Popular sushi restaurants are popping up in unusual locations around New York City, including one serving a menu curated by actress Blake Lively in tasting rooms hidden away in train stations, hotel suites and public spaces.
This month, Emil Stefkoff’s The Group Hospitality opened the Omakase Room by Shin along the 6½ Avenue corridor at 145 W. 53rd St., across from the company’s La Grande Boucherie.
“We look for landmarked buildings — old bank buildings, theaters, fire stations — and renovate them into restaurants, like the beautiful arcades and pedestrian galleries between 53rd and 54th Streets,” Stefkoff told Side Dish.
“It’s the only Parisian covered walkway of its kind.”
Meanwhile, Lively, the former “Gossip Girl” star and wife of “Deadpool” superhero Ryan Reynolds, has taken her love of sushi to Daniel Boulud’s Michelin-starred restaurant, Jōji Box, tucked away in a nameless, doorless and signless corner beneath Grand Central Terminal.
The curated omakase tasting menu, launched last week, includes 10 pieces of sushi for $55 and comes with a signature cocktail from her Betty Boo’s brand: sparkling tequila with lime shiso.
“You can’t beat fresh, high-quality sushi,” Lively told Side Dish, adding that she sampled the menu “in the backseat of a car on the way to the airport a week before it launched.”
NoMad hotel 32|32 is home to another unique sushi spot: veteran restaurateur and nightlife impresario Richie Romero’s Simple Venue, which offers an omakase menu with four seats in a suite.
Guests will check in at the hotel’s front desk, receive a room key to their Omakase and Sushi Suite, and then dine on a 1.5-hour, 17-course meal for $185 per person.
The balcony will have a hidden bar with a few seats, said Romero, who is a partner in Simple Venue with Mike Sinensky, Erica London and chef David Buhadana.
“Our omakase restaurants are tucked away in unused spaces,” Romero told Side Dish, “and each has its own unique vibe. [Quentin] “A Tarantino movie.”
Simple Venue also offers a more affordable option at its Sushi by Bow outpost in what looks like the former rooms of Midtown’s Sanctuary Hotel, where workers used to rip apart cardboard boxes.
It offers 12 courses over 45 minutes for $60.
That price is much more palatable than the $950 per person charged at Masa in the old Time Warner Center across from Central Park, which, according to its website, has warnings such as not wearing strong perfume, which could ruin the experience.
“We get 4,000 to 6,000 reservations a week. It’s affordable luxury,” Romero says. “Wagyu beef, sea urchin and miso cod are $5 a slice. It’s top quality and the seating turns over quickly in 45 minutes.”
Led by chef Makoto Yamaoka, Omakase Room by Shin serves a 14-course menu (currently $175 per person) that reflects traditional sushi preparation techniques and kaiseki elements, using fish flown in daily from Japan as well as locally caught fish.
Stefkoff hired French designer Pierre Renard to create a precious space out of curved timber with an upholstered ceiling that can seat just eight people.
“When people come to dine, it’s a transcendental experience,” says Stefkoff, who recently opened the Omakase Room by Mitsu in the West Village.
“We create a Japanese-style room exclusively for a particular chef. We create and treat it like a traditional Japanese culinary temple, and the chef is the monk telling his or her own story.”
Other new spots include Crave Sushi Bar, a 1,400-square-foot, 60-seat space from chef Todd Mitgan and partner Brian Owens.
The restaurant will specialize in sustainable fish dishes in a more traditional space at 947 Second Avenue, and follows on from popular Upper West Side and Midtown restaurants Crave Fish Bar.
Craib works with fish farms across the Northeast, including American Eel, a women-run, sustainable eel farm in Maine.
