Chef Preeti Mistry's five-year-old Temescal spot Juhu Beach Club will be sunsetting at its current strip-mall location in the near-ish future, as Mistry has just announced. A number of recent developments including her new Emeryville fast-casual spot Navi Kitchen have contributed to the decision, which Mistry tells Inside Scoop, is "tough, but it’s the right move for my career."
Though no closing date is set and no buyer is lined up, Mistry seems to be advertising the business, its lease, liquor license, and equipment for sale, and she suggests that after some kind of hiatus, Juhu Beach Club will likely return, though she won't say where. Referring to the current iteration as version 2.0, after her 1.0 pop-up inside of a liquor store on 11th Street in San Francisco, Mistry tells Eater, "Juju is not going away, just the current iteration. There will be a 3.0, we can’t totally talk about it yet but it’s not going away. I’m not going away."
Could she maybe be moving closer to downtown Oakland, like to one of those spaces vacated by Pican and Ozumo?
She says that part of the reason for announcing so early is that she hopes that people who love Juhu will get a chance to come back before they close.
As Inside Scoop explains, likely contributing to the decision is Mistry's recent James Beard nomination, a high-profile visit to the restaurant from Anthony Bourdain, and her cookbook, which got blurbed by Bourdain, who said, "What Preeti Mistry does on the page is as delicious and exciting as what she does in her restaurant."
Mistry was an early-season contestant on Top Chef, and she proceeded to lay low for several years before launching her Juhu Beach Club pop-up in 2011, serving her own modern spins on Indian street food like her Uncle's Chicken Pav, and her vegetarian take on the Sloppy Joe, the Sloppy Lil' P. Also uncommon for Indian spots: She uses a liberal amount of pork.
Bourdain visited Juhu a couple years back, on the recommendation of Twitter buddy John Birdsall, and he asked Mistry in the video clip you can see here, "Does authenticity have any meaning for you anymore at all?" And she responded, "Our food may not be traditional, but is it authentic? Hell yeah."
Related: Preeti Mistry's Navi Kitchen Debuts In Emeryville, Indian Pizza Coming Soon