Michelin-starred culinary concept burgeons in Bentonville

Three years ago, Phil Libin, the co-founder and former CEO of note-taking app Evernote, gave up his life as a San Francisco commuter — and all that implies — and moved to Northwest Arkansas.

“It’s nice here, is the short [answer],” he said in a recent interview. “The simple and true answer.”

Libin escaped the Silicon Valley lifestyle with his girlfriend, Tammy Sun, the founder and CEO of Carrot Fertility, a global fertility care platform for women. They’ve since bought a residence in downtown Bentonville and continue their successful careers here while working remotely.

Libin, 51, is the co-founder and CEO of All Turtles, a startup studio that develops artificial intelligence (AI) products. The company launched in 2017 with offices in San Francisco, Paris and Tokyo, all closed now, yielding to remote workforce trends. Libin also runs a startup called mmhmm, a hybrid video app built in 2020.

Those ventures are just the latest for Libin, who was born in Russia and moved to the U.S. when he was 8. Before All Turtles, Libin was a managing director at venture capital firm General Catalyst, where he is currently a senior adviser. Previously, at Evernote, where he was the chief executive from 2007 to 2015, he grew the product to hundreds of millions of users. In November 2022, Evernote was acquired by Milan-based Bending Spoons.

Libin also co-founded and was CEO of CoreStreet, acquired by ActivIdentity (now owned by HID Global) in 2009. Before that, he was co-founder and CEO of Engine 5, a Boston-based Internet software development company acquired by Vignette Corp. in 2000, where he worked as principal architect and chief technologist for applications.

Libin holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Boston University and is currently on the Board of Overseers. He still travels globally but says the Northwest Arkansas lifestyle is unique and easy to plug into for his professional endeavors.

“We can live, more or less, wherever we want, but what I didn’t realize fully [in 2020] was that I could be productive from anywhere,” he said. “The quality of life here improves my productivity. I’m not usually in a rush; I don’t usually have a million things on my mind.

“There’s no work-life balance because it’s all one entity, and that frees up so much more brain space to work on things that matter.”

REDEFINING DINING
A current Libin project is “Bentoville,” a new dining concept focused on bringing world-class Japanese culinary experiences to Bentonville. The name is a play on words mixing the city’s name with a bento box, an essential part of Japanese food culture. The concept combines Japan’s culinary art with fresh local ingredients from Northwest Arkansas.

Cabin3, the company behind Bentoville, is an All Turtles company with nine co-founders, including some locals. Working with Libin and Sun are Bentonville entrepreneurs April Seggebruch and Stan Zylowski, who launched software firm Movista in 2010, and Walt Cooper, a healthcare leader who, among other things, was previously interim CEO of Alice Walton’s Whole Health Institute and head of innovation for Walmart Health.

Seggebruch, who wrapped up a long-planned transition out of Movista a year ago, is the managing partner of Good Gravy Group (GGG). The hospitality company operates several Northwest Arkansas brands, including Tusk and Trotter, The Bend, Butcher and Pint, High South Catering and Trash Ice Cream. She said the market is ready for an innovative culinary concept.

“We’ve been in the restaurant business in NWA for over a decade and have seen a growing sophistication and appetite for different experiences here, as well as real pride in locally produced food,” she said.

She said GGG is “attracted to authenticity” and enjoys introducing Arkansans to new culinary experiences.

“Bentoville is the real deal,” she said. “The difference is immediately obvious on the tongue and all the senses, really. We are curating immersive, pleasurable moments. In hospitality, that is the holy grail.”

Kevin Girkins is also a partner. He opened The Meteor, a cafe and boutique bike shop in Austin, Texas, with friends in October 2019. Girkins later opened a similar location near the Momentary in Bentonville, where he now lives.

Two Michelin-starred chefs — Shin Takagi and Billy Kong — and former Apple and Evernote Japan executive Hitoshi Hokamura are Cabin3 owners.

“Between us, I think we’ve started 12 restaurants and around 15 companies,” Libin said. “I contributed more to that [companies] number. I’ve started zero restaurants. It’s an eclectic but experienced team.”

A Michelin rating is a coveted stamp of approval from the Michelin Guide, signifying the best of the best globally in the culinary world.

Arkansas has no Michelin-rated restaurants, but Bentoville comes close through Kong and Takagi’s accolades.

Kong owns several restaurants in San Francisco, including the Michelin-starred Kinjo and the new Saru Sushi Bar. Trained in San Francisco, Kanazawa and Kyoto, he recently moved to Northwest Arkansas to lead Bentoville’s culinary team.

Takagi travels globally frequently for television appearances and to open restaurants and splits his time between Japan, Singapore and Bentonville. Libin said he has dedicated his life to his family restaurant Zeniya, growing it from a modest local eatery to a world-renowned dining experience. Zeniya has two Michelin stars and is named by the prestigious French culinary guide La Liste as one of the world’s top restaurants.

“We’ve also hired one local chef, and we’re hiring more,” Libin said. “We also had two chefs from San Francisco in town for our yakitori dinner [in November] that we’re recruiting. We’re developing and hiring local talent and recruiting high-end people.”

Libin said Cabin3 had raised $1.3 million so far from All Turtles and the co-founders.

“We aim to raise more next year from strategic partners and investors,” he said.

Bentoville is part of a more extensive campaign to promote what Libin calls “Goldilocks” cities (not too big, but not too small) and attract people to the area by providing high-quality Japanese culinary experiences to match the variety and quality of art and cultural experiences offered throughout the year.

“Several of my companies are built around this concept,” Libin said.

Libin said he hypothesizes that over the next couple of decades, more people will be able to choose where they want to live without affecting their careers or jobs.

He believes economic development will favor Goldilocks cities, and Northwest Arkansas is a prime example.

“It’s not the only one, but it’s a leading one,” he said. “There’s about a billion knowledge workers in the world. In 10 years, that’s projected to be about 2 billion. Let’s say that in 10 years, 10% of those people will decide to change something about their life and move. That’s 200 million people. That’s a decent-sized country.

“That is a massive economic change in the world, and it will completely transform the fundamental blocks we build life from — housing, healthcare, education. A big part of that is food. So, at Bentoville, we’re focusing on the food and hospitality portion.”

A TASTE OF BENTOVILLE
In the past year, Kong and Takagi have hosted (and are hosting) a series of intimate, invitation-only dinners. It’s a Japanese feast called “kaiseki,” a multi-course tasting menu curated by the chef — who displays their knife skills and Japanese cooking techniques — unfolding over a few hours.

Bentoville offered a $300-a-ticket Christmas kaiseki dinner from Dec. 7 through Dec. 10. The eight-course meal had many different types of Japanese cuisine.

The chefs serve each dish in different plates and bowls, so enjoying their various colors, designs and shapes is another enjoyable aspect of the meal.

“Bentoville isn’t only sushi,” Seggebruch said. “The menu and experiences are many and varied. There is something great for everyone. Nowhere else in our region can one find fresh Japanese ingredients prepared by decorated Japanese chefs using time-honored authentic methods.

“We have envisioned and designed a scalable concept and expect multiple locations in the future. First, we will focus on excellence here in Northwest Arkansas.”

Other experiences and pop-up food services are boosting the Bentoville concept. One of those pop-ups, The Bentoville Box, offers bento boxes prepared daily. They are available in limited quantities Monday through Saturday through January. Patrons may order in advance and pick them up from Onyx Coffee Lab in downtown Bentonville.

Libin said Cabin3 plans to open the first brick-and-mortar Bentoville location next fall. He compared the concept he envisions to the food hall at Harrods in London — a refined dining facility centrally managed, featuring diverse food stations.

“It’s not a food court like a mall, which is random vendors,” he said. “It’ll be everything from Michelin-starred, high-end, fairly expensive cuisine, but also more accessible stuff that you can have every day [like] bento boxes, which are the ultimate things for takeout or delivery.”

Within that restaurant, the group intends to organize upscale dining occasions, inviting chefs from around the globe for special culinary events.

“The whole point is it’s like a venue,” he said. “If I go to a music venue, you don’t expect to see the same band every time. There are different acts. When you go to Crystal Bridges, there’s a different exhibit every few weeks. But it’s always the same thing when I go to a restaurant. Why?

“Our restaurant is going to be a circuit. Kind of like musicians do, chefs can go on tour. They can spend a few weeks in Tokyo, a few weeks in Singapore, a few weeks in Bentonville and other places. The economics are great for chefs, and people have high-quality, diverse food to experience.”