Jet lag is a real pain in the ass but when you travel from Minnesota to Tokyo there is at least one compensation: you are wide awake in the morning on the first few days and can eat sushi for breakfast—even before the sun rises. Of course, the vast majority of restaurants in the city are closed until the middle of the morning but this is not true of the ones in the Toyosu Market. As you may know, Toyosu Market is the new, larger and more organized home of Tokyo’s wholesale fish market, which moved there right before the pandemic from the better-known Tsukiji Market—which continues to exist as a tourist site for restaurants etc. even as the fish market which used to be the primary attraction is gone. There are still popular sushi restaurants in Tsukiji but some of the most highly-regarded ones moved to Toyosu Market as well. The best-known of these are Sushi Dai and Daiwa Sushi. Both open at 6 am but people—mostly tourists, I assume—start lining up at 4 am when the market opens. Now, I’m a little insane when it comes to food but I’m not that insane. Certainly not when there are other restaurants at the market that don’t require setting out quite that early (before the Metro even starts running) and which probably offer only very marginally inferior—if that—sushi. The leader of this second tier (at least in terms of Tabelog ratings) is Sushi Dokoro Yamazaki (3.59 on Tabelog to Dai and Daiwa’s 3.64 and 3.63 respectively, if you care about these things) and that is where we went on our first morning in Tokyo. Here’s how it went.

There’s far less tourist noise about Yamazaki than about Dai or Daiwa—doubtless because you don’t have to do anything extreme to eat there—and as a result not very much information about them. It was hard to find out if there’s any need to queue up at all, if not at 4 or 5 am. As luck would have it, a friend visited Tokyo and ate breakfast there just a few weeks before us and let me know that there was no queue either when they opened or when they left. Speaking of which, even the question of when they open is not clear. My friend coudn’t remember exactly what time they arrived but Tabelog says they open at 7 whereas Google says they open at 7.30. In practice, on the day we visited they opened at 7.10 am (we’d arrived at 6.55 am to find no line at all).

We went in to find a small, bright restaurant, with 13 or so seats arranged around a blonde wood counter. There were two chefs working at opening, one of whom took lead on serving us and the three people who’d lined up behind us shortly after we’d arrived. He was very friendly and had more than enough English to describe the fish and answer any questions we had. Their menu includes a number of sushi sets at different price points and also an omakase. The price for the omakase was not listed on the menu but a sign on a wall listed it at 8500 yen ($58). None of us got the omakase, however. The younger boy got their chirashi (various sashimi scattered over rice, 5200 yen/$35) and the missus got their maguro/tuna don bowl (3400 yen/$23). Both enjoyed their bowls thoroughly. For the younger boy, who was a little sushi-wary going into this trip (he does not care for wasabi), the chirashi was a revelation; and the missus said her tuna was the best she’d ever had. Both bowls came with very good miso soup.

The older boy and I got the cheapest of their three nigiri sets, the Gensen (3900 yen/$27). The Gensen offers seven pieces of nigiri plus tamago—we added on a few extra pieces at the end. On the day the Gensen included the following: somewhat unusually the course began with tamago (2 pcs). This may not be unusual in Japan, of course, but I’m used to it coming towards the end (as was the case at the omakase meal we ate later in the week). The tamago was followed by pieces of (in order) shima aji/striped jack, suzuki/rosy seabass, aji/horse mackerel, hotate/scallop, katsuo/skipjack, akami/lean bluefin tuna, and ikura/salmon roe. To this the boy added the following: a piece of chutoro and a second piece of ikura. In consultation with the chef, I added pieces of iwashi/sardine, kinmedai/goldeneye snapper/splendid alfonsino and bafun uni.

The nigiri was all outstanding—the quality of the fish was on par with that we’ve eaten at the better places in Los Angeles. Particular highlights were the shima aji, the iwashi (prepared quite beautifully), the kinmedai (you can see it being torched on my Instagram) and particularly the uni from Hokkaido.

For a closer look at everything, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much the meal cost and to see what’s coming next from Tokyo.

The total price, inclusive of tax, was 24,000 yen or $163. So less than $41/head—which in comparison to sushi in the US felt like an utter steal for the quality (of course, we felt the same at Yayoi Sushi the previous night, even though they’re not on this level, and pretty much at every sushi meal we ate on this trip).

For the quality of the fish and the rest of the experience I recommend Yamazaki thoroughly. If you’re the kind of traveller who relishes telling people that they queued up at 4 am then by all means try your luck at Dai or Daiwa; if not, give yourself an easier morning and eat at Yamazaki or one of the other places in Toyosu Market that aren’t famous for having long lines (we ate at another of those places the following week and enjoyed the fish there too). Of course, it’s also the case that there is sushi as good or better available closer to wherever you might stay in Tokyo—the difference when you are jet lagged is that none of those places will open before lunch.

And for visitors with more English than Japanese, a place like Yamazaki is very easy to navigate—there’s no reason, of course, that Japanese restaurants in Japan should have English-speaking staff but, all else remaining equal, it does make things easier. What also makes things easier is Yamazaki’s relaxed attitude: it’s a good place for people who’ve already eaten a lot of sushi in their time and for newcomers alike (by default the chef will give you the English names of the fish).

Alright, next up from Tokyo will be reports on two meals that did not involve any raw fish. The first of those, and my first of four ramen reports from this trip will go up on Wednesday.