NYCGuide
The Best Japanese Restaurants in NYC
photo credit: Frank Ahn
If you’re looking for Japanese food in NYC, you really can get it all. Luxurious sushi and budget-friendly omakase. Slurpable ramen. Grilled skewers, alongside super-bubbly highballs. You’ll find a concentration of older spots for great Japanese food in Midtown and the East Village, as well as a cluster of newer places in Greenpoint, but there are steamy izakayas, katsu specialists, and sushiyas across the city. Here are just a few of our favorites.
THE SPOTS
photo credit: Vincent Zhu
For $480, we expect a super serious omakase experience, and the two-hour meal at this Tribeca sushiya demands both your full attention and a high level of respect. It’s not just the Tokyo-famous chef’s skillfully sliced nigiri that makes it worth the price, it's also the seven-plate otsumami course, with dishes like butterfish in hot ponzu, and deep-fried tilefish. Come to this restaurant for a very special occasion—just don’t plan on throwing back sake shots and singing “Happy Birthday.”
At this East Village spot with Ghibli soundtrack remixes on the stereo, delicately fried tempura is the specialty, and the $145 omakase (with an A5 wagyu add-on) is your only option. Here, nothing is served out of season—you might get a piece of baby sea bream just because the adult sea bream weren’t optimal that day. Eating at the six-seat counter will remind you that perfectly prepared vegetables can be crunchier than potato chips and sweeter than candy.
photo credit: Sushi Lin
Sushi Lin has five locations across NYC, but the original in Park Slope, with its shoji screen and bonsai tree, is one of our favorite spots for budget-friendly omakase. They have options ranging from $37 to $120, but the sweet spot is their $70 option, which gets you 10 pieces of perfectly formed nigiri, a soup, and a handroll. You can order a la carte as well.
If we could only go to one restaurant for a quick pre-theater meal for the rest of our lives, it would be Yakitori Totto. Up a staircase, this Midtown West has a speakeasy-ish feel, and a huge selection of skewers. Go for some juicy tsukune and tender chicken oysters, as well as non-chicken options, like pork neck (mostly fat, not complaining), and okra with bonito flakes. It’s smokey and loud, with clinking glasses and people laughing because their skewers are just that good.
The energy at Torishin couldn’t be more different than Totto, but the skewers are just as excellent. This serious yakitori library in Hell’s Kitchen has a few different omakase options, from an $88 pre-theater meal to $143 for one that includes wagyu and Iberico pork. You can also do a la carte for a self-guided tour of different chicken parts topped with things like plum and shiso, or sweet white miso (with pork and vegetable detours thrown in)—but it does get expensive quickly.
photo credit: Frank Ahn
Midtown East has no shortage of excellent izakayas, and Toribar, with its big smoky grill and basement sake den setting, is one of our favorites. It’s especially great if you like to customize your skewers, because you can choose between salt or tare on every bite. Get some chicken thigh with scallions, and smelt stuffed with fish roe, then move on to juicy chicken karaage and teppanyaki to soak up your choice of Japanese draft beer or sake.
photo credit: Will Hartman
This small, subterranean shop in the East Village serves comforting Japanese food like crispy okonomiyaki, and perfectly fried karaage on paper plates—and everything costs less than $16. There are a few tables, but this spot works better as a takeaway option. The Hakata-style yaki udon is one of our favorite bites, with big, juicy slabs of pork belly, large flakes of ginger, and a creamy sauce that has enough of a kick to counter its own richness. Grab an order of takoyaki; the fried balls are hot and squishy, with just the right amount of octopus chew.
Midtown isn’t supposed to have casual spots where you can dive into a thick cut of crispy pork for under $30. Yet here we are. Katsu Hama is an exceptional, relatively affordable katsu joint that makes other restaurants in the area look like multi-level marketing schemes. If you find yourself near Grand Central in need of a quick, unpretentious sit-down meal, grab a sturdy wooden table and eat some fried pork loin with curry or cabbage salad.
photo credit: Suki
For Japanese curry in Midtown, Suki is the place. It’s an airy spot with bright white walls, but the curry they specialize in is thick, dark, and sweet. They also have a sushi menu with rolls and bowls, but your focus should be on the deeply beefy curry, either with noodles or over rice. It’s so orange it’s almost brown, and it sticks to udon like a toddler to their parent’s pant-leg. If you’re wearing a white shirt, beware.
photo credit: Taku Sando
Taku Sando in Greenpoint bakes all their own bread, which is fluffier than a cotton field, with crust the texture of a perfectly smushed donut. Their uber fatty pork shoulder katsu and chicken thigh katsu need every shred of cabbage and mustard-mayo sauce to balance them out, but the resulting sandwiches are awesome, and the egg salad sandos eat almost like egg pudding for breakfast. From the people behind Takumen, this spot also serves natural wine, and has an astroturfed backyard.
photo credit: Noah Deveraux
For udon, there’s Raku. Everyone at the Soho spot has a bowl of it in front of them, topped with things like shrimp tempura, wagyu, and oysters, and each bowl—really more like a cauldron in size—releases steam into the light wood dining room as if this were a noodle spa. Grab a seat at the bar for lunch, or sit in the big window in the front for dinner. The udon has a flavorful, fish-based broth and silky yet chewy noodles—and the frozen grapes you receive with your check are a massive highlight. Raku also has a second, smaller location in the East Village.
photo credit: Kate Previta
If you’re looking for the best ratio of katsu size to restaurant square footage, go to Mama Yoshi Mini Mart. The Ridgewood konbini is the size of a shipping container, and serves chicken katsu the exact dimensions of a barbecue paper plate. The little shop also does a few other Japanese American dishes really well, like a spam grilled cheese, cauliflower katsu, and a more reasonably sized katsu curry bowl.
photo credit: Okiboru House of Tsukemen
Okiboru House of Tsukemen on the Lower East Side makes excellent ramen and tsukemen, and you’ll have to wait in a bit of a line to try it. But once you’re through the door, you’ll feel like an insider, privy to ramen secrets you had only dreamed about before. Choose between tsukemen, which comes with a gravy-like chicken and fish broth, lime, and some punchy chili paste, or the tontori ramen with a creamy pork and chicken broth. Bring another person so you can try both. They’ve recently opened an udon spot in the East Village.
photo credit: Kate Previte
This gourmet Japanese market in LIC claims to be the first market in America to sell yubari king melons: the luxury Japanese melon that costs more than $100, even in Japan. At Mogmog, they cost $120, but if that’s outside your budget, you can still get excellent jewel-toned sushi, as well as fried chicken sandwiches, and whatever other hot food specials they feel like making in the back kitchen. Take your food to the cafe tables outside.
photo credit: Sakagura
Sakagura isn’t a speakeasy, but the fact that you have to walk past a security guard in a very normal looking Midtown East office building and descend down a flight of stairs to get there makes it feel like one. The izakaya has an extensive sake list, with flights and seasonal specials, so it’s a great spot to explore your taste in rice wine. The menu ranges from things like $18 karaage with matcha mayo, to an $88 bowl of cold soba noodles with sea urchin dashi and Hokkaido uni.
photo credit: Ben Hon
Thought you knew all there was to know about chicken anatomy? Think again. Kono's $175 omakase includes everything from hearts to oysters to chochin: a stack of liver, fallopian tube, and unlaid egg. Be wary about the add-ons as some are pricey, and not super worth it. But simply being in the all-black room, watching licks of red flame sputtering up from white-hot binchotan whenever a piece of chicken fat drips onto it, makes Kono an extremely cool place for a night out. A meal here really is the embodiment of “dinner and a show."
photo credit: Jesse Hsu
The first time you go to this soba specialist on the Bowery, make a beeline for the back of the menu and get their signature mera-mera bowl. It’s an extremely satisfying dish, with spicy sesame and chicken-based broth adhering to the thin, firm buckwheat noodles (which are gluten-free). The second time you go to Cocoron, you should probably do this again, unless it’s really hot out. In that case, get a bowl of cold dipping soba, served with a salty chicken broth.
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
You could come to Tomi Jazz just for drinks—they have enough Japanese whisky and sake to keep a boatful of 19th-century sailors satisfied. But you most likely waited in a line to get into this jazz club, and probably worked up quite an appetite. So while you’re on the best Midtown East date of your life—in a room stuffed with dusty tchotchkes, being serenaded by a trumpet player—get a bowl of their cod roe spaghetti. It’s creamy, salty, and a perfect complement to whatever you’re drinking.
photo credit: Cotra
From the people behind Trad Room in Bed-Stuy, this Gowanus izakaya still has the leather booths and exposed brick of the Italian restaurant that used to be in this spot. They also kept the pizza oven, which they use for wood-fired specials (and some Japanese pizza experiments). Get small plates like sake kasu caesar salad with crispy lotus root, mochiko chicken, and Cotra mazesoba with ground pork and a poached egg. It’s easy enough to walk in, and you should start your evening with a carafe of house sake.
Dashi Okume is a Greenpoint store where you can buy bespoke dashi with different varieties of seaweed and fish, or pick up a ceramic bowl for sesame grinding. But look past the dried goods, and there’s a little cafe area where you can have a really nice meal—especially for lunch. (House, a separate tasting menu spot, is also located inside.) Grab a counter seat and get a teishoku set with some grilled fish, rice, and sides. It comes with some truly incredible miso soup, which will justify your dashi purchase as you exit the store.
