NFL WAG Katya Suh opens chic cocktail bar, Kaya: ‘Finding my voice’

A licensed realtor by trade, Katya took her real estate knowledge and love of interior design to build the cocktail bar of her dreams outfitted with luxury fixtures from Restoration Hardware, CB2 and more. She is also a passionate basketball player, so she used that as inspiration for Kaya’s patio, which features hoops and basketball planters.

“I think that basketball, street style, that’s kind of the blend with Kaya. You’re getting luxury with street style,” she says. “The whole idea with Kaya is that you come for a luxury experience; you come to have a really great, fun time … I call it an in-depth cocktail.

“You’re gonna have a lot of palettes, a lot of things going on, and that’s like what we want to be known for, but also the aesthetic is a big part of it right. The feeling and the ambience of a place is important.”

Katya commissioned a black Boston painter to create art of people who have “impacted” her life, from Biggie and Tupac to Michael Jordan and LL Cool J.

“The whole point is to highlight folks coming in and their BIPOC community and bringing in the hip-hop and R&B music,” she says, adding that the bar will feature hits from the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s.

“We really want to bring in the intimacy and the conversation and the excellence and the luxury of a restaurant vibe, but we’re not a restaurant — we’re more of, like, a high-end bar.”

Although Katya sees her new venture as a project independent of her family, she reveals to us that she finally landed on a tequila cocktail named after husband, which she has dubbed the “RNS” for “really nice smile.”