Leina Horii and Brian Lea are 2024 F&W Best New Chefs

With an irresistible, breezy nonchalance, Kisser is a modern take on the traditional Japanese kissaten — an old-school neighborhood spot to eat, drink, and hang out — from married chefs Leina Horii and Brian Lea. Taking inspiration from ’70s and ’80s Japanese café culture and the food Horii grew up eating with her grandparents in Japan, the menu features delicate handmade udon and katsu sandwiches on delightfully squishy milk bread that’s baked in-house. You get the sense that every dish is the product of great care and technical finesse, yet it all feels comforting, subtly luxurious, and never flashy. The sunny, lunch-only café would be a fantastic place to linger all afternoon. But damn it, all of Nashville is waiting for your table. 

The tight menu at Kisser embraces homey, traditional Japanese dishes, and sentimentality is occasionally, unapologetically at play. A chopped salad is graced with “Leina’s dad’s carrot ginger dressing”; the recipe is from her parents’ sushi restaurant in California. “That’s his recipe with minor tweaks that I’ve made,” says Horii. (She’s swapped in tamari for soy sauce and uses vegan mayo, so the recipe is gluten-free and vegan, but otherwise, “It’s the dressing my dad’s been serving for the past 40 years.”)

The restaurant also draws deeply on the couple’s fine-dining background — they met at Ludo Lefebvre’s Trois Mec in L.A., and Horii and Lea did stints at 2017 F&W Best New Chef Jordan Kahn’s Red Medicine in L.A. and Sean Brock’s Husk in Nashville and Charleston. Kisser is an efficient, choreographed machine, doing 190 covers a day with only 40 seats. “It’s all very dynamic, so we don’t have that hard line between front and back of house,” says Lea. “If I’m expo-ing, I can see every single seat in the restaurant. We learned to sort of pace it, based on watching the diners, and to do that in a small café setting. It’s a thing that we learned doing tasting menus.”

From the energy and seasonality of the food to the minimalist interior with blond wood communal tables, Kisser’s upbeat, glimmery California vibes are unmistakable — which is not all that surprising since that’s where the couple hails from. “There’s an inherent Southern California–ness in everything we do,” says Horii. “And especially with how we cook.”

The perfect order at Kisser

Beef tataki udon 

For these noodle bowls, Horii makes fresh udon — a pandemic-era hobby that turned into a Kisser staple. “We’ve tried different brands of noodles,” Lea says. “When it comes down to it, the ones that Leina makes are better.” In the beef tataki udon bowl, those fresh noodles are served in a yuzu kosho broth with grilled mushroom and seared dry-aged beef tri-tip from Bear Creek Farm.

Chicken katsu sandwich 

The chicken katsu sandwich is a dish Lea and Horii have been doing since their early days as a pop-up and farmers market stand. The sandwich is composed of fried chicken, Kewpie mayo, pickled ginger, tonkatsu sauce, and citrus-cabbage slaw, and it’s served on their pillowy house-baked Japanese milk bread.

Onigiri 

An order of the delightful onigiri comes with a choice of three per order — and yes, you should get one of each. There’s the stellar snow crab with avocado and cucumber, the smoky grilled rice with cod roe and yuzu, and the sweet and savory kabocha squash with Japanese curry. 

Behind the scenes at Kisser

1. What the name means: The name came from a conversation about sports phrases and slang for mouth, Horii explains. “So like, ‘Pow! Right in the kisser!’” They realized the word was similar to kissaten, a type of Japanese café. Lea elaborates: “We didn’t want anyone to struggle with having to pronounce it correctly, which people still do, surprisingly. We get Kaiser a lot.”
2. Why you might hear “Oh, bother”: Horii made a promise to herself to try not to curse, so instead of, “Ah, fuck,” she’ll say, “Oh, bother.” Says Lea: “She’ll be in one of the back rooms, and I’ll hear, ‘Oh, bother!’ And I’ll respond, ‘You OK back there?’”
3. Where the Japanese produce comes from: “We do a lot of gardening,” says Horii. “A lot of the vegetables and herbs come from our little farm. The growing climates between here and Japan are so similar, it’s like a dream for Japanese ingredients. Shiso grows like a weed here. In Japan, it’s an expensive herb.”
4. What’s on the playlist: The go-to music at the restaurant is Horii’s “lady jams” playlist. “It’s a lot of hip hop, R&B, ’90s or early 2000s, by female recording artists. I do lady jams Monday. It’s a lot of Mariah Carey and TLC.” 
5. What it’s like to work there: A positive restaurant culture is as important as the food they make: “It all comes down to just sort of the golden rule of, ‘Remember how it made you feel when someone spoke to you like this? Don’t ever do that.’ Or, ‘Do it more,’” says Horii. “So that’s, really, I think, the foundation of the work culture that we try to create.”
6. Why they’re only open for lunch: It’s all about the work-life balance. “We wanted our employees to have a normal work day,” says Horii, “and be able to come home to either their children, their families, or their significant others who may not work in the restaurant industry.” Says Lea, “Yeah, so we can also have a life outside of work.”