Derry's pioneering Asian fusion restaurant 'Umi' to release own wine

Umi will be open for two years now in June and is still going strong. It's an Asian fusion restaurant primarily focusing on Japanese food, and winner of best world cuisine in the Irish Restaurant Awards for Derry in the Ulster region. Umi is more than just a Japanese inspired restaurant however, the restaurant aims to give its customers an innovative dining experience from the food, to the atmosphere and the alcohol.

The Journal visited Umi to speak with its owner and heart of the restaurant, Sean Lafferty.

As soon as you walk into the restaurant you are hit with its personality, house music playing and a nightlife aesthetic complemented by Japanese influence.

You can feel that this place is handcrafted, the ice cubes have the Umi logo on them, the bar itself is self branded. Character is shown throughout the restaurant. All this character is coming from Sean Lafferty, and we sat down to talk with him on his journey, the restaurant and their new own branded wine.

Sean is a fully trained chef particular to sushi, and says of his professional role: “As a chef, being a chef isn't just a job it's a lifestyle, also working tasting, comparing flavour profiles, always trying to improve. I'm a massive perfectionist. Never satisfied, that's the drive that's in me. Feels like we are only getting started here still.

“If you followed our journey until now you'll see the differences in food styles, how much it's improved, how much we are innovating. We are the first to do this in Derry, something I'm really proud of. Opening a sushi restaurant in Derry, we are branded as the raw fish restaurant which isn't true.

“As a chef you dip your hand into all different cultures of food. Sushi was my calling card. That's what I want to do. I dedicated all my time and energy to it. I've been making sushi now for five years. The love for it has never died out, it's just getting stronger really. I love it.”

Sean carries himself very confidently, during our chat you could see that he has a strong passion for what he does. We asked if his confidence is a factor in his success: “I was shy and timid at the start, as the years went on the confidence grew. Hard work really, I've killed myself to get to where I am. It came to me when I was 25: I wanna give this a really good crack and that's when I started working at Michelin star restaurants.

“A chef has to be confident, if a chef wasn't confident cooking your food how would you feel? Customers put their full faith in me to cook them a safe meal, tasty meal, creative meal.”

Establishing a menu for a restaurant can already be a difficult task but in Umi they add on the pressure by changing the menu most weeks. Sean said: “It's challenging, yes, but we put that pressure on ourselves, we don't have to change it every week. There's no other restaurant doing what we do, like tonight i'm changing four items from the menu. We do make it hard for ourselves but that's where we get our kick, keep the fire in the belly. We’re on a mission to change the perception of restaurants, the way they dine. There's too many of us doing the exact same thing. Trying to do the chicken better than the other person, come on there's more to it than that.”

For Derry, a unique restaurant like this isn't the norm, and on getting people to try Umi Sean said: “I had a following, I did pop ups. It's not just sushi, it's steak and dumplings, bao buns. Every week we have so many first timers coming in here; regulars every week, sometimes people come in and we already know their order! Our pork dumplings, bao buns, beef tempura maki that's a staple here, if we took them off the menus they would be outside with pitchforks.

“I like to just punch you in the face with flavour, there's no subtleness to it, I've had so many picky eaters, people come in here and just try something. Whenever I opened it I thought, ‘I've nothing to lose, I'm gonna do it my way, being original’.”

Umi is bringing out their own wine this year named ‘Rainbow Pie’ . Talking about the wine Sean said: “One of the guys I opened the restaurant with, one of my best friends, Jack Mcateer, is a wine grower. About a year ago we spoke over the phone he had the opportunity to grow his own wine - ‘want to make an Umi wine?’

“We are both massive lovers of wine, the name of the wine is Rainbow Pie. Why? It’s lyrics to a song that he likes; it stuck. The wine was put into barrels September 2023, hopefully in our restaurant at the end of July start of August.”

Looking towards the future of Umi, Sean said the focus is on “getting better, constantly improving our ways of service, improving our drink selection”.

"The whole personality of the restaurant reflects off the staff, we are all similar people. We have such a good team, constantly improving.”

Where can you find Umi? The Strand Road and online you can find them here.