RESTAURANTS • First Person
Some deserving restaurants open to immediate acclaim. Others, for whatever reason, take a minute to heat up. But rarely does a great new restaurant fly under the radar, smack in the middle of Greenwich Village.
Here’s one that does — for now. And given how excellent it really is, likely not much longer.
Mitsuru, on a downtrodden stretch of West 4th Street not far from Washington Square Park, opened its doors in November. Its chef Mitsuru Tamura cut his teeth at Naomichi Yasuda’s pioneering Sushi Yashuda in Midtown East, before being anointed by the master as his replacement when Yasuda moved back to Japan in 2010.
Now very much in the prime of his career, Tamura stands alone behind the eight-seat sushi counter at his namesake restaurant. In contrast to many of Manhattan’s austere counters set in their own throne rooms, Mitsuru’s shares space with an appealing dining room. A mod pale green sofa curves from the entryway into the brick-walled room filled with tables, chairs, and a L-shaped green banquette leading to the counter at the back of the room.
On my first visit in April, in search of a quick dinner before a friend’s book party, we tucked into a table along the banquette and dug into the menus. The first, titled Today’s Fish, shows a tally of à la carte raw fish offerings; the second includes a mix of additional handroll offerings and an appealing selection of Japanese dishes from the kitchen.
We started with two very good tuna handrolls, which arrived at the table do-it-yourself style. But where things got exciting was the cooked dishes. The unagi don (eel served over rice with cucumbers) delighted us with its elevated comfort, and the sea bass tempura — three pieces with a crisp crust and fish inside as light as the upper atmosphere — amazed with its texture and delicate taste. We were in and out in 60 minutes. And hooked.
When I returned to Mitsuru last week, it was to put myself in the hands of Tamura himself. Guests at his counter choose between two omakases, $175 and $275 per. We went big, and laughed out loud when the chef presented our first dish: three tiny, fried saltwater crabs from Japan, which we squeezed with lemon and popped into our mouths whole. Equally unforgettable was the striped jack, served warm in scallion broth, dazzling with grated radish on top. (This first portion of the omakase also included a six-piece sashimi course and several torched fish courses.)
The nigiri procession (14 in all) started with sea bream, and made its way through spot prawn, Hokkaido uni, and otoro (both raw and seared), before closing out with an eel double-dip (one served with salt, the other with eel sauce). We thought a toro handroll and tamago would finish our meal, but then came the final flourish, a luscious slice of crown melon. (The restaurant told me that the $175 omakase drops the sashimi, uni, tamago, and melon — leaving plenty of the good stuff at a very good price point.)
Throughout our 90-minute meal, we chatted easily with the chef, the vibe as light and enjoyable as I’ve ever experienced at a sushi counter, the atmosphere further aided by the sounds of Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan wafting throughout the room. Wonderfully, this is a counter and dining room bereft of the bromakase crowd, at least on the nights we were there.
Let’s hope it stays that way. I mentioned Mitsuru to a friend who lives in the West Village and knows her way around an omakase to see if it was on her radar. “Oh, we love Mitsuru — we’ve been five or six times,” she responded. As it inevitably happens in New York City, the word is getting out. –Lockhart Steele
→ Mitsuru (Greenwich Village) • 149 W 4th St • Tue-Sat 5-10p, omakase seatings at 530, 730, 930p • Reserve.