We ate sushi for dinner on our first day in Tokyo (at Yayoi Sushi in Morishita). And we ate sushi for breakfast on our second day in Tokyo (at Dokoro Yamazaki in Toyosu Market). And so, as per Japanese law, it was required that we eat sushi for lunch on our third day in Tokyo. We were happy to do so. We headed out to a historic spot in Nihonbashi: Yoshinozushi Honten (also listed as Yoshino Sushi Hon Ten). It’s my understanding that “honten” or “hon ten” means “main office/branch”. I would normally think that means that they have other locations as well but their website does not list any others. I assume therefore that they mean to distinguish themselves from other sushi restaurants in the city with Yoshino in their names. For Yoshinozushi in Nihonbashi is not just another sushi restaurant in Tokyo with a good reputation. Given that there are so many good sushi restaurants in Tokyo, we could have been assured of an excellent sushi lunch at a number of places. But they’ve been open for more than 140 years—the current chef/owner is from the fifth generation of the family—and was the restaurant at which toro was first served and eaten under that name. And so we came here in search of not just a sushi lunch but also a piece of history. Here’s how it went.

Yoshinozushi is open for both lunch and dinner. At dinner they are more of a regular sushi restaurant and prices can get high. Reservations are necessary for dinner (and credit cards are available). At lunch, however, they are known for high value nigiri sushi and chirashi sets—indeed the menu lists nothing else at lunch. They’re also “cash only” at lunch (you can be expected to be reminded of this outside the restaurant, as you enter and again before you order). Reservations can be made but by phone only (and apparently they don’t accept reservations from hotel concierges etc.); however, it’s possible to get seats at lunch by just walking in and that’s what we’d planned to do. The thinking was that we would arrive 20 minutes or so before opening and hopefully not be too far behind in the line. In practice we got there 15 minutes before opening and were the first people in line. The fact that it had been raining cats and dogs just 20 minutes prior may have had something to do with that. At any rate by the time they started letting people in at 11 am, there was only one more small party waiting with us. However, over the next 20 minutes they’d begun to get a rapid flow of customers—though they were never completely full over the course of our meal.

The restaurant has about 10 seats at the counter and a few 4-top tables. I think there’s also a second floor with more table/tatami seating. We’d hoped to sit at the counter but despite being the first people to enter were waved off and directed to a table. This might have been because we had the boys with us, or it may have been that they wanted to reserve the counter for Japanese speakers as far as possible. I say this because it turned out that no one at the restaurant had very much English. This doesn’t make it a hard restaurant to navigate for non-Japanese speakers, however. This because the lunch menu, as indicated, is very brief. There’s a selection of nigiri sets at four price points and chirashi sets at three price points. There were also listed what appeared to be nigiri and chirashi sets focused on toro but we were focused on the regular nigiri and chirashi options.

I must admit embarrassedly here that if the restaurant gave me an itemized receipt at the end of the meal, I did not preserve it. And it being a cash-only restaurant, I am unable to reconstruct the exact order from the credit card total. I checked with my fellow diners and we are all pretty sure that the older boy and I both got the second-highest priced nigiri set (3850 yen) and that the younger boy got the medium chirashi (3300 yen) while the missus got the large chirashi (3850 yen)—but we cannot be certain. I’m also unable to tell you, as a result, whether the tea was included or paid for separately. As I mentioned, there was a bit of a language gap and I’m pretty sure there was no itemized receipt at the end—or if there was one, it’s somehow the only one I didn’t save over 10 days.

Anyway, the fish was very good in both the chirashi sets and in the nigiri set. As far as we could make out, the two chirashi sets were distinguished from each other primarily by how much ama ebi/sweet shrimp was on top. The nigiri set had 11 pieces of nigiri (including tamago) plus some hosomaki (cucumber, tuna, pickled radish). The tuna and toro were indeed quite good but, on the whole, we all thought the meal at Dokoro Yamazaki was clearly superior in all regards (it was, of course, also a bit more expensive).

Again, on account of the missing receipt, I cannot tell you exactly how much we paid for this. But if we are correct in our memory of the order, the total would have been around 15,000 yen or just above $100. Yet again, a massive value compared to anywhere in the US for fish of this quality or anything even approaching it. Hell, it’s massive value compared to what you’d pay for similar amounts of mediocre fish in the US.

For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see what’s coming next from Tokyo.

Okay, next up from Tokyo will be a report on another meal in Nihonbashi, this time featuring katsu. Following that will be reports on excellent ramen at Ramenya Toy Box and on another sushi meal. Those will all go up next week.