Sunda Detroit Is Built for Scale on Columbia Street

Sunda New Asian opened March 10, 2026, at 33 West Columbia Street in downtown Detroit. The restaurant sits near Comerica Park, Ford Field, Little Caesars Arena, and the Fox Theatre. Its scale fits that location: more than 200 seats in a 6,000-square-foot dining room, plus a patio.

That makes Sunda a different proposition from a small chef-led dining room. It is the fifth location from restaurateur Billy Dec, following restaurants in Chicago, Nashville, and Tampa. The Detroit operation is designed to handle dinner, event traffic, private groups, and a menu wide enough to serve several kinds of occasion at once.

A room made for volume

Hour Detroit's opening report, carried on Sunda's press page, identifies Studio K as the interior designer. Capiz shells hang above the sushi bar, while decorative cherry blossoms frame the island bar. Those details connect the room to Dec's Filipino background without disguising the building's basic purpose: this is a large restaurant.

Sunda's own site markets private, semi-private, and communal dining for corporate gatherings, seated dinners, and cocktail receptions. The group business is not an accessory. It is part of the operating model.

A menu covering several lanes

The menu spans sushi, sashimi, dim sum, noodles, rice dishes, larger plates, and caviar service. Hour Detroit's March preview identified Mike Morales as culinary director and Ise Matsunobu as head sushi chef. Morales is Filipino, and Matsunobu is from Tokyo.

The same preview highlighted spicy tuna crispy rice, steamed buns with Korean fried chicken, pork belly, or crispy eggplant, and desserts and drinks using ube. It also described the Sunda sundae as a play on halo-halo. Those are useful markers for the menu's range, but they do not turn a media preview into an independent review.

The restaurant's current site continues to describe the food as modern Southeast Asian cooking while listing sushi and dim sum among the core categories. Current hours, reservations, and menu changes belong on that page because an operation this large can adjust service around events and private bookings.

Where Sunda fits

Sunda brings a polished multi-city format to a block built around entertainment traffic. The defining fact is not that the dining room is large. It is that the restaurant uses that size deliberately, with an island bar, sushi service, private-event options, and a menu broad enough for groups that may not agree on one style of dinner.

That breadth is the central operating challenge. On Columbia Street, Sunda's role is clear: a high-capacity dinner room with sushi, dim sum, a full bar, and group dining under one roof.

Sunda New Asian is at 33 W Columbia St, Detroit. Check the official Detroit site for current menus, hours, and reservations.