Chef and restaurant owner Josh Dorcak has long set the standard for fine dining in Ashland with his Japanese-influenced, prix-fixe restaurant MÄS — ranked last year as one of the 50 most exciting U.S. restaurants by the New York Times and nominated for a James Beard Award this year for Best Chef — and NAMA, its raw bar sibling. Both share a downtown location and heavy Japanese influences on their dishes.

While MÄS dates to 2018, NAMA opened in 2021 and has the distinction of being a raw bar and not a sushi restaurant. That means everything from oysters on the half shell to ceviche and Dungeness crab panna cotta. Chef Sarah Cook took over the kitchen when she moved up from Texas last year.

Cook has added items like a Wagyu cheeseburger and meaty-tasting Firefly Squid to the menu. Unusual sakes, natural wines and inventive new cocktails still rule the roost at the bar, which is now decked out with more comfortable high-top chairs.

The horseshoe-shaped bar and Scandinavian-minimalist room would not feel out of place in super-chic neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The blue neon sign saying “oysters” that blinked during happy hour was the icing on the cake, but the city of Ashland made the restaurant take it out of the window.

Cook was happily ensconced in the cooking scene in Austin before the pandemic. She was the chef of a small restaurant called Kyoten Sushiko that featured Tokyo-style food offerings. In terms of her interest in Japanese food preparations and ingredients, she notes, “this style of cuisine found me more so than I found it. I was offered an opportunity to apprentice under a chef specializing in old school Tokyo-style sushi [edomae] and was instantly attracted to the sense of harmony, balance and purity within Japanese cuisine.”

Despite not being formally culinarily trained, the aptly named Cook has been cheffing professionally for almost a decade. She first fell in love with cooking while studying philosophy in Texas and making food with her roommates.

“The foundational experience of trying to utilize everything we had on hand to make something special has strongly influenced my professional approach to food,”
 she says.

When Cook came to look at NAMA, she was impressed with both the local sourcing of food as well as Dorcak’s unique preservation techniques. “The ability to balance something harvested this morning with something preserved six months ago into one dish is something I have never experienced before.”

One of my favorite dishes at NAMA has long been the savory, multi-layered, egg custard embedded with seafood treats. It embodies some of the best of Japanese umami, the uber-savory Japanese sixth flavor. The seafood Donabe — which refers to the clay pot it is cooked in — is rich and flavorful.

The new meat offerings are also delicious — and playful. The cheeseburger comes with crunchy potato chips right out of the bag. The late-night savories, such as hamachi and Wagyu bites, are appealingly plated and adorn half the bar when the late-night crew rolls in. Oysters are $1 a pop on the late-night menu.

The whole establishment has benefited from the addition of mixologist Nick Rementeria in February. He mixes up cocktails with hints of Japanese flavors: think refreshing yuzu everywhere. The Coca-Cola daiquiri has cola, rum and yuzu: it’s a tryptic that really embodies the fun accessibility of Nama, tweaked with high-brow Japanese touches.

NAMA, at 140 Lithia Way, Ashland, is open 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Mondays. Happy Hours are offered from 5 to 6 p.m. and 8 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, and from 5 to 9 p.m. Mondays. Late-night hours are offered on Fridays and Saturdays.

For further information, including Nama’s full menu, or to make a reservation, see namaashland.com or call 1-458-246-7352.