Is food just food, or is there a power behind the experience of eating that can bring people together? Hirofumi Leung, the Founder of Dragonfly Restaurant Group, creates restaurants that push Japenese cuisine beyond sushi, creating authentic connections and shared moments. Hiro shares his secrets for how he created one of Florida's best restaurants.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace

James Di Virgilio: 0:39

Food. Does it talk back to you? Is it an experience or is it just something that we eat? For Radio Cade I'm James Di Virgilio. My guest today is Hirofumi Leung. He is the founder of the Dragonfly Restaurant Group locations, Gainesville, Orlando, Miami. Hiro, welcome to the show.

Hirofumi Leung: 0:56

Hey, thank you, James. Uh , yeah, I actually love what you just said. Food talking back to you.

James Di Virgilio: 1:00

I stole it from you, which is a good opener because as we were discussing before the show, food, as you envision, it has a lot more to do with just something on your plate that you are eating. Some people view food as just performance material. It's bland. I don't need it. I just want it to fuel my body. You on the other hand, see it very differently.

Hirofumi Leung: 1:19

Absolutely. I'm growing up in Asia. My parents were always in my family were always about food. I come from a culture where family meal really meant putting food in the center of the table. And we deliberately, instead of eating individual meals in front of you, we would put food in the middle of the table. And in order for you to get your food, you had to reach over and ask people and create these interactions and meaningful conversations. And so from an early age on food really met a connection with people rather than the food that you're eating, but it helped the food tastes good.

James Di Virgilio: 1:50

So you grew up in a culture around food, and then you're in Gainesville, Florida. And now you started a restaurant that primarily focused on Asian cuisine, raw foods, raw materials at the time. Was there such an offering in Gainesville?

Hirofumi Leung: 2:05

No, not really. There was just the average restaurant. When I first started, I was going to school at University of Florida and , uh , like many people who didn't have a lot of money to go to. You had to go work part time. So I was working at a part time restaurant and it was very transactional. You serve tables and you bring food out and you say goodbye. And that was it. I actually had a business plan exercise from my class and I put together a whole experiential component of that business presented to the business owner. And at the time she just ran her restaurant for 10 years as a mom and pop. She just told me, Hey, you're I really appreciate you doing this, but I'm actually not trying to add on extra work. And so I put it back on the shelf and collected dust for a couple more years until I had the energy or a life changing moment when I was unemployed and said, Hey, look, I either go do something or continue on this path of just chilling out and just hanging out on my brother's couch. So we act