Dining Out Bentonville

Japanese Fine Dining Finds a Home in Downtown Bentonville

• Visit Bentonville • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Join us inside the heart of Downtown Bentonville’s Motto Hotel at Junto, with chef Donovan Johnson. In this episode of Dining Out Bentonville, host Biju Thomas uncovers Donovan’s journey through Bentonville’s dining culture to Junto. 

Discover how this popular restaurant elevates the downtown culinary scene through sushi, hospitality, and community. This episode is a must-listen for food lovers, business travelers, and anyone curious about the flavors fueling Bentonville’s rise.

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Biju Thomas:

Dining Out Bentonville. Beyond the menu, behind the flavor. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Dining Out Bentonville with me, bijou, and our lovely friends at Visit Bentonville. Today we're coming to you from this beautiful little hidden sushi place named Junto, just a few feet off the square of downtown Bentonville, inside the Motto Hotel, and stick around, we're going to give their interpretation of a beautiful little grilled cheese right here. Chef Donovan, how are you, bud? It's so great to meet you. Thanks for joining us and doing this. What a lovely place you have here. Thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, you did all this. Huh, all of it by myself. Unbelievable. It's a big team to make this happen. Yeah, so I've been fortunate enough to move to Bentonville just a couple of years ago and I come from Colorado, which is also another landlocked state. I did not expect there to be this level of sushi available in the middle of Arkansas. Yeah, sure, what is happening? Why is this happening?

Donovan Johnson:

this happening. Oh well, the only way to make it happen is very carefully, with a lot of special planning. Okay, um, so we have a lot of great vendors that are out in japan specifically. All right, luckily we're able to get some of the fresh fish delivered morning of, caught the morning of and get it to our doorsteps within from japan. From japan. Get out, really so it'll be. Uh, flying out of some of the northern islands in japan flies directly to a refrigeration airport in san francisco. Okay, gets delivered that same night over to here. We have it at our doorstep within about 44 hours that is craziness.

Biju Thomas:

So we're legit downtown. The downtown bentonville square is right there. We're in the middle of arkansas, which is in the middle of the country. Obviously, it rains a lot here, but that doesn't mean fresh seafood and the level of, you know, sushi and the level of food that you guys are doing here is so beautiful. Thank you. I've been lucky to be able to come here a few times because I live within walking distance and, you know, in addition to the food, of course, the physical space is just incredible.

Donovan Johnson:

You don't expect this. When you're in Bentonville just walking down the street and you come in here, how do you explain the space? What is happening here? The best way I can explain it is it's intimate, real nice tight quarters, as well as very large at the same time. The way we kind of have it broken out to you is in three separate sections. We have our main dining room in here. It's a little more elevated, like I said, a little intimate. Um, you'd want to celebrate, like special occasion, anniversaries, birthday. It's nice. Here we have our inside bar, kind of the same theme but a little bit louder, more lively in there, yeah, and then right out here at the back doors, we have our bar capu. How do you pronounce?

Biju Thomas:

that bar capu, bar capu. So it's spelled k a p? U. Yes, it's a tiki, bar right, it's a tiki and I couldn't tell is it kapu or kapu? So it's bar kapu. If you're wondering bar kapu, okay, please sorry oh sure, yeah, because I didn't know how to pronounce this. I've been like, yeah, there you go, bar kapu.

Donovan Johnson:

Yeah, the bar kapu. Outside it's a little bit more of an upscale tiki bar. It's not just Japanese food, it's more Polynesian island food, a good variety of everything. Nice, it's a little bit louder out there. We'll often have fun events out there. We'll have a DJ that comes out weekly, sometimes nightly. Out there we got a nice little Robata. It's a Japanese grill. We'll work everything up off that. Is that visible? Is that behind the bar? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can go out there see it. Guests can interact, talk to their stuff working out there.

Biju Thomas:

Because I've sat at the bar there. You've got that beautiful bar with the great outdoor courtyard space. It's totally unexpected when you're walking down the alley, gorgeous space, and then so you have the Roboto, roboto, roboto, roboto Japanese grill. Am I saying any of these things right? No, that sounds right. Roboto. Right behind the bar. It's fantastic, beautiful space and, especially on a warm night, nothing like a big, fun, delicious cocktail and a little bit of smoke and food happening outdoors. It's nice.

Donovan Johnson:

You can smell it walking down on the other side of the square. That's pretty dang cool by the smell.

Biju Thomas:

Yeah, one more question to the space. The space feels very much like a warm, like it's somebody's basement full of records and books. Yeah, I mean, there are records right there. They're stacks and stacks and stacks of old vinyl records. Um, what is that theme or how does that tie into everything happening?

Donovan Johnson:

it kind of hits around on the 70s, 80s, along with like a little bit of like Japanese upscale. Um, it kind of makes it a little bit more interactive. Over here on the other side of the building we have our our record room or listening room. We have a nice, beautiful, round, comfortable couch. Uh, we have a nice record player in there with a preamp hooked up to some really nice speakers. Oh nice, all those records you see over there hanging on the shelves. Guests can come up, pull one off, take it over that room and kind of jam out. That's awesome. As much as it is decoration, it is interactive that is awesome because it definitely has that vibe.

Biju Thomas:

If you just want to chill, listen to music, hang out with your friends, it doesn't feel like a place where you got to rush in and rush out. Oh no, some places have that feeling like, okay, you get your food and get out, we got to see more people no, we'll keep you here.

Donovan Johnson:

If you want to get out, we can help you get out. But most people come in looking for like a full-on experience. Yeah, and it's a nice course. That can have it coarse stout or you can come in for a quick bite and bounce pretty quick if you want to.

Biju Thomas:

That is definitely how it feels and I was telling you earlier. Sometimes you come in here like right now obviously it's not busy yet because we're recording, so the place feels rather intimate. But when you come in here and it's busy, it's almost like the space expands. It feels like twice the size when it's full of people, where a lot of restaurants have the opposite vibe. When it's full, it just feels crowded. This place is built for just big, loud groups of people having fun together. It's very cool. Yeah, absolutely. How long have you been making sushi? How long have you been in the Japanese food space?

Donovan Johnson:

So, with us opening up in the middle of last summer that's when I joined on with the company, so I'm relatively new to the Japanese cuisine experience. I've been in the industry for a while I got lucky enough to meet with our head of Japanese cuisine within our company, Indigo Road. His name is Chef Masa Hamaya, head of a Japanese cuisine within our company, indigo Road. His name is Chef Masa Himaya, and he's kind of been the one to help me navigate with operating running this restaurant, along with his long-term expertise in this cuisine. So really the only way this whole place works or happens is with a collective group effort, and it's everybody's little bit of help is what makes it run.

Biju Thomas:

It's a big operation, so do you all do does this hotel do room service also?

Donovan Johnson:

No, not currently, so a little bit on the hotel side. So we do have like a good amount, I believe, like 174 rooms up in here. Really they're a little bit more minimalistic, they're nice sleek, but the whole vibe of it even like there's not even a coffee maker up in there.

Donovan Johnson:

So we do have a nice little lovely coffee shop called Kohi over here and the whole theme of it is to kind of drive, navigate people down to this bottom floor big hangout space, be it. If you're coming down to do some office work, zoom meetings, want to meet up with people. Like I said, listen to some records Drives people down. Here you can get some wonderful coffee that we partner with Onyx with using their beans, and people can walk up from outside on the sidewalk walk up to the coffee yeah, we get.

Donovan Johnson:

Yeah, we kind of have like a bike drive-thru window is what I always find cool.

Biju Thomas:

Yeah, yeah, it's nice yeah, and for folks that are visiting for the first time, you'll notice, there's the ledger building, which is right across street, which has a ramp that you can take from the sidewalk all the way to the top of the seventh floor, and I believe that's the only building of its kind so far anywhere in the world. I'm gonna go with anyone in the world, and originally when I heard about this hotel opening, the whole idea was this hotel is opening to support people that are coming into town for work, for meetings, to ride your bikes, whatever. There's a bike shop opening up soon in here that will build up your equipment. Get it ready for you. Have it ready. You have a great dinner, have breakfast, have coffee, go do your thing, drop. They ship it home to you. It's all like between just a few feet. Here it's a full service operation, which is really cool. That's awesome. So on the restaurant side, are there more Junetos around the country, or is this it?

Donovan Johnson:

So we're the only Juneto, but within our parent company it's called Oku. So you'll see, we have a few of those over on the east coast, charleston being, like our home base main operation, oh nice. So we'll have people being different, different name junto compared to oku, but we'll have people who, over on the east coast, a lot of like you said, a lot of people either come out here to bike or business trips or whatnot. They'll come in and be like, oh my gosh, this tastes just like some same great sushi I had east coast and yeah we kind of like, reluctantly, we're like, oh hey, like we are actually them.

Donovan Johnson:

So you can't find us elsewhere on the east coast, but junto is its own little special thing right, that's very cool.

Biju Thomas:

Yeah, okay, so you're. You've been here for how many years now, how long you've been?

Donovan Johnson:

in. I've been here, northwest arkansas, about 15 years. I've been here working on the square in downtown bentonville for about seven years all.

Biju Thomas:

so as somebody who technically you're a native. Now, if you've been here more than two years, you're technically a native, yeah, so you've been here long enough to where you know what's happening. When you've got friends and family visiting that are coming out for the first time, where do you send them? What is your favorite thing to do or send people to go and do Somebody who's visiting? Where do we send them?

Donovan Johnson:

Be it from here. Well, so I mean I'm going to be biased and I love to have friends and family come here, but it's nice. You can come on a weekend night whenever we have that outdoor amphitheater, the momentary. It's awesome to come out Eat at one of like the nice local great restaurants we have here. I believe you hit up Conifer, matt Cooper over there a bunch of great places to go eat at, a variety of restaurants to go eat at, and then you can either go hit up some nice live shows, go on bike trails there's just so much to do around here.

Biju Thomas:

You know you bring up a good point Because it's such a small community of restaurants and you've been here as it's grown. You've been here as it's grown, as have other people on your staff, so you've been able to watch as these things are happening and you've all been able to support each other and help each other and grow together, which is really cool.

Donovan Johnson:

It's nice, yeah. So, like a lot of the restaurants all around here, we're pretty close knit, like often if, say, we have a supply that didn't get to make it in. We're all nice, tight, really good friends. We'll borrow from each other, help support each other.

Biju Thomas:

Even often like we'll do like restaurant week around here and a lot of us will partner with other restaurants, come up with a special, unique item. That is like highlighting both restaurants and then serve it for the week. That's awesome, okay, that's something that would not happen in the vast majority of cities around the world. Yeah, for one. Physically, everyone's too spread out. You know you're too far away from other people too. Unless you grew up with these people, unless you spent time in kitchens together and in town together, you would never be that comfortable. Yeah, sure, but how cool is that?

Donovan Johnson:

Oh, it's nice. Yeah, I mean I could go walk down occasionally if I'm taking like a quick break before service starts, I'll go visit my good friends over at Evan Tapps, just a 30 second walk over there, be able to hang out, chat for a little bit. Vice versa, they can come over here. They get off work. We're open a little bit later, say I'll be outside cooking on the robota, I get to have my other chef buddies come out and hang out.

Biju Thomas:

We just get to eat good food yeah, that, uh, pretty much makes it all worthwhile to move to a small town. Nice, get a job in a kitchen, work your way up and kind of have a community. You know where you get to do the thing that you love to do with friends, which is pretty dang awesome. Nice, okay, on the menu here. What's your favorite thing that you like to eat on the Junto menu? Oh gosh, other than the grilled cheese, of course, which is not on the menu. It's only a super-secret menu, but if you had to pick one thing that's a star of your menu so far, you can pick a couple.

Donovan Johnson:

Okay, I'm a big sucker for our just classic nigiri. We get some amazing bluefin tuna in. We get the whole fish in, so we get to break down the whole part. You can either get the belly, any other sides of it. Our sushi team does an amazing job with all of our nigiri. So if you're going down that road, we do have some signature nigiris where of course, you can get like your classic take on, you know, like fan favorites, traditional Japanese sushi, as well as like different takes on it as well as we do some Hakko sushi box. So it's a little bit more of old school sushi as opposed to your roll maki mono.

Donovan Johnson:

Yeah, this is a box press one and this is my favorite as far as like actual individual piece sushi goes. But it's the rice is mixed with squid ink, real dark, rich. As well as then, we'll incorporate some tempura fried lobster, mix that in with it, top it with some spicy egg.

Biju Thomas:

This sounds amazing. This is on the regular menu. Yes, oh well, okay, please sorry. Oh, I mean that's amazing.

Donovan Johnson:

So, like you can get a variety of, like I was saying, of traditional Japanese cuisine, as opposed for just sushi we do on our menu is filled with a whole bunch of other hot items, so we'll get a lot of people who come in. Uh, a lot of people around in this area are still really new to sushi shore fish so we have plenty of hot items to go around as well. Uh, rock shrimp it's one of our more popular ones tempura fried rock shrimp and then it's tossed in a gin, juniper, berry base aioli. It's sweet, pretty savory, yeah yeah. And then, of course, our bao buns are pretty dang popular. We've got a little bit of beef, short ribs and pickled red onion oh man, a little bit of micro cilantro. Sesame seeds Sell a ton of those.

Biju Thomas:

It all sounds pretty spectacular. Okay, so a second ago, what was the one you were talking about? The gin, juniper berry, aeolian Rock shrimp, rock shrimp. How is that served?

Donovan Johnson:

So I mean, it's a share plate like kind of the theme of our restaurant, Like it doesn't have to be, but it's intent to share with a group of people, oh, nice, so that just comes out on just like a little bit of lettuce for a garnish. Yeah, yeah, the highlight of it up, nice, high, served with a little lemon wedge. If you want to, you can hit it up with a little bit more acid and it's just amazing simple by itself.

Biju Thomas:

Yeah, that's such a cool combination of flavors. You've got those really bright herbal notes gin and juniper and then to bring it together with a little bit of aioli and a little crunchy shrimps the little rock shrimp, the little guys. They're perfect because you can pick up a couple in a bite. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's fantastic. So I know we've got a grilled cheese coming, but I've got more questions about food. If that's all right, yeah, sure, for non-fish eaters and non-seafood eaters, what's kind of the highlight of the menus?

Donovan Johnson:

Okay, so we do some. Talking about Kapu, we have some nice Wagyu smash burgers. Okay, little sliders on Hawaiian kind of hints, on the little bit of a tropical island theme. Uh, as much as we can, we try to order local, so that ground wagyu comes from a little farm about two hours outside of here. All right, sean bansley's. So amazing, amazing pork and beef there. Let's see what else can we do. Again, back on the bao beef local meat beef rib from bansley's as well, as well as a variety of we do a lot of seasonal salads. It's rolled out local greens, again from local farmers, with a little bit of a Yuzu pink peppercorn vinaigrette and local strawberries as well from Barnhill Fonds, a little bit of leeks Dude. The sauce sounds awesome, it's great. It's a pretty extensive menu and if you don't like one thing, you're absolutely going to find something that you are going to like here yeah, there's.

Biju Thomas:

I mean, the place smells wonderful, looks wonderful. Look at this. Look what's happening. All right, what is happening over here? You somehow managed to make grilled cheese. What do we got here?

Anthony Szymanski:

so we have, uh don stef donovan's version of our grilled cheese. We have a chocoupon, also known as japanese milk, that we make here in-house every single day. What Garlic butter, miso with Gruyere cheese and smoked cheddar cheese that's fantastic.

Biju Thomas:

What's your name? Anthony, anthony, thanks, man, this is super cool. So is this a bread that y'all keep in-house regularly, or is this something you make? We make it fresh here every single day.

Anthony Szymanski:

What do you do with it normally, normally? What do you do with it normally, normally? It's on our, I'm sorry, go ahead, dylan.

Donovan Johnson:

I was going to say right now we have a wonderful caviar service. We get this toasted up real nice, cut into little triangles, perfect for transporting your caviar.

Biju Thomas:

Whoa. And it's always that thick. It depends on where we're going. This is a little bit thicker. So it's a whole loaf that you guys are slicing as you need it, fresh dude that is so beautiful have you ever had shogupan before?

Donovan Johnson:

no so Japanese milk bread. It's like rich, creamy, fluffy. It has an amazing texture, especially whenever it's like fresh untoasted, but whenever it's toasted as well, yeah, I might pick this for the grilled cheese. It toasts up so nicely whenever you give it a good amount of butter with it.

Biju Thomas:

Anthony, you want to hang out and have a bite with us? Tell us a little bit more. All right, come on in. Um. Wonderful Anthony, what's your?

Anthony Szymanski:

role here? What do you do here? I am the food and beverage director.

Biju Thomas:

Oh cool, general manager ah, I got the exact chef and the food and bev manager of chaguntow hanging out with us, all right, so this, uh, this is beautiful. Thanks for doing this for us. If it ends up on the specials menu or the feature once in a while, you do not have to mention me at all. No, I'll call it the BJ Grubbs. Oh my gosh, you guys, you didn't have to do that. Okay, anthony, how long have you been part of this?

Anthony Szymanski:

Since day one, donovan and I. I was hired a few months before Donovan, but we opened the doors together, so and have you been in, lived here for almost 13 years now.

Biju Thomas:

All right, I got to do this real quick before it stops being melty my goal, all right, look at that. What kind of cheese do we have here? Look at that incredible Chef hands you half buddy, thank you. You're in smoke cheddar, so we got Greer. Yeah, he can't smoke cheddar, sir. Please, anthony, you have some right. That is incredible. Look at that. Bread is soft and chewy and buttery. This is like a perfect grilled cheese bread Dude. That is so good. Thick and rich and crunchy and chewy all at the same time. It's so good, anthony. Sorry, I got distracted by grilled cheese and that's totally acceptable.

Biju Thomas:

How long have you been?

Anthony Szymanski:

here in Bentonville. It's about 13 years now, actually. Really, yeah, and did y'all work together before here? It's funny. We've never worked together before, but we've worked with the same people. Somehow we have we're connected with the people that we've worked with in different areas.

Donovan Johnson:

Nice Finally came full circle. It's kind of nice meeting up with Anthony. We know a lot of the same crew, same people. It's really nice finally being able to get to meet you and work with you.

Biju Thomas:

That is so cool. All meet you and work with you. Yeah, ah, that is so good.

Anthony Szymanski:

All right, um, as the f and b director here, are you also responsible for the bar outside of the restaurant? I am the the restaurant here, the lobby bar, cohi, our coffee bar as well, well, and then finally, kapu barker poo in the back, and I bet you get your hands on all the things, all the things.

Biju Thomas:

Yeah, yes, man, what, uh, what a cool team you guys got going on, and how big of a crew do you guys usually run? How? How many people are in here cranking all this out?

Donovan Johnson:

Oh, let's see on the back of the house. I got about a busy night about 12 people in the back.

Anthony Szymanski:

Okay, and then what do you got on the floor? On the floor we have roughly about 15 people usually, so totally we run about 60 to 65 people total, as far as those in here with us that is so cool.

Donovan Johnson:

Yeah, and then with Cohe opening up early in the morning 6, and then we'll be open late to the night, at 11 o'clock at night, just about throughout the whole night, throughout the whole day, we always have some sort of team here operating, producing food. There's always somebody doing something, always somebody doing something.

Biju Thomas:

And is the baked goods and the pastries for Kohi? Is that all made here? Yeah, oh, wow, fresh daily as well too. That explains this too. You know, front of the house, back of the house, everybody out on bicycles once in a while. Yeah, so we're going to start building that then as we bring on more restaurant folks. So just once a week we'll go tour around town. We can talk about the restaurant biz, we can vent, we can, you know, rejoice about how great, great it is, we can go try other people's food. But, yeah, you guys are first to be called when we start riding bikes together. I appreciate it. Well, I appreciate you both taking time. Anthony chef donovan, thank you. Thank you so much. This is wonderful. Thank you, thank you to hanging out and watching from uh junto in Bentonville.