The best sushi restaurants in America

We were first introduced to Daisuke Nakazawa when he was toiling over tamago as the apprentice to Jiro Ono, the world’s most distinguished sushi chef, in the lovely film Jiro Dreams of Sushi. When we first visited Nakazawa’s eponymous spot in the West Village, we weren’t sure we’d ever really had salmon, snapper and fatty tuna before, not like this, not with flavors, textures and temperatures that have been perfected and then, unbelievably, improved upon. Omakase at the counter is $190, it’s $160 in the chic dining room, and a sake pairing is $120–$150.

Omakase only. For all the warm sushi rice and dragon rolls, L.A. boasts plenty of excellent Edomae-style sushi bars, with no better example than this relatively new omakase ($300) hidden away in the basement of a Little Tokyo office building. Run by veteran sushi chef Yoshiyuki Inoue, Sushi Kaneyoshi tops out in luxury, refinement and overall wow factor. The exact seafood used in Kaneyoshi’s approximately 20 courses changes seasonally, but diners are likely to dig into a delicate Hokkaido crab chawanmushi, along with one of the city’s best preparations of ankimo (monkfish liver) and nodoguro (blackthroat sea perch). A word of warning: Tock reservations here are tough to snag, but the eventual outcome is well worth the time and effort.

One of Chicago's most extensive (and expensive) omakase experiences can be found at Kyōten in Logan Square, where chef Otto Phan offers upwards of 20 courses at his eight-seat sushi counter. Priced at $440-$490 per person depending on the day, it's an expensive meal, but the menu pulls out all the stops, with dishes catered individually to each guest. You can look forward to noshing on oceanic treats like kanpachi, uni, ebi and maguro.

Azabu is for the discerning diner. The one who prefers their fish flown in from Japan and their rice cooked in cutting-edge equipment calibrated to the Miami climate. The main dining room serves an expansive selection of sushi and sashimi, as well as a full Japanese menu of meat, veg and composed fish dishes. The tempura corn and miso cod are a must if you’re ditching the raw stuff. But if you’re not, turn your attention to The Den—one of Miami's Michelin-starred restaurants—Azabu’s secret omakase hideaway. It’s a large space so couples and small groups can section off to enjoy a little privacy while participating in the communal dining experience.

Flashy. Splashy. Cold-hard cashy. Iron Chef star Masaharu Morimoto’s flagship everything you’d imagine it to be. High ceilings, undulating lines and color-changing neon give the two-story space a disco vibe; snazzy cocktails and specialties like yosedofu—tofu made before your eyes—or the infamous fugu (blowfish), prepared three ways in season, only heighten the spectacle. But after more than two decades, the substance here remains equal to the style, whether you’re savoring such rarities as keiji salmon and firefly squid à la carte or splurging on the gorgeously crafted seven-course chef’s tasting.

Vegas has no shortage of world-class sushi restaurants, but Kame Omakase stands out from the pack. Take a seat in this beautiful, minimalist space and get ready to be greeted by Executive chef Eric Kim, who will take you on a journey. After getting a sense for personal tastes, preferences and mood, he prepares and hand-serves a completely personalized omakase experience for each and every guest. Such hospitality comes at a pretty penny—ranging from $350 to $500 per person—but it's worth it. 

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Tyson Cole swears he didn’t set out to transform the Austin dining scene when he opened Uchi in a 1920s bungalow over 14 years ago; he simply wanted the “creative freedom to get other people as addicted to Japanese food as I was.” But he did both, becoming the first American itamae to receive a James Beard Award for Best Chef and opening a larger but no less warmly chic spinoff, Uchiko, along the way. Despite the expansion, there’s no room here for pretension: for all his technical mastery and cutting-edge proclivities, Cole’s menus change often and range widely enough to appeal to novices as well as connoisseurs, who can compare, say, three different kinds of sea urchin while their warier companions sample tempura-fried cauliflower alongside crisp sakes and white wines.

Though Boston was hardly devoid of Japanese restaurants in 2007, it had never seen anything quite like the arrival of this rustic-industrial Leather District hideaway, O Ya. From needlefish sashimi served with the deep-fried head and backbone to tomalley aioli-topped lobster-caviar nigiri, every last luxury presented by chef Tim Cushman was as exquisite as it was exotic (as were the beverage pairings his wife Nancy, as the city’s first sake sommelier, oversaw). And so they remain. At around 20 courses, omakase at O Ya fetches a small fortune, but as you marvel your way through striped horse mackerel in leche de tigre or the famous foie gras with chocolate-balsamic kabayaki and raisin-cocoa pulp, the tab will shrink in comparison to the blissful memories being made.

If you’re looking for a slightly more budget-friendly sushi meal, this Little Tokyo classic is beloved among L.A.’s diehard raw fish aficionados for its reasonably priced, high-quality à la carte nigiri selection. The main draw, however, is the $23 weekday lunch special, complete with a rainbow of sashimi, soup, salad and rice. For a quicker table, head here during the evening, when you’ll be rewarded for waiting with fresh halibut, fatty tuna, sea urchin, monkfish liver, scallops, and oysters, all in a wonderfully serene, wood-paneled sushi bar setting. Just mind the rules: no personal device usage while dining, and make sure your whole party is present outside the restaurant to get seated—and no, you can’t put your number down and wander elsewhere.

The unassuming Aoko is a refreshing addition to the Miami sushi scene, a city where flashy, triple-digit-priced omakase menus currently dominate (with more to come, I'm sorry to say). Not only is the tasting option here under $100 ($75 for sashimi and $85 for nigiri), but it holds up against the other higher-priced options in taste, creativity and execution, with rice that is always somehow the perfect warm temperature. (Frequent enough omakase spots and you’ll quickly notice the difference.) What’s most inspiring about Aoko is the team, a crew of young, diligent chefs helmed by co-owner Daniel Vanh, a veteran of Miami’s top sushi restaurants and a South Florida local. Grab a seat at the counter to see the talent and synchronization at play.

Omakase menus tend to follow a typical progression: light bites, followed by more filling sushi, nigiri and so on. But at Michelin-starred Noz 17, that all goes out the window. At the intimate, seven-seat restaurant from Chef Junichi Matsuzaki, which opened in 2022 as a sibling to the original Sushi Noz, expect the unexpected. Matsuzaki’s style is as precise as they come, but it’s also surprising enough to keep you on your toes. The 25-plus courses are full of surprising twists and turns soft lotus root dumplings may appear, followed by a slew of nigiri courses, before moving on to shabu shabu and going back to light bites and more nigiri, and so on. The unconventional approach encourages diners to simply sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey—come what may.

A sushi bar and yakitori izakaya headed by former Musashino chef Kazu Fukumoto, this Swedish Hill spot serves perfect raw fish in addition to deeply flavorful marinated and grilled yakitori options. Fukomoto himself is always on site and everything that leaves the kitchen does so with his blessing. Try to get a seat at the sushi bar, where the chef will check in on you in his typically gracious manner. Bonus: The music is always a kooky mix of country, ’80s and techno that drowns out any chance of pretension. Order the chef’s choice sushi platter, with offerings such as fatty tuna with pickled daikon, yellowtail with Thai chili mayo and creamy ankimo monkfish liver.

Kusakabe, an upscale restaurant that serves omakase, serves a carefully calibrated progression of dishes designed to achieve a distinctive balance of tastes, colors, and cooking methods (roasting, steaming, frying, simmering, and serving raw). Mitsunori Kusakabe, an alum of Nobu Tokyo, New York and Miami Beach, oversees the sushi bar. After leaving Miami, Kusakabe honed his skills at Sushi Ran, the revered Sausalito sushi restaurant. He is an expert in traditional Edomae sushi techniques and a certified blowfish butcher—order accordingly.

The dining experience at Sushi Yoshizumi, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Silicon Valley, is one you won’t soon forget—but not because of anything flashy or extreme. In fact, it’s the beauty of the restaurant’s simplicity and purity that makes it so memorable. In a bare-bones, one-room restaurant with nine seats around a cypress bar, diners sit quietly and patiently as they await creations Chef Akira Yoshizumi sets before them. The chef has perfected Edomae sushi during his work throughout Japan and New York—a style opposite of sensational. “No torch, no truffles, no caviar, no golden flakes, no music, no fusion at all like high-end true sushi restaurant in Japan,” the website clarifies. Here, the star focuses on the subtle flavors and textures of the in-season fish, delicately treated, plated and presented to you.

Omakase is a Michelin-starred fish haven headed by chef Jackson Yu, a local restaurateur and longtime Bay Area resident who has been honing his skills in the preparation of traditional Edomae-style sushi for two decades. For $240 per person, diners receive the full Omakase experience—a couple of appetizers, a course of sashimi, chawanmushi, and nigiri. Nearly all the fish is flown from Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market—shipments arrive three times a week and even the Gen-emon porcelain dishware is imported. Splurge on the sake pairing, which is served in handcrafted Seikado pewter cups and pitchers.

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At this 20-seat sushi counter from rock-star chefs Jimmy Lau and Nick Kim—formerly of Neta—a cool $270 prompts an omakase (chef's selection) of exceptionally made edomae sushi served in its purest form, each lightly lacquered with soy and nestled atop a slip of warm, loosely packed rice. Luscious, marbled toro, a usually late-in-the-game cut affectionately known as the Kobe beef of the sea, boldly arrives first, even before sweet Spanish mackerel with barely-there shreds of young ginger, or sea bream dabbed with plummy ume shiso. The cocksure shuffling, though initially jarring, is a kick hiccup to your usual omakase beat, a winking reminder that, even with the price hike, Shuko’s Lau and Kim haven’t completely shed their subtle sushi-dogma subversions.

When Ryan Roadhouse's Nodoguro closed during the pandemic, fans—including sushi lovers worldwide—mourned the loss. Nodoguro had transformed a beloved pop-up to a nationally acclaimed restaurant. But in late 2022, the community rejoined when Nodoguro opened in a new spot in the Kerns neighborhood. For $250 per person, with optional wine and sake pairing for $50, the “regular” yet ever-changing farm-to-fork Japanese menu involves a Hassun course of seasonally inspired bites, followed by dishes such as fresh oysters and cooked seafood, to a series of creative dishes, (think: duck with pumpkin and cranberry jam), followed by sushi courses made from fish flown in from Japan before heading into light dessert bites.

An experience at Koya—an intimate, eight-seat restaurant, is a real treat, almost like watching theatre. Chefs work diligently to prepare dishes that feature hyper-seasonal ingredients and fish flown in weekly from Toyosu Market to create a menu that blends tradition and innovation. Envision luxurious items coming out one after another, from uni on toasted milk bread to o-toro tartare with caviar, followed by fresh and creative desserts to round out the meal.

Seiji Kumagawa doesn’t give a damn about his uncompromising reputation as a host. As a chef, he gives every damn. This is why, amid increasingly tough competition, this simply, traditionally decorated Makiki outpost of an L.A. original remains a must-go among must-gos for the gung-ho. If you sit at the bar at Sasabune—and you should—it’s omakase-only, a 12-to-13-course affair about which, barring allergies, you have zero say. The experience will set you back $160 to 180 per person (but you can stop eating at any time if you get full and only be charged for what you ate.) From the cool-warm nigiri (including revelatory negitoro) to the painstaking treatment of local abalone and opah to the rare treat that is Koshu (Japan’s indigenous white wine), you’ll be speechless and powerless to resist your chef’s directives anyway.

At this Midtown Village outpost, you'll get two distinct experiences on each of the two levels. Upstairs, you'll find a creative cocktail bar. Downstairs, a dimly lit dining room serves a Japanese menu complete with sushi, sashimi, meaty entrées and creative sides. Specialties include the crowd-pleasing edamame dumplings, a Philly-inspired duck scrapple bao bun and the signature Big Eye Tuna roll. Behind the bar, unique cocktails incorporate Japanese components like yuzu, Japanese plums and cherry blossoms.

Stephen Starr's Japanese restaurant inside the Bal Harbour Shops features a modern menu that includes sushi bar selections as well as bincho charcoal robata. Raw fish options that are not to be missed include particularly sweet fresh shrimp and meaty amberjack, as well as tempting cooked seafood like a lobster maki roll with pickled jicama and avocado. Complementing the Asian flavors is a menu of handcrafted sake-based cocktails.

A stripped-down, strip-mall storefront sets the stage for a low-key yet high-toned parade of daily specials in the Edomae style: here’s your chance to try Japanese sardines and barracuda, the fatty halibut fin muscle called engawa, and clams galore, including blood cockles. Start with fried smelt and sake in charmingly mismatched cups; finish with a bowl of zenzai (mochi dumplings in sweet adzuki-bean soup); and, above all, bask in the serene glow of Sushi Tadokoro’s seafood extraordinaire, presented with neither pomp nor circumstance.

Since Chef Masa Miyake opened the restaurant in 2011—expanding from a hole-in-the-wall to a sleek, urbane Old Port destination—Miyake served as a staple in Portland, Maine's dining scene. Like so many others, Miyake closed in 2020 amid the pandemic. But this year, the restaurant is back in full force with its small bites, sushi, and various omakase menus. Chef Miyake continues his tradition of raising chickens and heritage pig breeds on his own farm, and sourcing seafood as locally as possible (uni and monkfish included). Of course, sake pairings are an option, but take a gander at the streamlined, spot-on wine selection first.

A staple in the Atlanta sushi scene since 2013, Umi is a glam go-to that's raised the bar for A-Town Japanese cuisine to haute levels. In a strikingly glossy, oak- and cypress-filled Buckhead space, co-executive chefs Todd Dae Kulper and Tasuku Murakami turn out classics like nigiri, box sushi, and specialty rolls along with such originals as the foie gras roll and a warm lobster toban-yaki. Craft cocktails and elevated desserts like the chocolate kyu (only a few are available each night) put the finishing touches on a gold-standard gourmet experience at Umi. Also of note: In 2023, Umi added M by Tasuku Murakami, an omakase experience offering around 18 courses just above the main dining room.

At more than 30 years old, Nobu Yamazaki’s Dupont Circle fixture gleams as brightly as it did when his father opened it—if not even brighter, its polish extending from the handsome decor to the smooth execution of multiple menus. At Sushi Taro, you can take an a la carte thrill ride through orders of spotted-parrot snapper nigiri, live-scallop sashimi, soy-simmered eel liver and ginger-blossom tempura. You can indulge in a kaiseki-style chef’s tasting, with or without a soft-shell snapping turtle as a centerpiece. Or, with foresight and patience, you can book a reservation for Sushi Taro’s six-seat sushi bar and do omakase as it was meant to be done, in conversation with the chefs. The sake selection’s divine but, for a change of pace, check out the shochus and imported beers.

It’s still named after the legendary founder who studied under Jiro Ono (yes, that Jiro) before introducing Seattleites to Edomae-style sushi. But Shiro Kashiba’s successor, Jun Takai, has quickly put his own stamp on this lively, comfy Belltown classic. The one-time buyer at a Kyoto fish market keeps a tight focus on the fundamentals, maintaining the clout to source top-quality local and imported species for specialties like albacore tataki and beautifully aged bluefin while perfecting the all-important rice. Hold out for a seat at Shiro’s bar and let the personable chefs show you not only what to eat and drink but how, from soy sauce usage to sake temperature.