The Restaurant
MM by Morimoto opened in July 2023 at 193 Glenridge Avenue, one block south of Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair Center, as a full collaboration between Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto and the Montclair Hospitality Group (the team behind Faubourg's New York and Montclair locations and the wider Montclair restaurant resurgence). The room is the town's most architecturally ambitious — a 130-cover space across a sushi counter, a robatayaki bar, a main dining room, and a separate cocktail lounge that runs late on Friday and Saturday until 2 AM. The chef's counter, seating nine, is the centerpiece of the room and the most coveted reservation in suburban New Jersey.
The kitchen is Morimoto-style throughout — edomae nigiri with two-week aged toro, the signature Tuna Pizza on a crisp tortilla with anchovy aioli, the Angry Chicken with chili-lime glaze, a Wagyu A5 robatayaki section with cuts grilled to order over binchotan charcoal, and a full omakase progression at the counter (eight to ten courses at $145; twelve courses with premium ingredients at $245). The sake list runs to roughly 80 references with serious depth in junmai daiginjo from Niigata and Yamaguchi, and the cocktail programme — Japanese whisky highballs, yuzu-shochu sours, a small but careful umeshu list — is the work of a Morimoto Group veteran from the New York and Las Vegas operations.
The dining room is dramatically lit — dark walls, illuminated counters, sculptural Japanese woodwork — and runs at the volume of a serious New York omakase room rather than a suburban Japanese restaurant. The brunch service on Saturday and Sunday (11:30 AM to 2:30 PM) has become the town's signature daytime booking, with a shorter omakase progression alongside Morimoto's breakfast formats. For Montclair guests who want a single Iron Chef-grade evening without the trek across the Hudson, this is the obvious move — and the reservation difficulty reflects it.
Why This Is Montclair’s Impress Clients Pick
For impressing a client on the west side of the Hudson — and a real cohort of Montclair-resident Manhattan executives now host their senior dinners here specifically — MM by Morimoto carries the Iron Chef brand without requiring the Time Square or Tribeca commute. The chef's counter format removes all menu decisions from the host. The Wagyu robatayaki section and the premium omakase give the bill room to make a serious impression without ostentation. And the late-night lounge means the evening can continue past dinner without a relocation. The room is at the standard of a Manhattan omakase counter at a suburban-New-Jersey address — exactly the kind of asymmetry that registers as taste.
Leave a Review
Registered members get published by default; guest reviews are moderated first.