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New York is a city of sushi fanatics, and omakase – which translates literally as “I’ll leave it up to you” – is suddenly everywhere. It’s part of the great levelling of luxury foods sweeping the city. There’s an omakase counter in a food court in Queens and an all-you-can-drink omakase party nightly in a restaurant in the East Village. There’s omakase inside the Saks Fifth Avenue department store, at the Ace Hotel in downtown Brooklyn, and near the entrance to the subway under Grand Central Station (where Jōji sells a $62 “Omakase Box” to go).

Seared kinmedai sushi at Masa © Dacia Pierson Photography

And members-only omakase is the thing of the moment for the city’s private clubs, from Zero Bond to the crypto-financed Flyfish Club. When Coco’s at Colette, a dining club attached to a C-suite co-working space, needed a dose of Japanese decadence they enticed a veteran of Masa, for more than two decades the standard-bearer for top-shelf New York omakase.

Eugeniu Zubco started at Masa 10 years ago: the 20-year-old transplant from Moldova – a complete sushi novice – was assigned to wash rice. After rising through the ranks under mentor Masa Takayama, though, he was confident enough this autumn to strike out on his own. He launched his 12-seat counter, Yūgin (his nickname), at Coco’s on the 37th floor of a Midtown tower with views across Central Park.

The dining room at Yūgin © Blaine Pennington

His 20-course omakase, available to limited non-members by reservation, is studded with truffles, caviar and the finest fish, which is flown in daily from Tokyo. “I’m able to get the best tuna, period, in the world right now,” said Zubco, standing behind his hinoki-wood counter slicing into a richly marbled slab of o-toro in the opening week.

His menu at Yūgin, starting at $475 a head, is a relative bargain at the pinnacle of New York omakase. At Masa the “Hinoki Counter Experience” is $950 before drinks, tax, or tip (a shorter lunch version is $495). “I would charge more, but I want to get people in, I don’t want to be cocky,” says Zubco.

Clockwise from top left: mushroom tart, A5 wagyu with caviar, toro tomato and lean tuna with grapefruit at Yūgin © Blaine Pennington

At the very high end, the omakase landscape has become especially competitive, with a few giants of the sushi scene having relocated from Japan. In 2021, Tadashi Yoshido moved his acclaimed sushi temple, Yoshino, from Nagoya to the Bowery. His 10-seat counter’s $500-a- head twice-nightly seatings are perennially booked up. Last year his compatriot, Keiji Nakazawa, also made the leap. His new Midtown flagship, Sushi Sho, is found behind a barely marked door across from The New York Public Library. Nakazawa, who helped popularise omakase in Japan in the 1990s, considers his $450 menu a starting point – “half omakase”, he calls it – with a vast array of à la carte add-ons that can quickly double the price. “I don’t want to torture people with too much food,” he says. “So I leave half the meal up to the customer.”

Nakazawa, who earned a third Michelin star for his New York restaurant this autumn, says omakase was originally conceived less as a showcase for sushi chefs than a way to take the burden off diners who might desire to focus on other things. He believes the craze for omakase has gone too far in New York – and hopes to open an à la carte sushi bar in the city that will inspire the return to a broader choice.

The counter at Sushi Sho © Nacása & Partners

In the meantime, Mekumi, which opened in October, is an eight-seat counter in west Soho from Takayoshi Yamaguchi, whose restaurant in Ishikawa (also called Mekumi) is open just five months of the year. The New York branch, run by acolyte Hajime Kumabe, hopes to build a following by keeping down the prices, for the first few months at least, at $300 for a 20-course meal. The original Mekumi is best known in season for its snow crab preparations. The live crustaceans will be flown in from Japan this winter when an $800 snow crab menu will debut.

And, despite punishing new tariffs on Japanese imports and a flagging US economy, next year restaurateur Simon Kim, the impresario behind the Cote group of Korean steakhouses, will open a Madison Avenue sushi bar with one of Japan’s most celebrated Edo-style sushi chefs. Masahiro Yoshitake’s preparations have earned his restaurants, in Tokyo and Hong Kong, three Michelin stars each over the years. The New York outpost, a sort of omakase speakeasy, will be hidden inside a new food and drink complex, Kim’s largest project to date in a Philip Johnson-designed landmark tower. “It’s Gotham City meets pristine, refined Ginza,” says Kim of the sushi bar he’s planning. “I was looking for a chef with the force to live up to the space.”

Yoshitake, who worked in New York early in his career, will close his seven-seat Tokyo flagship for the first five months of the New York opening. “He loves New York more than the next guy, so he’s going to spend a lot of time here,” says Kim. “We are going to put our best efforts to create one of the most unique and exciting sushi experiences in the city.”