Muku – Tribeca's fastest star, built on purity

On Greenwich Street in Tribeca, in the ten-seat room that once held Sushi Ichimura, chef Manabu Asanuma serves a nightly menu built around goho, the five classical techniques of Japanese cooking: raw, grilled, simmered, steamed and fried. The restaurant takes its name, Muku (無垢), from the idea of purity – nothing on the counter is there for decoration, only to show the true character of the ingredient. Asanuma, who grew up in Yamagata Prefecture, trained under Iron Chef Koumei Nakamura and studied Kyoto-style cuisine before winning Japan's Silver Egg award at the RED U-35 competition and working in Tokyo, Taiwan and then New York at Uchu, Odo and Sushi Ichimura. He opened Muku in September 2025 under Rahul Saito's Kuma Hospitality Group, the team behind Tribeca's L'Abeille. Within two months the MICHELIN Guide had awarded it a star, making Muku the fastest restaurant in New York City history to receive the distinction. It holds one MICHELIN Star.

01The room and the setting

The dining room is small by design: ten ochre-yellow stools are arranged around counter-top seating, with dark wooden panels lining the walls and a dramatic 17th-century screen, borrowed from the owner's family collection, standing in for art. When the concept replaced Sushi Ichimura in the same Greenwich Street address, the panelled interior was tweaked to include a larger six-panel screen from the owner's collection and more subtle, recessed lighting. The result is a room with almost nothing to look at beyond the counter, the chef and the glow of that illuminated panel behind the seats.

Muku sits two doors from its sister restaurant: L'Abeille and its parent company, Kuma Hospitality Group, were co-founded by Tribecan Rahul Saito, and the two kitchens share a Greenwich-and-Laight corner of a neighbourhood that has quietly become one of the city's densest clusters of serious tables, sitting within a few blocks of Jungsik, Atera and L'Abeille itself.

02The chef

Manabu Asanuma was born and raised in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, trained under Iron Chef Koumei Nakamura, studied Kyoto-style cuisine, and won the Silver Egg award at Japan's prestigious RED U-35 competition before opening Muku. After winning the Silver Egg award he was selected as the representative chef for Oceania and the Americas. He built his career in Tokyo and Taiwan and then moved to New York, where he worked at Uchu, Odo, and Sushi Ichimura – the very room he now runs under his own name.

Insider tip

Prepaid tasting menu, two nightly seatings Tuesday–Saturday, reservations open monthly.

03The cooking

Muku's kaiseki-inspired menu follows goho, the Japanese principle incorporating five methods of cooking – raw, grilled, simmered, steamed and fried – with seasonality at the forefront. Each evening unfolds as a 10-to-12-course journey through the season's finest ingredients, moving from an opening bite through soup, sashimi, steamed and grilled courses and a fragrant rice dish. The meal closes on the chef's own signature: Yamagata Soba, made with buckwheat flour grown by his parents on family-owned land, followed by a beautifully composed seasonal dessert, mizugashi.

04What to order

Early menus have included foie gras chawanmushi and hairy crab in shio-koji tomato soup with caviar, the crab dish built as sakizuke of hairy crab, tomato, caviar, tosazu jelly and shiso flower. The rice course has arrived as gohan of unagi, maitake, chicken soboro, chives and pickles – grilled eel over mushroom rice, finished with the quiet acidity of pickle. And always, near the end, soba noodles crafted with buckwheat from Asanuma's family farm in Japan, the one dish that ties the counter directly back to Yamagata.

05Wine and drinks

Muku offers a curated selection of sake, wine, beer, Japanese whiskies, and exclusive chilled Japanese teas, and its beverage list has been awarded a Best of Award of Excellence by Wine Spectator. The sake list features labels from Japan's most celebrated breweries, some made exclusively for Muku and Kuma Hospitality Group. For anyone who would rather drink something cold and inventive, the sleeper hit on the bar menu is Silent Harmony, a house cocktail of vodka, sansho, yuzu and spruce.

06When to go and booking

Muku is open Tuesday through Saturday with two seatings nightly at 5:30pm and 8:30pm, and reservations open on the 1st of the month at midnight for the following month. With only ten counter seats and two sittings a night, and a MICHELIN Star earned, as OpenTable noted, just two months after opening – New York City's fastest restaurant ever to receive one – walk-up availability is effectively nonexistent, so booking ahead is essential.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.