Please note: Reservations are required; walk-ins cannot be accommodated.
Please note: Reservations are required.
Hello. I’m Hishiya, and I have been a sushi chef for over 50 years. I co-founded REONA Sushi Tokyo and Hishitani in Kanda, Tokyo. Alongside overseeing our sushi chefs, I handle the parts of the work where experience matters most, especially sourcing fish and supervising the preparation before service.
During my years as head chef at Sushi Sei in Tsukiji, I learned what omakase really is from regulars who sat at the counter without ordering a word. These days the word “omakase” is understood in English and many other languages. That means something to me. I was one of the first chefs to put omakase on a Tsukiji menu, and to help spread it from there.
Here is what omakase actually is, why this style appeared, how it spread, and why it has also been criticized, all drawn from my own experience. Having served sushi in Tsukiji, a sacred place in sushi culture, to professional chefs, market workers, serious food lovers, and travelers alike, I want to explain the essence of omakase as honestly as I can.
Omakase is a polite Japanese word meaning “I leave it to you.”
At a sushi counter, it means the customer leaves it to the chef. Which fish to use, how to prepare it, and in what order to serve it.
So omakase is a way of enjoying several pieces of sushi as one sequence. In Edomae sushi, it is close to a tasting course.
From the chef’s side, omakase means we get to decide what to serve and in what order. So the quality of an omakase rests directly on the chef’s skill, on how well we source the fish, and on how we put a meal together. The responsibility is heavy.
That’s exactly why we sushi chefs pick the best fish of the season, prepare it in the way we are most confident in, and build a flow that holds the guest’s attention from the first piece to the last. Omakase is not just “let me suggest something.” It is a way of serving sushi that tests everything a chef can bring to the counter.
Omakase is actually a fairly new idea in the long history of sushi.
Edomae sushi has 200 years of history. But people in Japan only started ordering in the omakase style about 50 to 60 years ago. Back then, omakase wasn’t a course on a menu like it is now. It was a way of ordering used by longtime regulars who trusted the chef and said, “I’ll leave it to you today.” It was a pretty insider way to order.
It was around 1990 that omakase actually started showing up on menus where any customer could order it. That was also when I formally put it on a menu in Tsukiji.
Before that, the main style was “okonomi,” where customers picked what they wanted to eat one piece at a time. Okonomi means “as you like it.”
Sushi started as something like fast food for ordinary people. Even after more refined sushi restaurants showed up over time, until around the 1980s most shops were casual places. Customers would order a few pieces in season, eat quickly, and leave. That was how sushi shops were used. A long omakase course like today’s would not have fit.
And back then, even more so than today, most of the people who came to a sushi shop knew sushi well. They knew which fish was good right now, and they came in with a clear idea of what they wanted to eat. For people like that, okonomi simply made more sense.
So how did omakase appear, and how did it grow into the main style today? Behind it were changes in Tsukiji itself, and in the people who came to eat there.
This was when I was the head chef at the main branch of Sushi Sei in Tsukiji. Tsukiji, before it moved in 2018, was a fish town. For 80 years it held Tokyo’s biggest fish market. It wasn’t a tourist spot like it is today. It was a place for cooks, market workers, and people who supplied food businesses. In short, it was a town for professionals.
Most of the customers in our shop, then, were market workers, chefs, or serious foodies who came all the way to Tsukiji for good ingredients. People who really knew sushi and fish.
These guests ordered in the okonomi style, picking the sushi they wanted to eat. They were the kind of people who knew which shop had bought which fish that morning. If they knew my shop had bought good tuna, they came in and ordered tuna.
But there were also regulars who sat at the counter and ordered nothing at all. That silence was its own order. “Show me your best today.”
One of those silent customers was Rokusaburo Michiba, the Iron Chef of Japanese cuisine, the one most people outside Japan know from the TV show. When Mr. Michiba sat at my counter, I would put a bottle of beer in front of him without being asked, exchange one short greeting, and start making sushi without a word. No questions. No talking. Just the work, my best for that day.
Sometimes Mr. Michiba would glance at the piece I served and not touch it. That was his answer. “You’re going to feed me this?” I took the piece away and served the next one. I went over what was missing, what I could have done better, and I aimed for a higher piece next time. I learned a lot inside that tension.
That kind of exchange, possible only inside a deep trust between customer and chef, is what omakase originally is to me.
It was the most demanding way to serve sushi, a style only a chef with the right skill and the right sourcing instincts could carry.
As time went on, Tsukiji started showing up in magazines and on television. Tourists and office workers began coming through. Many of them weren’t used to sushi. Which fish was in season? What to eat first, what to eat last? It’s hard to know if you’ve never done it. It is said that there are more than 500 sushi ingredients, and just choosing takes time.
So I had a thought. The “real omakase” that had worked for professionals so far, could it be translated into a form ordinary guests could enjoy too? What I built was a menu item called “Tencho Omakase,” meaning “the head chef’s omakase.” The head chef was me. Around 1990, I started serving Tencho Omakase as a real menu item in Tsukiji. Within a few months of putting it on the menu, the shop’s sales tripled. The shop was already busy, and they tripled.
By translating the original omakase, born inside the tension between professionals, into a form a beginner could experience, I helped a lot of new people start enjoying sushi. After that, omakase began appearing as a menu item in sushi shops everywhere. That said, when I first started Tencho Omakase, there were also voices of criticism. “If omakase spreads, chefs will stop working hard.” “It’s arrogant for a chef to serve only the sushi he wants to serve.” These criticisms touched on real problems, problems I’ll come back to in a later section.
I believe omakase opened the door to the world of sushi for many people. Here are the strengths I see in it, set out clearly.
Not many people walk into a sushi shop for the first time and know exactly what to order. You can name fish you’ve heard of, but you can’t tell which one is in good shape today, or which one the chef would most happily serve.
With omakase, the chef can serve the fish they consider best that day, in the way they think best. That is the clearest benefit of all.
At a good sushi shop, you shouldn’t be disappointed by ordering the omakase.
There are a great many ingredients used in sushi, and even one ingredient becomes a different dish depending on the cut and the preparation.
The different cuts of maguro. For a deeper look, see our guide to maguro in sushi. The aroma and texture that come out when you sear scallop. There are a lot of sushi you can’t order if you don’t know they exist.
With okonomi, you always end up ordering what you already know.
Omakase, by contrast, draws on a chef’s knowledge and experience, so there’s a real chance you’ll meet a piece of sushi you would never have ordered for yourself. I think this is one of omakase’s greatest strengths. Meeting sushi you didn’t know about opens the world of sushi all at once.
Japanese sushi shops have a culture of valuing regulars. That’s natural. Chefs build a working relationship with customers they see often. But with a first time guest, neither side knows the other’s tastes yet, and the conversation feels its way at first. It’s not always smooth.
Omakase is a style that lets you start a sushi meal cleanly even before that relationship exists. Because it’s designed as a course, both the shop and the chef can serve smoothly, which also frees up time for conversation and for getting to know the guest.
For visitors from outside Japan, there’s also the language gap. Very few sushi chefs in Japan speak English. Seen that way, omakase is a structure that allows guests to enjoy a good sushi experience even when they do not fully share a common language.
Omakase is a fine style, but it isn’t without its problems.
When I was spreading omakase in Tsukiji, more senior chefs and shop owners sometimes pointed out its downsides to me. The criticisms I mentioned earlier, “if omakase spreads, chefs will stop working hard” and “it’s arrogant for a chef to serve only the sushi he wants to serve,” tie directly into this problem.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to every shop. But when a chef who doesn’t put in the work, or a shop that doesn’t put in the work, uses the word “omakase” to its own convenience, the weakness comes out.
A good chef uses omakase as a higher bar. They don’t compromise on the fish or on the flow, and they push for a better course tomorrow than the one they served today.
But for a weaker chef, omakase can become “the easy way out.” They serve only what they’re already good at, only what’s easy to prepare, fixed and unchanged, with no real improvement. What that becomes is just a plain set with the word “omakase” stuck on it.
In the okonomi era, all kinds of orders came in from guests. The chef had to respond every time, and that meant widening their technique. That kind of pressure also raised chefs. I have actually heard older chefs say, “since omakase spread, the number of bad sushi chefs has gone up.”
The problem isn’t only with chefs. The business side of a shop can also use omakase for margin first.
For example, an omakase built around high margin fish, or whatever stock they had left over. Shops that won’t pay up for good fish, and won’t put in the labor or the prep work that good sushi takes. It’s a sad truth, but such shops exist.
And it isn’t easy to tell from the outside before you walk in. For a traveler, even harder. That’s why, at minimum, you should read the reviews carefully and look at what people actually wrote about the fish and the service, not just at the star count.
So far I’ve shared the meaning of omakase, its history, its strengths, and its downsides, all from my own experience.
At REONA Sushi Tokyo we serve omakase too. But what we are aiming for is not only to serve good sushi. We want guests to understand sushi, including the technique behind each piece, the preparation it took, and the reasons each piece tastes the way it does.
What I learned in Tsukiji about the essence of omakase was simple: when someone places their trust in you, you give them your very best. At REONA Sushi Tokyo, we want to carry that idea further, not only by serving delicious sushi, but also by helping guests understand the traditions and culture behind it as much as we can.
Tokyo has many excellent sushi restaurants, and I hope you will visit many of them. But if you want to understand the basics of sushi, the mindset of Edomae, and the work that happens behind the counter more deeply, I believe REONA Sushi Tokyo can be a meaningful place to begin.