A Tokyo Sushi Master’s $700 Counter Opens in Midtown

In Tokyo, the road to a seat at Yasuhiko Mitani’s Yotsuya sushi counter is a four-year waitlist and an introduction from someone who already knows him. In Midtown, it is a few taps on Tock and a credit card with a very high limit.

Mitani, whose six-seat Yotsuya restaurant opened 20 years ago and is among Tokyo’s most inaccessible tables, quietly opened Mitani New York in May inside the Lotte New York Palace hotel at 455 Madison Avenue, at 50th Street. It is his first restaurant in the United States, and, as Eater New York reports, it offers something the original does not: a reservation without a multi-year wait.

The base price is steep. The seasonal dinner tasting menu runs $700 including tip, for roughly six appetizers and 10 to 12 pieces of sushi, built around Japanese seafood sourced at fish-market auctions. The restaurant says that fish travels from Haneda Airport to the New York counter in less than 24 hours. Mitani adjusts the temperature of both the fish and the seasoned rice for each piece of nigiri, a approach he calls a “temperature gradient.” Otoro, for example, is served at 59 degrees over rice at 68.

The real draw is what Mitani calls “Mariage,” his approach to pairing courses with wine, sake and tea. Serving wine with sushi is not new in New York. Counters such as Sushi Noz on the Upper East Side and Jōji in Midtown have poured serious French bottles with omakase for years. What sets Mitani apart, per Eater, is the caliber of what is poured by the glass. Aged Champagne, Burgundy and Sauternes are on offer, with bottles such as a 2002 Cristal and a 1981 Château d’Yquem opened for individual pours.

There are two Mariage tiers. The entry-level option adds $800 to the menu, bringing dinner to $1,500 per person. The premium version starts at $2,000 and can climb depending on selections and diners’ requests. Across an 18-course menu, guests receive roughly nine to 11 drinks.

Eater describes how a Mariage meal might unfold: kuruma ebi, briefly fried so the center stays raw, alongside the 2002 Cristal; Fujinosuke salmon sashimi topped with Japanese black caviar, paired with a softly sweet junmai daiginjo sake; fried bafun uni beside the 1981 Yquem; and otoro, akami and chutoro with a Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Cros Parantoux 2018 that can run more than $1,400 a bottle.

The restaurant has two private dining rooms, each with a six-seat, L-shaped hinoki counter. Executive chef Kazuya Tsurta, who spent five years at Kioicho Mitani, leads the cream-colored Oh Room, working alongside fellow Mitani alum Daichi Shimamiya. Behind the counter, panels conceal a traditional Japanese refrigerator cooled by blocks of ice rather than electricity. The adjoining Koku Room is wrapped in charcoal-colored earthen walls. Mitani himself works behind both counters when he is in town, roughly three times a year.

Back in Japan, the chef’s original restaurant holds a Tabelog Gold award. He followed it with Kioicho Mitani Honten in 2016 and Kioicho Mitani Bettei in 2021; regulars book Honten about a year ahead and Bettei about 10 months out.

Mitani says he began considering New York five years ago, both to create opportunities for his apprentices and to take on what he calls “the most challenging place in the world to do business.” For now, the city gets a version of the Mitani experience with an unusual feature for a name this guarded: an open booking page.