Restauranteur Jimmy Liang praises ‘amazing’ High Street Place, one of Boston’s newest food halls

Excessive Avenue Place, one among Boston’s latest meals halls, opened downtown in March. With it got here Fuji at Excessive Avenue Place, one of many newest ventures from Jimmy Liang, head of JP Fuji Group.

“It is simply an incredible expertise,” Liang mentioned on Boston Public Radio Monday. “You possibly can stroll in there, you’ll be able to strive a variety of various things and the surroundings’s nice. We’ve reside DJs on the weekends, we do occasions.”

Liang grew up in Quincy, and began working as a dishwasher in a sushi restaurant at 14. Regardless of warnings from his household, who additionally labored within the restaurant business, Liang began Fuji at 19. Loads has modified since then.

“Once I first began, there was perhaps like 10 Japanese eating places in and round Massachusetts,” he mentioned. “At the moment, there are 1000’s.”

As one of many largest pan-Asian restaurant teams within the Northeast, JP Fuji Group has 9 eating places in Higher Boston. Nonetheless, Liang hasn’t been protected against the business’s turmoil throughout the pandemic, from shutdowns to staffing shortages, and he’s been compelled him to shorten hours at his eating places.

“I personally have confronted a variety of hardships in hiring individuals,” Liang mentioned. “Earlier than the pandemic, I had about 600 staffers, and proper now, I’m at about 450.”

Liang holds out hope for a return to regular. “I feel as soon as individuals’s consolation degree returns, I feel all the things will return on the market,” he mentioned. “I feel we as people, we have to socialize, we want that bodily contact, we want that face time.”

One other change could come to the native restaurant scene: glad hours. Outlawed for the previous 40 years, the state Senate just lately handed a invoice that will reverse the ban on glad hour drink promotions, which must be negotiated with the Home and get previous a “glad hour”-hesitant Gov. Charlie Baker.

“Will I be taking part on this? Most likely not,” Liang mentioned, explaining that his eating places are already busy and he doesn’t need to overload the workers. “Once I was youthful, my eating places have been somewhat bit extra of a celebration scene, I assume. However as I grew, as I’ve aged, my eating places are somewhat bit extra tamer.”

For his subsequent undertaking? Liang mentioned he’s engaged on opening a French Asian bakery.

Along with serving meals, Liang mentioned he tries to assist his workers who’re immigrants simply getting began in the USA. One pupil he labored with advised him he’s well-known in Taishan, China, the place Liang’s household is from.

“We’ve a variety of Taishanese that come to Massachusetts, new immigrants, and their first off job is with us,” Liang mentioned. “We have given them English courses up to now, we have given them banking courses, actual property courses, citizenship courses, mainly, to attempt to empower all people that comes into our nation, to study our tradition. When in Rome.”