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Anrong Xu
A Japanese restaurant in New York’s Flatiron District is rolling out a new tasting menu, literally.
YO! Sushi, a dining spot where patrons are served via a conveyor belt, plans to offer the $35 eight-course affair once every quarter, starting on this Valentine’s Day. The idea is tap into the current craze for omakase, a Japanese term for “chef’s choice” that is used to denote multicourse menus that typically emphasize sushi.
But restaurants like YO! Sushi and several others in the city are trying to democratize omakase by offering it for a fraction of the traditional cost, which can easily top $200 a person.
And in YO! Sushi’s case, the idea is also to wed two concepts into one. Conveyor-belt sushi restaurants, also known as kaiten-sushi restaurants, have been a fixture in Japan for more than a half-century and have spread throughout the world over the years, including in New York.
YO! Sushi, which opened its Flatiron District location in March 2017, thus refers to its omakase as “kaiten-kase.”
But conveyor-belt restaurants typically keep the offerings going nonstop, letting patrons pick what they want over the course of a meal—in short, the very opposite of the highly selective “chef’s choice” omakase approach.
Scott Steenrod,
managing director of YO! Sushi’s U.S. operations, said YO! Sushi would change its serving methodology on omakase nights by running the conveyor belt until each guest received the course being offered, then stopping until the next course was ready to go.
Other restaurants are putting their own discount spin on omakase.
Among them: Sushi on Jones, which charges $58 for its 12-course menu at its two locations, including one that opened about three months ago in Greenwich Village.
Restaurants offering lower-cost tasting menus say they are able to do so without stinting on quality. While Sushi on Jones proprietor
Derek Feldman
said there may not be a significant profit on each meal, he makes up for it through volume. His omakase is served over 30 to 40 minutes—a far cry from the two-hours-or-longer tasting-menu norm.
Another approach is to offer an a la carte option in addition to a tasting menu. That is what O Ya, a Japanese-inspired restaurant in the Murray Hill neighborhood has started to do. While 60% of its customers still go the omakase route,
Nancy Cushman,
one of the owners, said the restaurant recognizes the need for giving customers some flexibility price-wise.
“We want to let people dine differently,” Ms. Cushman said, adding that O Ya will also let diners customize an omakase meal that is less expensive than its standard $185 and $245 choices.
Still, a budget-priced omakase may not sit well with all diners, said
Stephen Zagor,
a dean at the Institute of Culinary Education, which has a campus in New York. He said that omakase, by its very nature, implies something refined.
“I’m looking for a true artistic expression of the chef,” said Mr. Zagor. Going the discount route, he added, is “like buying a Picasso for $49.99.”
Write to Charles Passy at cpassy@wsj.com
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