Shingo – a Kyoto counter rebuilt inside a 1924 Coral Gables hotel

Shingo sits behind an unmarked door in the 1924 La Palma building on Alhambra Circle, a single L-shaped hinoki counter seating fourteen guests who watch chef Shingo Akikuni work almost close enough to touch. It is one of only a handful of restaurants in Coral Gables to hold a MICHELIN Star, earned on 18 April 2024 and carried into the 2026 Guide — a single star, the Guide's mark for high-quality cooking worth a stop. Akikuni, a fourth-generation sushi chef from Osaka, built his reputation at Hiden before opening his own 14-seat room in May 2023, serving an 18-course omakase that leans on Edomae technique and fish flown in from Japan several times a week. The room itself is the first clue to how seriously the project takes craft: designed and built whole in Kyoto, then taken apart and reassembled piece by piece inside a Mediterranean Revival building that first opened as a hotel a century ago.

01The room and the setting

The counter is the point of the room. The 14-seat counter in Coral Gables is like a teleportation device to Osaka, Japan, where premium fish sourced entirely from Japan is sliced with uniform precision and dressed with barely a swipe of seasoning like nikiri. The interior was designed in Japan, deconstructed, and reassembled on site, including a hinoki L-shaped counter. The firm behind it, Kyoto-based Yoshiharagumi, built the roughly 850-square-foot space to Japanese tolerances before shipping it across the Pacific; as the restaurant's managing partner, Kenzie Motai, put it at the time, Japanese construction standards leave no room for the half-inch variances considered normal in the United States.

Shingo is the first tenant to open inside La Palma, the Mediterranean Revival building at the corner of Alhambra Circle, designed by George Merrick's cousin H. George Fink and built in 1924. It was one of Coral Gables' first hotels (The Solana), and today has been restored by the Maven Real Estate group into a mixed-use building of office, retail and restaurant space, featuring the French bistro Bouchon and the city's first Michelin-starred restaurant, SHINGO. Shingo opened in the summer of 2023 as the first place to open at La Palma. Even the tableware carries its own pedigree: chopstick holders fashioned in the shapes of various food and ceramic plates dotted with flamingos, palm leaves and other tropical motifs were specifically made for the Miami restaurant by Kyoto-based ceramicist Shin Murata.

02The chef

Shingo Akikuni is a fourth-generation sushi chef from Osaka, Japan, known for his meticulous technique and reverence for tradition. Before relocating to the United States, Akikuni trained at Ginza Sushi Aoki in Tokyo, a highly regarded restaurant known for its Edomae focus and exacting standards. In 2017, he moved to Miami, where he served as sous chef at Sushi Azabu before becoming executive chef at Hiden, the eight-seat counter that earned a Michelin Star under his leadership.

Insider tip

Two nightly seatings at a 14-seat counter; book well ahead, no pets.

In May 2023, Akikuni opened his namesake restaurant, Shingo, in Coral Gables, inside the historic La Palma building. On 18 April 2024, Shingo earned a Michelin star. The chef rarely steps away from the counter: midway through each seating, Akikuni swaps places with his assistant, keeping the room moving at the same unhurried pace from first course to last.

03The cooking

The intimate, 14-seat counter offers an 18-course menu that blends traditional Edomae nigiri with seasonal sashimi, Yakimono dishes, and hand-selected sake pairings. Every element of the experience — from the dishware to the fish flown in from Toyosu Market — is personally chosen by Akikuni. Akikuni offers two nightly seatings for his 18-course menu, featuring traditional Japanese nigiri, sashimi and grilled Yakimono dishes.

The set menu rotates seasonally and heavily focuses on fresh fish from Japan along with local ingredients from Florida, so the same broad structure — nigiri, sashimi, a grilled course — reads differently in October than in February. The restaurant's own site frames its approach through the Japanese idea of omotenashi: true hospitality is described as the restaurant's core value, extending that authentic spirit through food and service to guests.

04Wine and drinks

Sake is treated with the same care as the fish. Hand-selected sake pairings run alongside the 18 courses, chosen to match the seasonal rotation of nigiri and sashimi rather than offered as an afterthought — in keeping with a room where, as the chef's own brief puts it, the Japanese omakase is built course by course around what the season allows.

05The neighbourhood

Coral Gables' Alhambra Circle has become an unlikely pocket of serious cooking. Chef Akikuni is next-door neighbours with Thomas Keller's Bouchon inside the same restored La Palma building, a short walk from Coral Gables' Miracle Mile and the city's grid of 1920s Mediterranean Revival façades. La Palma itself became a landmark for the community over the decades, hosting dinners, weddings and meetings long before it reopened as a showcase for two very different kinds of fine dining under one roof.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.