Sushi Nakazawa – the counter that turned Jiro's student into a New York name

On a residential stretch of Commerce Street, a few doors from the Cherry Lane Theatre, Sushi Nakazawa occupies a black-and-white room that still draws a queue of diners who first heard the chef's name in a documentary. It opened in 2013, when restaurateurs Maurizio de Rosa and Alessandro Borgognone watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi and decided to hire its quiet co-star, Daisuke Nakazawa, apprentice to Jiro Ono at Sukiyabashi Jiro, to lead a counter of his own in the West Village. What began as a ten-seat room became one of the city's hardest reservations, and more than a decade on it still runs a single, uncompromising format: an Edomae-style omakase, nothing from a printed à la carte menu, nothing sashimi-only or vegetarian by request. It holds One MICHELIN Star, recognition for a kitchen that treats twenty-odd pieces of nigiri as a complete, sequenced meal rather than a sampler. The room has long since become a template copied across the city; the counter that started it is still booked out weeks ahead.

01The room and the setting

The space Borgognone built around his chef is deliberately spare: black leather swivel chairs, white marble counters and the kind of lighting that puts the fish, not the furniture, in focus. Borgognone presided over the décor, a stark contrast to what Nakazawa had worked with in the sparse shop in Japan: black leather swivel chairs, white marble-counter tops, and modern lighting, with the white marble conceived as a canvas and the food as the art placed on it.

The result reads, as one reviewer put it, as a gallery rather than a sushi-ya. The calm, gallery-like black-and-white space has two chef's counters, and there's also a small dining room where you can book a table. There are only ten seats at the counter and 25 seats in the dining room, and in 2016 the restaurant expanded into the space next door to add a lounge with its own a la carte offer. Today the kitchen serves the same omakase wherever you sit: the same Omakase Menu is served for the Sushi Counter, Lounge Counter, and Dining Room.

02The chef

Daisuke Nakazawa's name on the awning is not marketing shorthand; it is a direct line back to one of sushi's most famous kitchens. Nakazawa apprenticed at Sukiyabashi Jiro under Jiro Ono, and appeared in the David Gelb documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. That film, and the diligence it showed him submitting egg after egg to his master's judgment, became shorthand for his arrival in New York. Chef Daisuke Nakazawa, who had a star turn in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, is famous for his diligent work perfecting tamagoyaki, the egg omelet, and demonstrates remarkable precision with cuts and flavors.

Insider tip

Book exactly 14 days ahead at noon EST via Resy; omakase only, no à la carte.

The counter he opened in 2013 has since grown into a small group: a Washington, D.C. outpost inside the Old Post Office followed in 2018, with a West Hollywood location opening in 2026, but New York remains the original room, and Nakazawa still works the Commerce Street counter himself on service nights.

03The cooking

The format has not changed since opening: a single, chef-directed progression of nigiri, no deviations. Sushi Nakazawa serves Chef Daisuke Nakazawa's Omakase menu exclusively; there is no à la carte dining, and the kitchen cannot accommodate requests for sashimi, cooked fish, or a vegetarian menu. Highlighting seasonality, the chef's 'New York-mae' style omakase offers both classic and modern interpretations of Edo-mae style nigiri.

Fish is sourced widely and treated with restraint rather than flourish. Twenty or so pieces of fish, prepared by chef Nakazawa and his sushi chefs, are highlighted only with a minimum of salt, pepper, yuzu or other enhancements, or sometimes torched for maximum effect, with pedigrees from Japan, Boston, California and New York. The program is built on a specific technical philosophy: supremely tender fish, precisely seasoned rice, controlled wasabi, and a judicious brush of nikiri.

04What to order

There is nothing to choose beyond the counter you sit at; the meal arrives piece by piece in the chef's own order. The dish most associated with his training is the one Jiro Ono used to test every apprentice: Ono's 'test' dish, the sweet and silky egg tamagoyaki, is a Nakazawa masterpiece. Among the nigiri, two have become quietly famous — hay-smoked salmon is something from a sushi dream, while a more recent course, torched king salmon that tastes like buttery popcorn, sits alongside gently dressed pieces such as sea scallop with a dab of yuzu kosho.

05When to go and booking

Seats go quickly and online release is strict. Reservations become available at 12:00pm EST, fourteen days in advance of a specific date. At roughly nine dollars per course, it is still the lowest price in its tier of 21-plus-course Manhattan omakase.

06The neighbourhood

Commerce Street is one of the West Village's quieter curves, tucked away from Seventh Avenue South traffic. Set on a quiet, residential street in the West Village, this tiny sushi restaurant serves some of the city's best raw fish. It is the kind of block where a restaurant can build a decade-long reputation almost by word of mouth alone: Sushi Nakazawa was a bit of a revelation when its doors swung open in 2013, and Nakazawa's edomae-style cuisine went on to usher in its own era of dining in New York, spawning counters that have yet to fall out of style.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.