seattle, he settled in San Luis Obispo to be near family. “And somewhere along the line, I thought a restaurant like this could work here.”

Ask anyone who’s popped into Oki Kohi for a latte, a scone, a curry beef puff pastry or a zhong zi sticky rice dumpling, and they’ll agree: work here, it definitely does. SLO LIFE