Nick Hanke makes a mean omelet at Masao. (Photos: Matt Nelson)
By Matt Nelson
It’s been about six months since Masao opened in the East Village spot that used to be Miyabi 9. I first heard about it in April when the owner, Nick Hanke, sent me an email. He’d spotted some of my photos of Japan and France on display at Daisy Chain Coffee, around the corner, and wanted to order a few for the new place, which blends Japanese and French cuisines.
Since then, I’ve been curious to learn more about Masao, which Hanke opened after many years in the family business at Waterfront Seafood. When I contacted him a few weeks ago, he invited me to visit Masao on a day when it was closed. He told me the whole backstory while he whipped up a Japanese omelet, or tamagoyaki, back in the kitchen.
The following account, in Hanke’s own words, has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
Mike Miyabi started out as a chef in Osaka, Japan. He left for California and became head chef at a place in Los Angeles in the early ’80s and opened his own place on Sunset Boulevard. Then he sold that and went to Portland, Maine, then Boston, and then his plan was to head back to Japan, but a doctor friend in Boston talked him into Des Moines because there was no authentic sushi here. This doctor was throwing international seafood shows in Boston, and my family had met him out there, and he introduced them to Miyabi.
Right when Miyabi came to Des Moines, I was coming off of the cook line at Waterfront and was two weeks into training at the sushi bar, when Miyabi pulled me aside and offered to teach me real sushi. I would go down to Miyabi’s apartment around the corner every Tuesday to train sushi. When Miyabi 9 first opened, it was just him, Hiro (the manager) and me running the sushi bar. I worked at both Miyabi 9 and Waterfront for a few years and filled in for Miyabi when he was on vacation and then when he retired.
With the change in ownership, we focused on bringing people back. Some people still come in looking for the old Miyabi menu and head out the door, not seeing what they had expected. Even the name, Masao, is the way Miyabi writes his name in Japanese kanji. It also means “elegant man” or “hero.” I wanted to honor him and name the restaurant after him, so those are the characters up on the door.
French and Japanese culinary traditions are largely centered around the ingredients, so they’re compatible. But my training was at the sushi bar, not in the kitchen. But I ran into Phil Shires, formerly from Cafe di Scala, not long before we opened, and he came in and saved the day. We had about six weeks to put the entire kitchen together and all of that.
We started opening the doors on Fridays, feeding people for free. We couldn’t technically sell food until we got our license, but those Fridays were a lot of fun. It allowed us to test what we had and get feedback.
The first day I did tamagoyaki here, I hadn’t done it in years and was unsure about it. But then Miyabi walked in with one he had just made at home, by coincidence. That dude just reads my mind from a distance. He walked over to my setup and dialed up the heat. He made a perfect one really quick and then slapped me on the forehead. It hurt.
I’ve been bringing in one or two fish from Japan most every week. This week I asked for a firm whitefish or a bream or something like that. Bonito — those fish set us apart from the other sushi bars.
Fish is so expensive. To go from buying direct from the boat at Waterfront, in bulk, to now buying literally three fish at a time from Japan, I am paying the highest food costs possible, the food prices are insane. I bought a suzuki fish for $57 a pound, head on, guts in. By the time I have the guts out and have it filleted, I’ve lost 30% on the fish, so the nigiri are like $40 a plate. But it’s worth it for me to bring in these fish I’ve never worked with, and also worth it for people to come in and try these fish that you’re not able to get anywhere else. It keeps the menu changing constantly.
We make just about everything from scratch, save for a couple of very delicate things we source from Japan that are handmade, like the pickled gourd, ginger and yuzu kosho (a fermented pepper paste). We bring in real wasabi for $220 a pound, but I can’t do it on every plate. We don’t do the powder, we do the nicer mix of ground and fresh wasabi. We also don’t have sriracha in here, either.
The menu is different every day, depending on what we have to work with. Picking up fish from cargo at the airport every Wednesday, it’s like weekly Christmas. Last week we got cauliflower mushrooms for a stroganoff. It’s always so fun to see what comes in and what we can make out of it.
As soon as service starts, people are in here and happy. That’s what we’re doing. It’s about making people excited about the food and the experience. We even take in the negative reviews, and people with criticism are always dumbfounded when we’re attentive to the feedback. People like to criticize food, but we also love to see if we can make our food even better.
Phil was able to come in and take over the kitchen, and Miyabi has been putting in some hours sometimes. Ben Bourland from the Contrary put together our cocktail menu for us and did a great job of it. We’re making all of the ingredients from scratch. With the whole staff, everyone gets it. They’re ambitious. They’re people who love trying out new flavors and new dishes every day.
This has all just been a Hail Mary. There was no plan, no financial backing. It’s just a love project, and it’s come together in such an unexpected way. I think that’s what sets it apart. That’s what makes it different.
Contributor Matt Nelson is a freelance writer and photographer based in Des Moines. His account of a baseball game in Japan was published in dsm May/June 2025.
