Best Sushi and Omakase Restaurants Worldwide 2026

The most expensive meal in America, and the one least likely to feel overpriced after you have eaten it.

Chef Masa Takayama opened his Time Warner Center counter in 2004 and has held three Michelin stars continuously since — the only three-star Japanese restaurant in the United States. The blond hinoki cypress counter seats 26; the minimalist room, finished in pale wood and warm light, is designed to create the same sensory quiet that the best Tokyo sushiya have always understood: nothing should compete with the food for your attention. Takayama personally selects seasonal ingredients — Hokkaido uni flown from Japan, otoro from carefully managed Bluefin tuna, white truffle shaved over rice in autumn, A5 Wagyu as a mid-sequence interlude.

The omakase typically runs 20 to 25 pieces and courses, opening with small composed dishes — a cold dashi with yuzu rind, a sliver of abalone with its liver sauce — before transitioning to the sushi sequence proper. The kohada (gizzard shad), often the first nigiri of the sequence, tells you everything within the first bite: the rice's temperature, the vinegar balance, the knife work. Masa's kohada has been described by multiple critics as the single best piece of sushi outside Japan. The value score of 5 reflects the price ($750 at a table, $950 at the counter) rather than any shortfall in the food.

For solo dining, the Masa counter is transformative — the chef's proximity and the sequential nature of the meal create an experience that is genuinely absorbing in a way that no group dinner can replicate. You leave the Time Warner Center understanding both sushi and your own appetite differently.

Three Michelin stars in a nine-seat room in Ginza, where Masahiro Yoshitake makes the Edomae tradition feel urgent and alive.

Located on the sixth floor of a building in Tokyo's Ginza district, Sushi Yoshitake holds three Michelin stars and seats nine guests at a hinoki counter. Chef Masahiro Yoshitake trained at Sushi Saito before opening his own counter, and his cooking combines the classical Edomae tradition with a personal precision that has earned him a devoted international following. The nine-seat capacity means the counter is among the most intimate three-star experiences available anywhere.

The seasonal omakase typically opens with composed dishes — steamed egg custard with crab and yuzu, or a warm hamaguri clam broth — before moving into the sushi sequence. Yoshitake's akami (lean tuna) is aged to the point where the iron notes transform into something floral; his anago (sea eel) is finished with a reduction of the eel's own braising liquid that the kitchen makes over several days. The akazu-seasoned rice — sharper and more acidic than most Tokyo sushiya, coloured a faint amber — is a deliberate departure from convention that has become one of the counter's most recognisable signatures.

For visitors to Tokyo visiting the Tokyo restaurant guide, Sushi Yoshitake is the single most coveted reservation in the city. Bookings require advance contact through a hotel concierge or the restaurant's direct email; foreign visitors without Japanese language proficiency will find a concierge intermediary essential.

Masa's discipline in a basement beneath Grand Central at $540 less per person — the best value omakase in New York.

Joji occupies a purpose-built omakase counter in the basement of One Vanderbilt, the supertall glass tower immediately adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. Chef George Ruan trained at Masa under Takayama himself and brings the same sourcing standards — premium seasonal Japanese fish, aged rice — to a counter that charges $410 per person for dinner rather than $950. The room is serene and dark, finished in natural materials that make the city's noise entirely absent; there are 10 seats, and the meal takes approximately two and a half hours from first composed dish to dessert.

The omakase sequence opens with two or three composed dishes before moving into approximately 18 nigiri. Ruan's signature is a monkfish liver (ankimo) with ponzu that appears early and prepares the palate for everything that follows; his aged bluefin tuna sequence — lean, medium fatty, and otoro — demonstrates the value of patience in a way that most sushi restaurants do not even attempt. The kegani (horsehair crab) when in season is the counter's most celebrated seasonal ingredient, served cold with its own tomally (crab liver) stirred through.

Joji holds one Michelin star and is the most rational answer to the question "where should I eat omakase for the first time?" — high enough to be revelatory, accessible enough to be booked without a three-month advance. It also serves one of New York's best lunch omakase at $295 per person, making it the finest value counter in the city for weekday dining.

The hardest reservation in Tokyo, possibly on earth — and the one that justifies the effort completely.

Chef Takashi Saito's counter in Minami-Aoyama is among the most discussed sushi restaurants in the world, holding three Michelin stars in a room that seats under a dozen guests at any one time. Saito trained under the legendary Jiro Ono of Sukiyabashi Jiro and has developed a style that is recognisably Edomae in its foundations — aged fish, akazu rice, classical Edo-period preparations — while being entirely his own in execution. Foreign visitors should know that a reservation requires a Japanese-speaking intermediary and, in many cases, an introduction through an existing client. This is not exclusivity as marketing; it is a genuine working constraint of one of the world's busiest chef-itamae kitchens.

The omakase at Saito is shorter than many top Tokyo counters — typically 16 to 20 pieces — but the density of each piece is exceptional. The kohada (gizzard shad) is the dish most often cited by guests as the sequence's defining moment: lightly cured for a precise number of hours, cut at a specific angle to the muscle fibre, placed at a temperature within two degrees of the chef's ideal. The chutoro nigiri, served midway through the sequence, is the meal's emotional peak. The ambience score of 8 reflects a room that is spare to the point of severity; the cooking demands this.

The value score of 8 (at this ranking) reflects the price relative to the experience at the Tokyo rate of ¥30,000 to ¥50,000 — significantly below comparable Western counters for cooking of this quality.

A residential side street on the Upper East Side, an eight-seat counter, and the care of a kitchen that treats every guest as the only one.

Since Itamae Nozomu Abe opened Sushi Noz in 2018, the Upper East Side counter has established itself as one of the upper-echelon sushiya in New York — a small, intimate room on a residential street that seats eight guests at a counter finished in natural wood, with a kitchen visible in its entirety from every position. The meal proceeds at the pace Abe sets, which is unhurried without being slow: approximately two and a half hours, 20 pieces, with composed dishes between the tsumami (appetisers) and nigiri sequences.

Abe's signatures include an aged akami tuna temaki served warm from the rice, which arrives as a course between the cold tsumami and the nigiri sequence — a structural decision that demonstrates the kitchen's understanding of pacing and temperature contrast. The sea urchin — Hokkaido uni when in season, Santa Barbara as an alternative — is presented on warm rice with a light application of soy that brings out the sweetness without masking it. The meal ends with a dessert of Japanese fruit: white strawberry when in season, followed by a small matcha preparation. The bill is $550 per person before beverages.

Sushi Noz hosts a separate counter, Noz 17, under Chef Junichi Matsuzaki — also Michelin-starred — which serves a 30-course omakase and represents an escalation from the main counter. Both are worth a visit on separate occasions to compare the interpretations.

London's finest Japanese counter — a BBC building's rotunda in White City, the Thames visible through the glass, and Endo Kazutoshi's technique unmatched outside Tokyo.

Endo Kazutoshi trained for 17 years in Japan — including time at the three-Michelin-star Sushi Sato — before opening his London counter inside the BBC's former Water Tower in White City. The setting is genuinely architectural: a circular room with panoramic views of west London, a custom hinoki cypress counter at the centre, and a design that positions the chef as the literal focal point of the space. Endo at The Rotunda holds one Michelin star and serves what is, by a significant margin, the most technically accomplished Japanese omakase in London.

The counter menu — typically 12 to 15 pieces of nigiri preceded by six to eight composed dishes — changes weekly with the fish market's supply. The snow crab and yuzu chawanmushi is the meal's opening statement: a silken egg custard with Hokkaido crab that arrives at a specific temperature — barely warm — that makes the yuzu's fragrance bloom without evaporating. The akami nigiri, aged for three days and served with a whisper of shio kombu, demonstrates Endo's technique in its simplest form. The sake programme, curated by Endo personally, is among the best in Europe.

For visitors to London seeking the city's finest omakase experience, Endo is the unambiguous answer. The White City location requires a short tube or cab from central London — 15 minutes from Soho — and is worth every minute of the journey.

The counter that proved young Tokyo chefs had not merely inherited the tradition — they had reinterpreted it.

Chef Ryo Sasaki opened Sushi Ryo in 2020 in Yotsuya and holds one Michelin star at a counter of eight seats — unusually intimate even by Tokyo standards. Sasaki's style is fresh-eyed Edomae: he trained in the classical tradition but incorporates modern sourcing decisions, including specific aging protocols for each fish type that he determines rather than inherits from a predecessor. The result is sushi that feels simultaneously rooted in Tokyo's oldest technique and genuinely contemporary in its sensibility.

The omakase at Sushi Ryo typically runs through 20 pieces, with a short kaiseki prelude. The flatfish (hirame) with its engawa — the fin muscle, served alongside with a contrasting texture — is the counter's most discussed seasonal piece. The medium-fatty tuna (chutoro) with house-blended soy is the sequence's midpoint; the anago (sea eel) finish, braised with a tare that has been maintained and added to for the restaurant's entire operational life, is its conclusion. The price — ¥25,000 to ¥35,000 per person — places Sushi Ryo among the most accessible serious counters in the city for the quality delivered.

For visitors to the Tokyo dining guide, Sushi Ryo offers the best entry point to the city's Michelin-starred sushi scene: enough prestige to deliver a genuinely transformative experience, at a price that does not require the reservation to be the trip's primary purpose.