Yoshino – a 300-year-old hinoki counter on the Bowery

Yoshino keeps a single unmarked door at 342 Bowery in NoHo, where ten seats line a sushi counter cut from hinoki older than the United States itself. Chef Tadashi "Edowan" Yoshida opened the room in September 2021, after closing Sushi no Yoshino, the Nagoya counter that Tabelog had ranked among Japan's three best sushi restaurants, to try his hand at the biggest stage he could find. The gamble worked fast: within a year, the ten-seat bar and its two nightly seatings had taken the restaurant's first MICHELIN Star and been named The New York Times' Best New Restaurant of 2022. It holds one MICHELIN Star. Every service since has run to the same standard — roughly twenty courses, raw and cooked, built on fish flown in and served across a counter that took fifty years just to cure before anyone sat at it.

01The room and the setting

The headline fact is the counter itself: a single length of Kiso hinoki cypress, a wood that Japanese tradition only calls authentic once a tree has stood for at least three centuries, then cured for a further fifty years after being felled — wood from the same tree, by Yoshino's own account, also lines parts of Tokyo's Imperial Palace. The handmade chairs come from Hida Takayama in Gifu Prefecture, Yoshida's own region, made under Japan's Made in Gifu revitalisation campaign. Behind the counter, the green plaster walls and the artwork titled "Waves that Come, Waves that Go" are the work of master plasterer Shuhei Hasado, built from natural dirt and clay. The entrance and bathroom doors use kumiko joinery, assembled without a single nail, and the coffered gotenjo ceiling above borrows a technique once reserved for Japanese castles.

Tomoya Hayakawa built the interior to a design by Kentaro Eba.

02The chef

Yoshida was raised in Seki, a city in Gifu Prefecture, and left for Tokyo at eighteen to apprentice in sushi for eight years. He returned home to take over his father's restaurant, Yoshino Zushi, running it for eighteen years as Sushi-ya no Yoshino between 1995 and 2012. He then moved the business to Nagoya and renamed it Sushi no Yoshino; over the following seven years it became the top-ranked sushi restaurant outside Tokyo and one of the country's most acclaimed.

Insider tip

Book via Tock 30 days ahead; omakase only.

Turning fifty in 2019, he chose New York over Tokyo for his next move, opening Yoshino with restaurateur Andrew Gyokudari and partners Jean and Paul Dupuy. The nickname "Edowan" is his own coinage — Edo, the old name for Tokyo, fused with "number one."

03The cooking

Sous chefs prepare the earliest appetisers under Yoshida's supervision before he takes the counter himself, opening by slicing and presenting the night's three cuts of tuna like an object to be studied before it is eaten.

Courses have included hairy crab, uni and caviar layered in an etched-glass bowl, and fried monkfish finished with a sweet, syrupy sauce. A piece of pressed mackerel is seared with a flourish of binchotan smoke before the nigiri sequence begins, moving from lighter cuts such as gizzard shad and tiger prawn toward chiaigishi chutoro, tuna belly sliced near the bloodline. The meal closes with a bowl of ice cream and a keepsake napkin, redesigned each season and hand-dyed in Japan.

04Wine and drinks

Sake and wine both have a place at the counter. Since 2022 the list has been chosen by sommelier Mayumi Kobayashi, who joined Yoshino after running the floor at MICHELIN-recognised Mifune and MICHELIN-starred Sushi Amane. One pairing she returns to is Suehiro Ken, a dry daiginjo from Fukushima, poured against a course of cod milt and ponzu finished with a sheet of kombu for extra umami.

True to Japanese practice rather than New York's habit of rewriting menus week to week, Yoshida changes the omakase with the seasons, not the calendar. The beverage list runs from approachable by-the-glass sakes to rarer bottles.

05When to go and booking

The counter seats guests at two sittings, Monday to Saturday, at 5.30pm and 8.30pm, for two and a half hours each. The omakase is prepaid through Tock, with new dates released daily at noon Eastern time, thirty days ahead.

Pricing does not include gratuity or drinks, and dietary restrictions must be flagged at least 72 hours in advance; the kitchen cannot accommodate vegetarian, gluten-free or no-rice requests.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.