We’re Entering Dallas’s Omakase Era
Here’s what to know about the Big D’s influx of chef’s choice sushi experiences.
With a deft, steady hand—a practiced hand—a blade slices through fresh tuna with precision. Decades of experience show with each knife stroke. The chef delicately drapes the fish over loose bricks of perfectly seasoned rice before adding subtle flourishes of wasabi and soy. Across the counter, the diner, giddy as each bite lands before them, pops the whole piece in their mouth. This transcendent experience—in this case at Tatsu tucked inside a corner of the Continental Gin Building—isn't your typical dinner out. But there’s been a noticeable influx of omakase in Dallas lately.
Yes, Dallas embraced sushi long ago, as did other metropolitan cities in the US. Here, neighborhoods and surrounding suburbs teem with sushi spots, from casual to upscale, and sushi even appears on menus of select steakhouses and other non-sushi-specific restaurants. Omakase is another realm of raw fish experiences.
In Japanese omakase translates to “I leave it up to you” and is the diner’s way of signaling they trust the chef to craft their meal exactly as they see fit. It’s like a culinary trust fall. Popular restaurants like Uchi, Nobu, Tei-An, and Edoko provide an omakase option in addition to their regular menus, and Namo supplements its regular service with omakase on select Wednesdays. Even your standard sushi counter is likely to offer a chef’s choice experience, if you ask. But the past two years have witnessed a surge of concepts dedicated to omakase: tradition-bucking Shoyo, true-to-classic-form Tatsu, among a growing list of small, intimate omakase dens of 12 or less seats.
Shoyo opened in the middle of 2021, meanwhile Tatsu followed suit in May 2022. Both were highly anticipated openings from respected chefs, ready to feed Dallas’s collective hunger for the omakase experiences already present in cities like New York and San Francisco. And both are now regarded as two of the best restaurants in the city, period.
Since then, we’ve witnessed a growing handful of new omakase spots, including Kinzo Sushi in Frisco and Yujo in North Dallas. Pearl Sushi in Knox-Henderson isn’t strictly omakase, but there’s a “trust your chef” option where Nobu-trained chef Shine Tamaoki can put together an omakase experience (best enjoyed at the sushi bar). Shodo in the Design District has a private omakase room. And Kaiyo, a new concept on Lower Greenville from Shoyo’s Jimmy Park, is a boisterous izakaya unlike its sister concept, but it still offers a rotating chef’s choice nigiri flight each night.
Ryan Stock, CEO of Adept Hospitality, the group behind Sushi | Bar, believes that we’re a long way from reaching the saturation point, especially considering that omakase restaurants are small by nature. “A new steakhouse opens with 300 seats, and no one blinks,” he says.
Two of the newest omakase-only restaurants are imports from elsewhere: Sushi by Scratch at the Adolphus Hotel downtown and Sushi | Bar in the East Quarter district. Both concepts were started by chef Phillip Frankland Lee, but he's now focused on the former while the latter operates independently. The restaurants are similar in design, and the menus feature many of the same creative flourishes.
Sushi by Scratch began in Los Angeles and now has locations in several markets, including Austin, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, and Montreal. The Dallas iteration operates as a pop-up inside an Adolphus hotel suite, but Lee and the property are already working to make it permanent.
Chef Lee describes the concept as a mixture of Edo-period sushi—when fish was not served raw but preserved, cured, fermented, salted, or otherwise treated and served as a street snack—and post World War II, when sushi chefs brought the snack indoors, and many began to serve sushi sans menu, highlighting their hometowns or personal styles.
Lee hails from the San Fernando Valley, so he puts his own California-accented stamp on Sushi by Scratch’s omakase preparations via house made sauces and garnishes. The hamachi, for example, is topped with sweet corn pudding and sourdough crumbs, in addition to homemade soy and fresh wasabi, and the restaurant’s yuzu kosho incorporates poblano peppers.
“We're closer to traditional than many people give us credit for,” says Lee. “It still tastes like sushi and celebrates the fish, but it features some of the ingredients from my home.”
Tatsu chef-owner Tatsuya Sekiguchi likes that more omakase options have allowed diners to experience how each chef approaches omakase and puts their own spin on the concept. It’s also great for chefs.
“As chefs, we can look at each others’ styles and inspire each other to further improve our skills,” he says. And he believes that Dallas’s food culture can only benefit from this. “I am very honored to be able to be a part of this growth. I am confident that Dallas will become a food town on par with New York and LA in the near future.”
Sekiguchi takes his position seriously, explaining that he has a two-part mission. “One is to further convey traditional Japanese food culture to people in Dallas. And the other thing is to attract great chefs from around the country and bring them to Dallas. I want to make Dallas the number one gourmet city in the country.”
So bring on the omakase boom.