Giapponese sounded so glamorous when Henry Chan was trying to come up with a name for his Woodbury sushi spot. But the name, which is Italian for Japanese, turned out to be a bad decision. So was opening a sushi restaurant in Woodbury. “The name was hard to spell and even harder to remember,” says Chan. “And Woodbury is a bedroom community; people want restaurants where they can take their kids.” Chan is now in the process of converting 2-year-old Giapponese to a Shanghai Bistro — like the ones he runs in Hudson and Eau Claire, Wis. The stark-white walls are being painted in earth tones, the kitchen is being reorganized and the signs are ready to go up. Chan plans to close the restaurant for a week at the end of June to get everything up to speed and retrain the staff. “This time, we’ll have a huge kids’ menu and something to appeal to everyone,” says Chan, who recently announced plans to open a splashy Asian-themed restaurant in St. Paul’s Lowertown next summer. “I learned a lesson the hard way. Next time, I’ll do my homework.”
