Moody Tongue Sushi – nigiri poured to a brewer's script

On a quiet block of West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, Moody Tongue Sushi opened on 9 February 2023, the first New York restaurant from Moody Tongue Brewing Company, the Chicago business behind one of the country's more unusual fine-dining ideas: beer built with a kitchen's own discipline, served instead of wine. On Feb. 9, the brewery opened its first New York City restaurant Moody Tongue Sushi, located at 150 W. 10th St. in Manhattan's West Village neighborhood. The sushi comes from Executive Sushi Chef Hiromi Iwakiri, a 25-year alumnus of many of New York's illustrious sushi dens and kaiseki joints, like Kodama Sushi, Lan, and Hirohisa, while Brewmaster Jared Rouben, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and the Siebel Institute of Technology who worked in MICHELIN-starred kitchens including the Martini House in Napa Valley and Thomas Keller's Per Se in New York, decides which of sixteen house beers lands beside which piece of nigiri. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, the New York listing for a company whose two Chicago restaurants already hold Michelin stars of their own.

01The room and the setting

The restaurant sits on the stretch of West 10th Street between Waverly Place and Greenwich Avenue, in the brownstone quiet of the West Village rather than on a restaurant-row main drag. Inside, the room pairs old-world charm with modern touches, dark wood and considered lighting standing in for the usual blond-wood sushi counter. Next door, through its own entrance, the Hand Roll & Martini Bar adds an eight-seat temaki counter and a handful of tables, overseen nightly by one of the restaurant's own hand roll chefs.

02The chef

Hiromi Iwakiri arrived at Moody Tongue Sushi after a 25-year career across some of New York's most demanding sushi counters and kaiseki rooms, including Kodama Sushi, Lan and Hirohisa. His menu here is built to move with the seasons — the restaurant describes it as a hyper-seasonal, refined sushi menu — and conceived from the start to answer to beer rather than the sake or wine a sushi chef might usually reach for.

Insider tip

Closed Mondays; reservations via phone or newyork@moodytongue.com

03The cooking and the pairings

Rouben treats brewing the way a chef treats a stock: ingredient-led, built in stages, and tuned to sit beside whatever is on the plate beside it. Of the sixteen beers poured here, several exist for this room alone — among them the Shaved Black Truffle Rice Lager, a New York exclusive, and the Pressed Asian Pear Saison, served in a flute and built to read like a vintage Champagne, alongside perennials such as the Juiced Lychee IPA, Orange Blossom Belgian Blonde and Yuzu Summer Ale. The same logic runs through Moody Tongue's two restaurants in Chicago, The Bar, an à la carte room, and The Dining Room, which offers a 15-course tasting menu, both sitting above the brewery's production facility.

04What to order

Regulars tend to steer newcomers toward the chef's special plate or the omakase-and-beer tasting menu rather than ordering piecemeal. At the Hand Roll & Martini Bar, the spicy scallop and spicy tuna hand rolls are worth timing to the Tuesday-to-Friday happy hour. To finish, the kitchen's dessert list runs to a matcha boba and a twelve-layer carrot cake, alongside a running vegan selection.

05Wine and drinks

Beer is the house's first language, but it is not the only one: the restaurant keeps a curated list of wines, sakes, spirits and specialty cocktails alongside its sixteen taps, with a separate spirits list covering bottles to take home as well as to drink in. At the adjoining Hand Roll & Martini Bar, the pairing shifts from beer to an evolving list of classic and seasonal martinis.

06When to go and booking

Moody Tongue Sushi is closed on Mondays, open Tuesday to Thursday from 5pm to 10pm, Friday and Saturday from 5pm to 11pm, and Sunday from 4pm to 9pm, in October 2026, with happy hour running Tuesday to Friday until 6pm. The nearest subway stop is West 4th Street–Washington Square, served by the A, C, E and B, D, F, M lines; reservations and questions go through the restaurant directly, by phone or by email.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.