Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephen Connolly.
Stephen, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was having quite the moment. Somehow, I had found myself in a train station, 6000 miles from home, staring at a wall. In front of me: a grid of almost a hundred vending machines, each one set into the wall, each one dispensing a different sake. Surrounded by the sweet smells of the food carts and the rambunctious sounds of the nearby food market, I paused and considered the path to my current situation. How did I, an Irish kid from Roslindale, Massachusetts, find myself making a pilgrimage to the Ponshukan sake wall at the Echigo-Yuzawa train station in northwestern Japan? Why did it mean so much to me? I think I knew, at that moment, what I wanted to do.
The story I wanted to tell. It took me a long time to find a calling. I spent my college days mostly in a directionless haze, unsure of what I could possibly throw myself into. I dabbled in radio broadcasting, journalism, acting. I wrote songs on keyboards, wrote short stories in notebooks. I kept coming back to storytelling in different mediums. But the lack of structure and guidance in college failed to harness or focus my creative energy. I eventually dropped out. I started working in restaurants the next year. A dropout broke and rudderless, I finally found purpose in a 23 seat sashimi bar in Back Bay. Promoted from a food runner at Clio upstairs, Uni reenergized and inspired me with a cuisine I had never even eaten before.
Every day I was given new and exotic ingredients to taste. Chef Chris Chung took me under his wing, building up my palate and confidence on a daily basis. He also helped me grow up. He called me “the wild horse”, confident that when I finally matured, I could be consistently great at my job. I owe a lot to that restaurant and the many talented people I had the pleasure of learning from. I had my first great sake at Uni. It was a premium daiginjo, layered with tropical fruit and summer flowers. “I taste pineapple and hibiscus” I relayed. “They grow pineapples in Japan?” I asked. “No,” he replied. “They achieve all those flavors with four ingredients and none one of them are fruit.” I went home and read about stories of making sake for hours. Someday, I told myself, I would see this for myself. Someday, I wanted to be able to experience these stories.
I spent the next few years taking small steps towards that goal. I found a travel partner for life when I convinced my girlfriend, former Clio Pastry Chef Renae Herzog (now Connolly), to marry me. We moved to New York City for a couple years, where I worked at Nobu 57. There, I gained invaluable experience at one of Manhattan’s most famous Japanese establishments. And then in 2013, I got a call from Uni, asking if I’d be interested to come back and run the same program there. Tony Messina, recently anointed chef, had revamped and elevated Uni’s cuisine over the course of a year. Chef Tony gave me a tremendous opportunity to grow, learn, and curate a sake list that thrived in the context of his food. My sake education at Uni was encouraged and fostered by ownership and management. I was able to experience and complete John Gauntner’s sake advisor course. I became a certified sake sommelier, studying under my sake hero: Urbansake’s Timothy Sullivan.
Eventually, I was able to travel to Japan. I was able to meet brewers, listen to them tell their stories, drink sake from the tank while they spun tales of their past and future. And eventually, I was able to stand, so awestruck, in front of a wall of sake vending machines, in a train station in northwestern Japan.
Chris Chung, the chef who helped me grow into a man so many years prior, gave me a call in the summer of 2017. I was once again, if but temporarily, rudderless. I had left Uni, after a combined seven years, in the spring. Yearning for a different challenge, I also sought a purer distillation of my lifelong calling of storytelling. Chef Chris, along with his wife Elaine, pitched me on opening a different kind of restaurant. Together, we conceived an izakaya that would mean something vital to us all. We decided to unwaveringly focus on sake, not the statistics or even just the flavor profiles.
But instead, something that we felt our guests could connect with, something that would resonate, something I had always wanted to tell: the stories. We opened last October. Elaine named it Momi Nonmi. So here I am, that same Irish kid from Roslindale, quite actually living my dream. But now I get to live it every day. One story at a time.
Has it been a smooth road?
There have certainly been hiccups and detours on my path to Momi Nonmi. After leaving Uni in the spring of 2017, I joined the team at Cafe Sushi. Chef/Owner Seizi Imura had hired me to open his forthcoming sake bar. The project, however, was beset with construction delays. When it became apparent that the delays were significant, I I had to move on. It was a frustrating experience, and despite all, I learned from Chef Seizi and his talented front of the house staff, I felt it was a step backwards from my goal.
Shortly after leaving Cafe Sushi, I seriously injured my back. For two weeks after the Fourth of July, I could barely walk. I had several job offers but had to turn them down as I recovered. However, it was only because of the injury that I was around to take Chris Chung’s phone call about Momi Nonmi. I rehabbed intensely throughout the summer and was in a good enough place to help launch the restaurant that October.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Momi Nonmi – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
At Momi Nonmi, we are an extension of our passions. Chef Chris credits changing his diet, including going gluten-free, with saving his life. So when he started designing the menu, he wanted to offer izakaya style faire through the healthier lense of his new diet. I wanted to truly operate as sake sommelier, to focus on telling the stories of the sake breweries. We both implemented our visions into daily service.
We’ve become known not just as a place to drink sake, but to experience it as well. We offer sake flights nightly where I (or a team member) tells the stories of three different breweries. It’s our most popular item on the menu. We also have a program that when you finish a bottle of sake, you sign it, draw on it, and then we display it on the wall. Our entire restaurant is decorated with guest signed bottles.
We also try to find the talents of our staff and allow them to creatively assert themselves. Koharu, our bartender and an MIT architecture grad, has designed our menus, flyers, and promotional images. Rachel, a server and talented sketch artist, draws our graphics, special boards, and occasionally staff portraits.
We have fun, stay loose, and keep motivated to get better. It’s an exceptionally positive work environment, rare in such a stressful industry.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I love Boston. I love its eclectic neighborhoods, the many parks, its rich history. I love its duality as a technologically progressive city peppered with green spaces. I could wander the trees of the Arnold Arboretum or explore halls of the science museum.
I don’t like the rush hour traffic combined with the street layout in some parts of the city. And the difficulty of traversing the city without a car late at night. I remember, especially in the days before Uber, you could feel very restricted in your movement among neighborhoods. Also, the lack of late night food options outside of downtown.
Pricing:
- Sake Flight $20-25
Contact Info:
- Address: 1128 Cambridge St. Cambridge, MA 02139
- Website: MomiNonmi.com
- Email: info@mominonmi.com
- Instagram: @sakesteve, @mominonmi
Image Credit:
Hien Nyguyen, Andrea Merrill
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
