Eiji Ichimura and Daniel Humm.
Photograph: Ye Fan
Although he’s had locations together with his personal title on the door, the sushi chef Eiji Ichimura has a behavior of sheltering underneath the wings of his devoted followers. For considered one of New York’s sushi masters, he hasn’t received a lot public ego. Within the early years of Ichimura’s New York fame, he was an if-you-know-you-know bragging proper: Throughout his years at David Bouley’s Brushstroke within the 2010s, in Tribeca, he quietly turned out glorious sushi underneath such a cloak of quiet that Pete Wells as soon as marveled that the “vacancy of the room wasn’t simply odd, it was plain incorrect.” Brushstroke had been the house of a succession of Tokyo-trained sushi chef instructors — it was run in collaboration with the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka — however as soon as Ichimura’s fame was established, it quickly grew to become Ichimura at Brushstroke. In 2023, the chef opened his personal Sushi Ichimura in Tribeca; that restaurant closed in 2025. Now it feels as if time has turned backward: Ichimura is as soon as once more in residence at a big-ticket New York establishment, and for what stands out as the final second, I’m unsure the world at massive has observed.
Ichimura’s devoted acolytes certain have. At my latest dinner at Ichimura’s open-ended residency on the Studio, a nine-seat eating counter above Eleven Madison Park, three of my fellow diners professed to have adopted the sensei from restaurant to restaurant for years, like shad-sniffing bloodhounds. A meal at Ichimura is in step with the upper finish of New York omakase, at $325 a head earlier than à la carte additions, drinks, or gratuity, however I received the sense that for these partisans, resistance was futile. “That is my favourite kohada,” sighed a girl subsequent to me in rapture, referring to Ichimura’s gizzard-shad sushi. The gizzard shad is a herring relative that’s generally thought of a check of a sushi grasp’s mettle. By itself, the fish is an untasty, blunt-nosed brack dweller. However with correct deboning, vinegaring, and time, it may be somewhat surprise. Ichimura’s arrives glintingly silver, its flesh slashed like a Lucio Fontana portray, sharp with vinegar, wealthy and simply melting sufficient.
Ichimura’s is an edomae-style sushi, a callback to sushi’s Nineteenth-century origins, depending on preservation methods solely out there then, primarily marination and kelp-pressing. Edomae places a selected give attention to rice, and Ichimura’s is scrumptious — toothsome and piquant. In contrast to a few of the extra narrated omakases round, at Ichimura, don’t anticipate a lecture. The chef doesn’t say a lot, although if pressed, he’ll mumble somewhat description right here and there: “Very small,” he defined of a kasugodai (younger sea bream) or “Not a child, this one” of a slice of sawara (Spanish mackerel), a a lot bigger fish. Who wants it? It’s way more satisfying to observe him work, slicing away with a big knife earlier than forming nigiri with such balletic, exactly articulated flexes of finger and palm that you may mistake it for crisp ASL.
An preliminary plan to accompany Ichimura’s sushi with dishes from Eleven Madison Park, kaiseki model, appears to have been scrapped. Ichimura now supplies just a few of his personal non-sushi choices to begin and finish the meal. His uni monaka — chilly urchin with caviar sandwiched between two skinny mochi wafers (the normal monaka is good with red-bean paste instead of the uni) — is a cookie the Woman Scouts may begin promoting in the event that they ever wish to make actual cash. Dessert is a form of frozen mandarin parfait, served in its rind. Daniel Humm, EMP’s chef and proprietor, appears content material to supply the drinks and the temper: sake, Japanese whiskey, and, in a mood-elevating contact not typically discovered on the omakase counters of my very own expertise, a soy-complementing soundtrack of soul from the ’70s.
Sea urchin and caviar inside a mochi wafer.
Photograph: Jovani Demetrie
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