Shin-Zushi opened on Rua Afonso de Freitas in the Paraíso district in 1981, when the Japanese community in São Paulo — the largest outside Japan — was just beginning to establish the city's enduring food tradition. The father, Kenji Mizumoto, trained in Tokyo's Edomae tradition before emigrating. For forty years he stood behind this counter. Today his sons Ken and Nobu run the restaurant with the same quiet rigour, a second-generation devotion that is now itself a São Paulo institution.
Edomae-style sushi is the historical foundation of what much of the world now thinks of as sushi — the Tokyo-bay preservation techniques developed in the nineteenth century: the nikiri soy brushed onto each piece, the vinegared and salted rice, the curing of certain fish with salt and kombu, the marination of others in sweetened soy. At Shin-Zushi, these techniques are practised with the kind of conservatism that has almost disappeared from modern sushi bars. There is no foam, no truffle, no Instagram courses. There is fish, rice, wasabi grated on sharkskin, and the silent judgement of Ken or Nobu across the counter.
The counter seats twelve. The omakase runs in three tiers — a shorter sequence around R$450, a fuller set around R$650, and the chef's extended evening closer to R$780. Sake is selected by the brothers themselves with a list that favours restraint over reputation. Some of the regulars have been eating here since the restaurant opened; they arrive at 19:00 every Wednesday and sit in the same seat.
Shin-Zushi is not fashionable in the way that newer omakase bars are fashionable. It does not need to be. It is the place that every serious sushi chef in São Paulo eats at on their night off. It is the counter that Japanese visitors to the city ask to be taken to. It is, more quietly than any other restaurant in Brazil, a national treasure.