Sushi Ei

Although this restaurant is located in Chiba, the fact that it’s reachable in under 90 minutes from central Tokyo means that it’s a feasible day trip destination even if you only have a short time in town. The chef, Kazuhiro Sato, is the second generation owner of this shop, and a culinary magpie who believes there is always something new to learn by experiencing sushi from the customer’s point of view. On top of his formative training in Ginza, he has spent countless hours dining on world-class sushi and learning from the words of the masters who prepare it. At his own shop, he takes such pride in his ingredients that he’ll hold them up for you to inspect before he cuts and serves them to you. This will give you a great sense of exactly what you’re eating, establishing a connection between source and dish that we’re just not accustomed to nowadays. There are plenty of inventive aspects to a meal here too. Consider, for example, the dried mullet roe, paired with samples of brandy and sake. His unique nigiri, some of which combine several ingredients, is also something worth writing home about. While the vast majority of sushi shops will serve you fairly plain looking fare, Sato-san’s dishes are veritable bouquets of color and flavor. A perfect example of this is the scallop with tuna on red vinegar sushi rice, or the even more complex sea urchin, tuna, shrimp, and salmon roe combo. To cap off what must be one of the most entertaining sushi experiences on earth, 300 bottles of sake are kept on site for you to sample to your heart’s content. If you find yourself getting tired of the sometimes quite repetitive sushi fare of Ginza, get yourself down to Chiba to open the door into a whole new world of pescatarian experimentation.