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The co-owners of ramen hotspot Sabu Ramen are preparing to open their second Japanese-inspired eatery, Hakucho. The venue’s name translates to swan in Japanese.
The eatery will be located in downtown Lakeland at 207 E. Main St., next to Black and Brew Coffeehouse and Bistro.
The owners hope to open in April.
Chris Cleghorn, 33, and Ryan Neal, 32, both Lakeland natives, said Hakucho will be an izakaya, which in Japan is typically a bar that offers small plates.
“People will order small shareable plates … As food is made, it’s brought to the table and people might order multiple times,” Cleghorn said. “It (will be) modern, upscale, casual dining.”
Neal said he was inspired with the concept after visiting the Shinjuku Golden Gai area in Tokyo, where there’s dozens of smaller bars in a row where people come, sip cocktails and socialize.
What’s on the menu: The menu will offer a limited amount of small plates or appetizers that will change seasonally, Neal said.
Guests can expect skewers, which comprise fresh meat or vegetables cooked on a stick over a charcoal grill, Neal said, and snapper sashimi, udon dishes, ramen bowls, wagyu steak, fried chicken and fried snack dishes such as lion’s mane mushroom karaage.
He said Hakucho will also offer vegan and gluten-free dishes. And he’s hoping to work with local farmers to source many of his ingredients.
“We want to have dishes that you can’t get anywhere else,” Neal explained.
“For dessert, we’re going to be making Hokkaido-inspired soft serve, which is a specific type of soft serve ice cream that they make in northern Japan using Hokkaido dairy which is, like, famous over there,” Cleghorn said. “We’re going to have a rotating set of flavors that you can have.”
The bar will offer drinks that range from Japanese whiskeys, Sake, craft cocktails that will change out seasonally, a curated wine list, Japanese beer, and mocktails.
The interior: The owners say the inside of the restaurant will be an intimate, upscale environment perfect for date nights, with diffused lighting, and tables overlooking the kitchen, where patrons can sip cocktails, eat appetizers and watch the chef prepare their food.
One item that differentiates Hakucho from other restaurants around town are the wooden slats across the ceiling.
In charge of renovating the 100-year-old building the eatery is housed in, Cleghorn said he spent countless hours studying the interior design of Japanese and other upscale restaurants around the world to come up with the interior design for Hakucho.
He was inspired to install wooden slats or battens in the ceiling after seeing posts on social media from a restaurant called Prime Seafood Palace in Toronto.
“I had to do a crash course on interior design,” Cleghorn said.
“I would spend all night on Pinterest, magazines, on Instagram, and I was just absorbing as many different restaurant interiors as possible. There were a couple of restaurant interiors that I was inspired by and I kind of cobbled together different aspects of a few different restaurants, their design.”
He describes the interior of Hakucho as a mix of Scandinavian minimalism and Japanese natural materials. The eclectic interior also includes custom tiles from Belgium.
The historic downtown storefront has been vacant for 20 years, Cleghorn said, and was formerly occupied by an internet cafe.
“It wasn’t built to be a kitchen, so getting the plumbing in…the fact that the floor isn’t that level… The building is very old and we had to build it from the ground up to be a kitchen and a restaurant.”
Why downtown: Neal and Cleghorn said they decided to create Hakucho because Sabu Ramen has been successful and they were ready for their next challenge.
With the limited space that Sabu Ramen has, being housed in The Joinery, a food hall, the business partners said the new restaurant will allow for more creativity with the menu.
“Sabu was going really well and we were just inspired to push ourselves. We saw a need in Lakeland. There’s only a few nicer places to eat downtown,” Cleghorn said.
The duo initially planned to open the restaurant across from the Lake Morton branch of the Lakeland Public Library, but that building didn’t offer enough parking to host a restaurant.
They entered a lease for the downtown property and began renovations in early 2024.
The partnership: Cleghorn is the businessman in the partnership, handling the leases, finances, and overseeing renovations.
Neal is the chef, curating the menu and meal ingredients. He’s been to Japan twice to source ingredients and study ramen. He said he even bought some Japanese culinary textbooks on how to make ramen and paid to have them translated.
The two millennials knew each other in high school and then reconnected in 2018. Cleghorn said he was switching careers and learned that Neal was in the process of opening Sabu Ramen.
The two, who both say their love for anime initially connected them to Japanese culture, decided to work together, and Cleghorn became a minority partner in ownership at Sabu Ramen.
“I worked in some sushi restaurants in high school and that kind of piqued my interest…I’ve always loved cooking,” Neal explained, adding that he worked at the now closed Ichicoro Ramen restaurant in Tampa and was the kitchen manager for Black and Brew Coffeehouse for several years.
Cleghorn’s uncle owns several fast food franchises, and he often learned from him how to properly run a business.
“For two years, he mentored me on the business of running multiple restaurants and how to think about creating an organization that can run multiple restaurant concepts,” Cleghorn said.
Also, Cleghorn, who has lived abroad in Mexico and Canada, said he fell in love with ramen while living in Montreal.
Hakucho is their biggest joint endeavor yet.
It will be open initially on Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. Later on, they hope to add a Sunday brunch menu and open for lunch.
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