The Best Sushi Spots to Splurge on This Fall
New York's best omakase restaurants at every price level, plus reviews of Noz Market's $80 omakase and Nami Nori's temaki handrolls
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Last week, I reviewed such an awesomely expensive sushi bar that I could’ve booked first-class airfare to Denver for roughly the same price. Round-trip.
But this past Friday, I ordered a blockbuster of a sushi tasting at Noz Market for just $80. The soy-marinated bonito packed so many notes of umami and iron that I stopped at The Met afterwards just to take notes.
Did both venues make it onto my best sushi list? You bet they did.
New York’s most expensive restaurants are omakase restaurants. As I mentioned in my Sushi Sho review, Manhattan had just a single sushi spot a decade ago where dinner for two would hit the $1,000 mark. Now, it has at least ten of those venues. I’ve reviewed a bunch of them and…they’re often quite good?
Most of us, alas, can’t afford to visit those places more than once every few years, if at all. But the good news is that our sushi boom has produced a deep bench of great spots well below the billionaire tier.
So what follows is a definitive guide to the city’s top sushi, at every major price level.
As usual, these lists aren’t a simple collection of quick blurbs. You’ll find new thoughts on old favorites, short essays on sushi culture, what spendy spots to skip, and reviews of Nami Nori and Noz Market.
Wait! One Quick Sushi Thing to Think About…
There is no such thing as “the very best” sushi restaurant.
Picking one high end sushi spot over another isn’t like upgrading from commercial aviation to a private jet, where one choice is clearly more luxe. Choosing a classically luxe Ichimura over a funkier Noz 17 is more like picking a Champagne over an aged Alsatian Gewurtztraminer. Or something like that. It’s not about better versus best; it’s about style and preference. You might love one and hate the other. So even though we organize this guide by price — we all have budgets — I hope I’m giving you the tools to think about what you might like before dropping $500.
Where to get a great omakase for $120 or less
Noz Market | A quick review of a speedy tasting
People love the “Jiro” documentary for a lot of reasons. It introduced millions to the intimacy of an omakase service, where the chef hands each piece of nigiri directly to the patron. It also exposed viewers to the unrelenting craft of sushi, a lifetime of repetition.
But one of my favorite moments from the film concerned something more mundane: The speed of the tasting at Tokyo’s Sukiyabashi Jiro. “For fast eaters, a meal there might last only fifteen minutes. In that sense it's the most expensive restaurant in the world.”
That line kept running through my head last week while I lunched at Noz Market, the more casual spinoff to a very exclusive Japanese restaurant on the Upper East Side. The chief offering is one of the city’s best fancy sushi deals: $80 for eight nigiri, plus (amazing) red miso soup and tamago.
It’s also a supremely quick tasting. My omakase lasted just 30 minutes, and that’s including an additional ten minutes for four supplemental pieces. The extras essentially doubled the price of my meal, hitting $180 after a cup of tea and tax. Noz Market, indeed, can also feel like one of Manhattan’s spendiest restaurants. I call that “Jiro” math.
Behind the paywall: Where to Splurge on Sushi in 2024
More notes on Noz Market, and a Nami Nori review
What’s a good “everyday” omakase for under $50
Where to get other great omakases for $120 or less
Where to splurge on an omakase in the $200-$350 range
Where to go if you want to spend $500 or more on sushi
Here’s what I tried over two visits to Noz Market: