Shalom Japan – where matzoh balls float in ramen broth

On a quiet corner of South 4th Street, behind brick walls and a sturdy wood bar, Shalom Japan has spent more than a decade proving that Ashkenazi Jewish cooking and Japanese technique can share a plate without either side losing its accent. The restaurant is the work of a married couple, Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi, who opened it in 2013 on the Southside of Williamsburg and built a menu entirely around their own biography: his family's Long Island Shabbos table, her childhood in Hiroshima. It holds a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand, the guide's mark for cooking that delivers real character at a fair price, and it has become the kind of neighbourhood room that regulars return to for one dish in particular — a chicken broth bowl holding a matzoh ball, ramen noodles, scallion and nori — rather than for spectacle. Nothing on the menu is trying to shock; everything on it is trying to make two inherited cuisines sit naturally next to each other.

01The room and the setting

The dining room keeps its scale modest: warm brick walls, a wood bar, chalkboard menus and natural light through the corner windows, the kind of snug space Time Out once likened to a neighbourhood hangout rather than a destination restaurant. Aaron Israel, who trained as a painter before he trained as a cook, has filled the walls with his own work and shaped some of the ceramic plates and sake cups the kitchen uses, so the room carries the same handmade logic as the food.

Shalom Japan sits on a corner in South Williamsburg, close enough to the Williamsburg Bridge and the J and M trains at Marcy Avenue that it reads as a true local rather than a tourist stop, even as its reputation has spread well beyond the block.

02The chefs

Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi are married, and Shalom Japan is built around the collision of their two households: his Jewish upbringing on Long Island, her Japanese one in Hiroshima. Israel worked in kitchens including Andrew Carmellini's before co-founding Torrisi Italian Specialties, while Okochi brought a Japanese home cook's instinct for precision and restraint.

Insider tip

Open Tue–Sun for dinner, weekend brunch noon–3pm; book via Resy.

In 2023 the pair published their first cookbook, Love Japan: Recipes from Our Japanese American Kitchen, written with food writer Gabriella Gershenson. The book, built on home recipes rather than restaurant plates, won the U.S. Foodways category at the 2024 James Beard Foundation Book Awards and was named a Food Network best cookbook of the year.

03The cooking

The kitchen's signature invention is the Matzoh Ball Ramen, chicken broth built around a matzoh ball, char siu chicken, scallion and nori, which has been on the menu since the restaurant opened and now sells more than three hundred bowls a week. Aaron Israel designed the matzoh ball itself to be soft but never mushy, with just enough structure to hold its shape through a bowl of ramen rather than dissolve into soup.

The idea became a national story in November 2025, when Israel and Okochi pitched a take-home Matzoh Ball Ramen kit on ABC's Shark Tank and secured an on-air investment from Barbara Corcoran, who had dined at the restaurant and knew the dish before the cameras arrived.

Elsewhere the menu moves fluidly between traditions: a sake kasu challah, made with the lees left over from sake production folded into the dough for a yeasty, funky edge, served with golden raisin butter; a Wagyu pastrami sandwich built on house-made caraway shokupan, the pillowy Japanese milk bread; and a lox bowl layering avocado, Japanese pickles, ikura and sushi rice.

04What to order

Start with the Sake Kasu Challah with golden raisin butter, or the Toro Toast on that same house-baked challah, spread with scallion cream cheese and finished with everything spice. The Sesame Temomi Mazemen brings pork char siu, shishito peppers and shiso into a brothless noodle bowl, and the Wagyu Pastrami Sando pairs house-cured pastrami with Gulden's mustard and dill pickle on Japanese white bread. For dessert, the chocolate-banana challah bread pudding, served with whipped crème fraîche and whiskey caramel, is the kitchen's richest closing note.

05Wine and drinks

The drinks list runs sake, shochu and craft beer alongside a curated wine selection and cocktails that lean into the restaurant's dual identity, including versions built on Manischewitz. The sake program is extensive and changes by bottle and glass, pairing Brooklyn-brewed and Japanese-imported bottles with tasting notes as specific as honeydew, bamboo shoot or ripe apple.

06The neighbourhood and booking

Shalom Japan sits in South Williamsburg, a short walk from the Williamsburg Bridge and reachable by the J and M trains to Marcy Avenue. Dinner runs Tuesday to Saturday from 5pm to 10pm and Sunday from 5pm to 9pm, with brunch served Saturday and Sunday from noon to 3pm; reservations are taken on Resy. In 2024 the owners opened Tokidoki, a café and event space next door, extending the original restaurant's footprint after more than a decade on the same corner.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.