The Story

Cumberland is the story of three decades in Austin, and more than that. When you visit us, we’ll tell you the story of a community that is uniquely American, but it’s a story as told by the half-Japanese, half-Canadian, 100% Born-Austin-Texans who have only ever wanted to grow their dinner table for more guests.

Our food found its way here through concentrations and diaspora, through a negotiation between adherence and assimilation, but mostly through neighbors and neighborhoods. Swapping family secrets over a grill or a hibachi or the plancha, we figured out how to talk to each other and our food communicated too. Our grandparents and ancestors packed what they could of their culture and came to this continent, and preserved the essential, but they also taught us where to find comfort in friendly faces.

So if our food tastes like a conversation at a multicultural picnic, you’ll know we made it right.

THE CHEF

Chef Chris wants people to eat his food and feel like they're visiting a dear old friend. His induction to the lifelong pursuit of cooking was in his mother's kitchen in Austin, where he first took on the sisyphean task of preparing the chow mein to her standard. He decamped for the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and continued his education at Austin's Parkside, and Alon Shaya's Domenica in New Orleans. Digging into the bounties of the Hill Country, he served as Sous Chef at Dai Due, and opening Chef de Cuisine at Pizzeria Sorellina before his most recent posting as Sous Chef at Apis Restaurant. With Cumberland, Chris invites you to settle in for a multicultural picnic. Cumberland will explore the culinary inventions that came from Japanese immigrants, like his Grandparents, as they settled into new environments and found camaraderie with their new neighbors. Chris wants to share his table, to express his purpose and his passion, and to learn a new thing with each plate.