Japanese cuisine will once again be returning to River Park Square with a new restaurant filing for building permits in a space on the ground floor of the Downtown mall. The new restaurant will actually fill the same space as the mall's previous Japanese eatery, Sushi Maru which was primarily a conveyor belt sushi restaurant that closed following the pandemic.
On the building permits the new restaurant is shown as Shiki Japanese Steakhouse, but is part of the small regional Shiki chain, with the other locations using slightly different names like Shiki Hibachi Sushi. Whatever the name officially becomes the restaurant will do some remodeling to the 5600 SF space to remove to conveyor belt and add a sushi bar and potentially more before opening.
Shiki is operated by Leon Chi who spent time working in the sushi restaurants of Manhattan before establishing the first location using the Shiki brand at Walla Walla in 2015. Other locations have also since opened in Kennewick, Hermiston, OR and Downtown Coeur d' Alene. We attempted to reach out to Chi for comment on an opening date and other details about the planned Spokane location, but we did not receive a response.
For more information about Shiki Japanese and menu examples, check out https://www.shikihibachisushi.com/ or http://shikicda.com
