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Masa
Masa opened in 2004 inside New York's Time Warner Center (now the Deutsche Bank Center), founded by chef Masa Takayama, and it quickly became known as one of the most expensive restaurants in the entire United States, with tasting-menu prices that have run into the hundreds of dollars per person for years, driven substantially by the restaurant's insistence on flying in fish directly from Japan's Tsukiji (now Toyosu) fish market. The restaurant earned three Michelin stars and has maintained that rating for years running, one of the longest-held three-star ratings of any restaurant in New York City, reflecting a level of consistency in execution that Michelin inspectors have recognized across repeated visits over more than a decade. Masa's dining room is built around a hinoki cypress wood counter imported directly from Japan, and the restaurant seats only a small number of diners per service, a deliberately intimate format that keeps the chef's personal attention on every single plate served during a given seating rather than delegating to a larger kitchen brigade. Masa's combination of its sustained three-Michelin-star rating, its direct-from-Tsukiji fish sourcing, and its position as one of the most expensive restaurants in the country has made it the reference point for high-end omakase dining in the United States specifically, the American answer to Tokyo's most legendary sushi counters.
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Sushi Yasuda
Sushi Yasuda opened in 1999 near Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, founded by chef Naomichi Yasuda, and it built its early reputation around an unusually strict traditionalist approach to Edomae sushi at a time when many American sushi restaurants were increasingly leaning into elaborate rolls and fusion-style preparations. The restaurant's minimalist blond-wood dining room, designed without the elaborate décor common to many high-end Japanese restaurants of the era, reflected the same restraint the kitchen applied to its menu — a deliberate choice to let the fish and rice speak for themselves rather than surrounding the food with elaborate sauces or presentation. Yasuda himself departed the restaurant in 2012 to return to Japan and open his own restaurant there, but Sushi Yasuda has continued operating under its original name and traditionalist philosophy since, with the kitchen staff he trained carrying forward the same strict Edomae approach he established at the restaurant's founding. Sushi Yasuda's combination of its early commitment to strict traditional Edomae technique and its minimalist, unfussy dining room design has made it one of the most influential sushi restaurants in shaping how serious traditional Japanese sushi came to be presented and understood by American diners.
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