Kosaka – Edomae precision on a quiet Greenwich Village street

Kosaka occupies an unassuming stretch of West 13th Street in Greenwich Village, the kind of block where a sushi counter can work quietly for a decade without ever needing to shout. The restaurant was opened in December 2015 by chef Yoshihiko Kousaka, who had spent eleven years behind the counter at the East Village's Jewel Bako, together with his former sous-chef Mi-Hyun Han and her husband, Key Kim. Today the kitchen answers to Masatomo Soma, who apprenticed under Kousaka for thirty years before taking over the counter, continuing a lineage built on Edomae technique rather than novelty for its own sake. It holds One MICHELIN Star, recognised for a stellar omakase served at a counter for twelve beneath soft piano music, in a dining room whose ambitions stay as quiet as its knife-work is exact.

01The room and the setting

When Kosaka first opened, the dining room was built around a sharp-edged, L-shaped counter with ten seats and a table area of two four-tops, a sparse, almost monastic layout for a restaurant aiming at the top of New York's sushi scene. That bones remain, even as the room has matured: the current counter seats twelve, flanked by a handful of tables, with soft piano playing over an attentive, unhurried service style that lets each course land without ceremony.

The effect, on a street better known for brownstones than Tokyo-grade fish, is deliberately understated. There is no signage drama, no open kitchen theatre beyond the counter itself — just a room built to keep attention on the cutting board.

02The chef

Yoshihiko Kousaka started making sushi at fifteen, and for the better part of the next thirty-five years worked the kitchens and bars of other restaurateurs, including a brief stint running his own place in New Jersey, before eleven years at Jewel Bako cemented his reputation. It was there that Mi-Hyun Han trained under him as a sous-chef; the two stayed close long after her apprenticeship ended, and eventually decided — with Han's husband Key Kim handling the hunt for a space — to open a counter where Kousaka could work entirely on his own terms.

Insider tip

Two omakase formats, sushi bar or table; book ahead, no à la carte menu.

The kitchen has since passed to Masatomo Soma, who completed a thirty-year apprenticeship under Kousaka before stepping in as Head Sushi Chef, carrying forward the same balance of traditional technique and precise, unshowy fish work. The wider team includes Mi-Hyun Han and chef Yuichiro Kusume, keeping the original partnership's imprint on the room.

03The cooking

Omakase here still follows the format Kousaka set out at the start: a run of seasonal otsumami, then sashimi, a daily-selected sushi course, soup and dessert, with no à la carte detour. The house-made soy sauce — which takes a week to prepare — and fresh-grated wasabi are used instead of shortcuts, applied sparingly so the fish, sourced from New York's markets as well as flown in from Japan, does the talking. Specialities have long included giant clam, redeye snapper and deepwater sea bass pulled from as deep as 1,600 feet off the Japanese coast.

Seasonal highlights on the current counter run from red snapper and Japanese sea bass to wild winter yellowtail and firefly squid, with king crab and ankimo available as supplemental additions for guests who want to extend the meal beyond the set course.

04What to order

Kosaka offers two formats: a sushi bar omakase at $295 per person for guests at the counter, and a table omakase at $270 per person for those seated at one of the room's few tables (read on the restaurant's own site in October 2026). Among the pieces that have drawn attention over the years are the botanebi sweet jumbo shrimp, a spoonful of ikura salmon roe, and a chilled uni sushi cup — small, deliberate flourishes within an otherwise classical Edomae structure.

05Wine and drinks

The restaurant is noted for a sake list substantial enough to be considered a draw in its own right, built to run alongside the omakase course by course rather than as an afterthought — a detail that matters as much here as the fish itself to regulars who treat a seat at the counter as a small occasion.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.