Sushi Ikumi – SoHo's quietly exacting Kyoto-style counter

On Sullivan Street, among SoHo's cast-iron shopfronts and gallery doors, Sushi Ikumi gives almost nothing away from outside. Inside, ten seats wrap a single L-shaped counter where chef Jongin Jeong, previously of the kaiseki restaurant Hirohisa a few doors down, works through a dinner omakase that runs to eighteen courses. The restaurant opened as the sushi-focused sibling to Hirohisa, sharing its commitment to peak-season ingredients and a zero-waste kitchen, but trading Hirohisa's full kaiseki sequence for a tighter, counter-driven sushiya built on nigiri, a handful of otsumami and Kyoto-style pressed fish. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, a distinction that puts it among New York's more closely watched rooms without the inflated cheque of the city's best-known sushi counters. At $220 for dinner and $150 for the shorter Saturday lunch, it has become a reference point for diners after Edo-mae and Kyoto technique without paying five hundred dollars a head.

01The room and the setting

The dining room is small by design: ten seats, one counter, no tables. The restaurant is run by chef Hiro Hayashi, who also operates the neighbouring kaiseki destination Hirohisa, and who turned his attention to the space next door to open a dedicated sushi counter in SoHo. The result is a room where nothing distracts from the pass: an L-shaped bar, bare brick, low, focused lighting, and the chef and his small team working in full view of every guest.

02The chef

Jongin Jeong came up through Hirohisa before taking the counter at Ikumi, and the meticulousness he learned there carries over directly: a staff member will reset a course mid-service rather than let a plate sit wrong in front of a guest. Jeong also talks diners through each piece as it lands, naming the fish and its origin rather than letting the courses pass in silence, an approach suited to a room that draws as many first-timers as devoted regulars.

Insider tip

Book via Resy up to two weeks ahead; dinner Tue–Sat, lunch Saturday only.

03The cooking

The omakase runs Edo-mae and Kyoto traditions side by side: cured and aged fish such as kohada and saba sit alongside pressed, Kyoto-style sushi and a procession of nigiri sliced to order. Part of what keeps the price down is structural rather than stylistic — seafood is shared and allocated between Ikumi and Hirohisa, so cuts not used at one counter find their place at the other, cutting waste across both kitchens rather than within a single one.

04What to order

Dinner typically opens with an egg custard built around sweet corn before moving into the main sushi sequence. Among the courses that recur and draw praise: plump shrimp nigiri, seared nodoguro given a touch of smoke, live cockles served straight from the shell, and two separate cuts of Montauk tuna prepared to show off the differences in texture and fat. The sequence often closes on a lighter note, with a miniature saba temaki and a futomaki paired, unusually, with house-made ice cream.

05Wine and drinks

The sake list runs deep, with up to a dozen pours available by the glass alongside a rotating cast of monthly specials chosen jointly by Jeong and Hayashi, built to match the changing seasonal courses rather than sit as a fixed, static list. Guests who prefer to bring their own are welcome to: the corkage fee is $80 per standard bottle and $150 per magnum, though bottles already on Ikumi's own list cannot be brought in.

06When to go and booking

Dinner omakase runs Tuesday through Saturday with two seatings, at 6:00pm and 8:30pm; Saturday is also the only day with a lunch sitting, at 11:45am and 1:15pm. Reservations for parties of one to six are taken through Resy up to two weeks in advance, with a credit card required to hold the table and a 48-hour cancellation window before the $220 (dinner) or $150 (lunch) charge applies in full. Larger groups and private events are handled directly by the restaurant. The kitchen does not accommodate vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free or no-rice requests, given how central fish and rice are to the format, so dietary needs are best flagged well before the visit.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.