Ito – Tribeca's omakase with a pulse

Ito occupies a slim storefront on Barclay Street, close enough to One World Trade Center to feel its shadow, where chef-owners Masashi "Masa" Ito and Kevin Kim run a sixteen-seat counter that refuses the hush normally attached to serious sushi. The two met in California about a decade ago, both came up through Sushi Zo, and in early 2022 opened their first restaurant together with backing from VCR Group. There is no à la carte fallback and no second menu to hide behind: one omakase, one seating of sixteen, twice a night, five nights a week. It holds the MICHELIN Guide's distinction for good cooking, recognised for nigiri built on fish flown in directly from Japan, deep knife work, potent saucing, and a room that plays hip-hop as readily as it plays host to serious eating. The crowd skews young, drinks whiskey and sake, and by the time dessert lands, many are already angling for their next booking.

01The room and the setting

The space runs to roughly 1,500 square feet, fitted out as a counter-only room: sixteen seats facing the chefs, with a separate area that can be booked out for larger private parties. Diners move through a welcome cocktail, four otsumami, miso soup, twelve pieces of nigiri, a handroll and dessert, served in a single unbroken sitting rather than an à la carte grazing menu.

The doors open exactly five minutes before each reservation, and the soundtrack leans toward hip-hop rather than traditional restraint. Service is conversational: the chefs work close enough to the counter to talk through each piece as it lands, which gives the room a looser, more sociable feel than most high-end sushi counters attempt. The crowd that fills those sixteen seats skews young, orders whiskey and sake rather than tea, and tends to be plotting a return visit before the current one has finished.

02The chefs

Masa and Kevin met in California roughly ten years ago and have worked on and off together ever since; the restaurant is theirs jointly, built with a small group of investors. Masa grew up in Hokkaido around his grandfather's sushi restaurant and the idea of shun - eating fish at the precise peak of its season - before training as a sushi chef from the age of nineteen.

Insider tip

Book on Resy 21 days ahead at noon; seatings run strictly two hours and cancellations inside 72 hours incur the full fee.

Sushi Zo recruited him to its downtown Los Angeles kitchen in 2012, and he later moved to New York to lead the chain's third location, in the East Village, earning a MICHELIN Star for that restaurant within his first year in the city. Kevin, raised in Orange County, started in sushi kitchens at nineteen and joined Sushi Zo's Los Angeles counter in 2016; three years on, he too crossed to the chain's New York dining room before the two friends struck out on their own. Masa's wife, Misa Ito, runs operations at Ito, which makes the restaurant very much a family project.

03The cooking

The nigiri carries most of the weight of the evening. Excellent quality fish, much of it flown in from Japan, is cut deep and finished with assertive sauces rather than left entirely plain - a style closer to modern Los Angeles omakase than the austere Edo-mae template. The otsumami and dessert courses are built to match that energy rather than simply bookend it: kampachi dressed with yuzu and chive oil opens proceedings, and a strawberry panna cotta closes them.

04What to order

Inside a fixed omakase there is little to choose, but certain courses recur as highlights: the crab and caviar hand roll is treated by regulars as the meal's centrepiece, and diners who still have room can ask to add extra pieces before dessert arrives. On nights it is running, truffle mushroom soup and a seared otoro that all but dissolves are worth asking for, alongside the uni-ikura-caviar rice bowl and a truffle-and-wagyu course that show the kitchen's taste for richer, more maximalist flourishes within an otherwise classic nigiri progression.

05Wine and drinks

The room is built for sake and whiskey as much as for fish, and the beverage list is weighted accordingly, with a seasonal pairing option that mixes wine and sake course by course.

06When to go and booking

Ito seats guests Tuesday through Saturday across two nightly turns, and reservations open on Resy twenty-one days ahead, from noon Eastern. There is no dress code - guests are simply asked to go light on perfume and cologne - and the kitchen will work around most dietary restrictions, kosher, gluten-free and shellfish-free among them, given 48 hours' notice, though it cannot accommodate vegetarian, vegan or an aversion to raw fish.

07The neighbourhood

The restaurant sits on Barclay Street between Church Street and West Broadway, in the quieter stretch of Tribeca that shades into the Financial District, a short walk from the National September 11 Memorial and the shops around Brookfield Place. The concept has since travelled: in 2024 the team opened an intimate twelve-seat counter inside the members-only Poodle Room on the 67th floor of the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, carrying the same wagyu-and-caviar-accented style several thousand feet up the Strip.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.