For most of his professional life, Vy Ton was solving problems thousands of feet beneath the earth’s surface. Today, he’s solving them over glowing charcoal grills.
The 34-year-old owner of Ichiro Izakaya, the acclaimed Near Southside restaurant known for its yakitori skewers and other small plates of meticulously grilled Japanese fare, took somewhat of an unconventional route into the restaurant business. Before opening one of Fort Worth’s most talked-about dining destinations, which landed on this magazine’s Best New Restaurant list of 2025, Ton spent eight years working as a petroleum engineer, traveling extensively and building a career that had little to do with the hospitality industry.
But Ton says the seeds of Ichiro Izakaya were planted long before he ever signed a lease or lit a grill…