“17-course, $300 omakase for 16 people a night, 8 people a seating.” Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Jesse Ito, owner of Royal Sushi & Izakaya in Philadelphia, as he prepares to serve his exclusive 17-course omakase to a lucky 16 customers a night.
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00:00 Royal Sushi and Izakaya is a passion project.
00:04 Under one roof, you have a boisterous izakaya
00:08 for some great food.
00:09 Tucked away behind the Norin curtains of the izakaya,
00:12 I have my omakase service.
00:14 Omakase literally means, I'll leave it up to you.
00:17 So it's a chef experience where you get
00:19 to see the chef's vision.
00:20 And there I do my 17 course $300 omakase
00:25 for 16 people a night, eight people a seating.
00:28 Every chef's dream is to have both things, right?
00:31 You want a fun, loud, volume-packed place.
00:35 In the same space, I have my very serious
00:38 chef-tasting meal where I get to make the food I want.
00:42 You know, I get to control everything.
00:44 And that's, I think, a chef's dream, to have both.
00:47 [laughing]
00:57 Hey, I'm Jesse Ito.
00:59 I'm the chef/owner here at Royal Izakaya.
01:01 10 hours before omakase service.
01:03 Fish is coming in right now from Japan.
01:05 Let's bring it on in.
01:06 This is Nobu.
01:12 He's the owner of Yama's Seafood.
01:14 He distributes to some of the best
01:15 Japanese restaurants in the area.
01:16 - This was caught on Sunday in Japan,
01:19 packed on Monday in Toyosu, brought on the airport,
01:23 and then it arrived last night at JFK.
01:25 A few hours later, brought it over to you.
01:27 - Today's Tuesday.
01:28 - Yeah.
01:28 - This feels pretty big.
01:29 - So long that it's on a two-pager.
01:31 - It's pretty big. - It's gonna be 400.
01:32 Not your biggest, but.
01:33 - Yeah, but that's just for today.
01:35 There's three more deliveries.
01:36 Tuna, bluefin.
01:40 Ooh, my God, it's heavy.
01:43 It's nine o'clock, fish just got dropped.
01:51 I can't stay on the ice too long,
01:52 otherwise it damages the fish.
01:54 I have to get it out clean, gutted, scaled, prepared.
01:57 Some's gonna go in the dry-ager,
01:58 some's gonna go in the walk-in.
02:00 A lot of it will be used for tonight's service.
02:02 Here are some farm mackerel.
02:05 Mackerel is my favorite fish.
02:07 It's oily, it's fatty.
02:09 I also gravitate towards fish that I think are a challenge
02:13 for the American palate.
02:14 Growing up in my dad's restaurant,
02:16 mackerel was a fish that a lot of customers
02:19 immediately said no to.
02:20 They probably had a bad experience.
02:22 It's a very technical fish because of the oil content.
02:25 Has to be extremely fresh.
02:27 That fish gets salt-cured, gets vinegar-soaked.
02:30 I like a good challenge.
02:31 I like to let diners know that things
02:33 they may not have thought they liked, they actually love.
02:36 This is the koe, Japanese long-toothed grouper.
02:40 This one's gonna get aged for at least a week.
02:42 You can kinda see it's already in rigor.
02:44 You gotta handle it with care,
02:45 'cause this could easily just mess up your whole day.
02:47 So what they've done here, this little chop,
02:49 and you see there's a little hole here.
02:51 This is the ikejime process.
02:52 That's a Japanese technique.
02:54 They stick a metal rod down the spine to kill the nerves.
02:58 Keeps the fish from decomposing so quickly.
03:00 You can tell an immediate difference
03:02 when you work with a fish that's ikejime
03:03 and one that's not.
03:04 The flesh kinda tears a bit for the ones
03:07 that have not been processed that way,
03:09 whereas this one, if I were to cut into it today,
03:11 it's just so pristine, it's so tight.
03:13 I got a ton of fish I gotta break down right now.
03:20 I usually have a couple more hands,
03:22 but since we have so much fish,
03:23 I came in a little early to get started.
03:25 But between three sushi chefs,
03:27 we usually spend about four hours
03:29 getting all this fish broken down, sorted out,
03:32 plus a couple more hours of skinning, slicing,
03:34 getting ready for service.
03:35 I always start my fish prep with the fish
03:39 that have to get salted or cured first,
03:41 'cause that takes time.
03:42 So we're gonna start with the Spanish mackerel.
03:44 All right, so first part of the cleaning process,
03:46 we're gonna just cut the fins off.
03:48 You just wanna get as much as the guts out as possible.
03:50 That's what really rots it very quickly.
03:53 Salt curing, what it does is essentially
03:55 pull out a lot of the excess moisture.
03:57 Mackerels, it's important because
03:58 we're gonna vinegar soak later,
04:00 so it allows the vinegar to penetrate easier and better.
04:04 So that's gonna salt cure for about 20 minutes.
04:06 So let me get the squid out.
04:08 This is the Iori Ika, bigfin reef squid.
04:11 I love using this squid specifically from Japan.
04:13 This one is super meaty, sweet, delicious.
04:16 You cannot get this from America, this squid.
04:19 Yeah, this is a $72 squid, to understand this cost.
04:23 Woo, there we go, ink sac intact.
04:27 You do not wanna pop that.
04:29 This is the spine.
04:31 This is the only kind of like bone in this squid.
04:34 I guess it's not a bone, it's like cartilage.
04:37 The squid has millions of layers of skin on it,
04:40 but you just take a towel or a paper towel,
04:42 and if you just go like this, you see this film, like that?
04:46 You wanna get this layer off.
04:48 Rubbing squid skin off, sticking my hand in fish stomachs
04:52 to take all the guts out, like, that's my zen time.
04:56 So Ishigaki Dai, spotted knifejaw bream,
04:58 also known as barred knifejaw bream
05:00 because of these crazy spines it has.
05:02 This is one of my favorite fish to work with.
05:04 I'm using it for the omakase this season.
05:07 This one's gonna get aged,
05:08 so it has to get cleaned very well.
05:10 This process, suki-biki, is the knife scaling.
05:13 Just removes the scales off of the skin.
05:15 Fish like this one, this Ishigaki Dai,
05:17 you have to do it this way because the scales are so compact
05:20 that if you use another scaling tool,
05:23 they just won't come off,
05:24 and they'll end up all over your cutting board.
05:27 You have to do the entire thing by hand,
05:29 so this is gonna take a bit of time.
05:31 Growing up in my dad's restaurant,
05:36 my dad's from Kyushu, Japan.
05:38 He's a classically trained Japanese chef.
05:40 My mom's from Seoul, Korea.
05:42 They opened a restaurant in 1979,
05:44 one of the first Japanese restaurants in South Jersey,
05:46 called Fuji.
05:48 I started working there when I was 14,
05:50 so I learned everything,
05:52 like the foundation of what I know there.
05:54 These fish heads, we actually save them and the collars,
05:57 and we're gonna use them in the izakaya.
05:59 They're gonna be fried.
06:00 It's a dish called kabuto age,
06:02 served with a ponzu sauce.
06:04 Getting the best meat available for a great price,
06:06 so we cross-utilize a lot of things,
06:07 so there's zero waste.
06:09 It's 10 o'clock.
06:12 I'm gonna break down the tuna upstairs.
06:13 I did what I had to do down here.
06:15 This is like 120 pounds.
06:17 It's from a 500-something pound fish from Spain.
06:21 All right, here we are.
06:22 This is the sushi bar.
06:23 This is where the omakase happens.
06:25 I do two seatings a night, 17 courses.
06:28 One, two, three, up.
06:30 Oh, my God.
06:31 That is a big tuna.
06:35 This is the belly cut.
06:37 All of this right here, this is otoro.
06:41 This is the super fatty tuna belly.
06:43 Now, all of here, this is gonna be chutoro,
06:45 and this is the akame, the lean part.
06:47 This is the kama, so this does have kama toro here.
06:50 This is good if you grill it or torch it.
06:51 It has a lot of muscle tendon.
06:53 So very chewy, but delicious if you cook it.
06:56 When I do this, I'm measuring for a sakukatsu.
06:58 This is like the length of the fillet
07:00 you wanna work with for sushi
07:02 when it gets cut into that long, rectangular shape.
07:05 This is the saigo, so I'm gonna just cut it down
07:07 in usable chunks.
07:10 Parts of it that are more chewy,
07:12 the tail end, the end bits,
07:14 that'll be put off to one of my sous chefs.
07:17 Some of it's gonna get dry-aged.
07:19 Some of it's gonna get used today,
07:20 and some of it's not gonna get dry-aged.
07:22 It's just gonna be stored and probably used tomorrow.
07:24 This loin right here is $2,500.
07:27 Yeah, this is $2,500 a fish.
07:30 Tuna is a quintessential sushi fish
07:31 because of just the flavor.
07:34 I mean, when you eat bluefin tuna like this,
07:36 there is nothing that tastes like this.
07:37 The umami, the depth of flavor,
07:39 the fattiness, the richness.
07:41 This paired with nice acidic rice, soy sauce,
07:45 it's like the perfect bite.
07:47 This is a special paper called maguro paper.
07:49 Each roll costs $10.
07:51 I mean, it's a highly absorbent, thick paper
07:54 that just maintains the quality of fish,
07:56 especially for tuna, but we use it for everything.
07:58 So 120 pound of that bluefin,
08:01 we're gonna go through that in five days.
08:03 Truly wild.
08:05 Go, birds.
08:06 So this here is Edwin.
08:07 He's one of our sushi apprentices here.
08:10 He's gonna be wrapping all the tuna
08:12 to put away in the walk-in.
08:13 That's it for the breakdown as of right now.
08:15 It'll continue through today,
08:16 but I'm gonna get the rice started
08:18 since that takes some time.
08:19 [upbeat music]
08:22 Okay, it's 11 o'clock.
08:23 Let's start washing.
08:24 We do three batches of this a day,
08:26 but my omakase rice, I use a special grain, special vinegar.
08:31 This is called the hitomi bori.
08:33 It means love at first sight.
08:36 This is my akazu rice vinegar.
08:39 It has to stay closed and contained
08:40 to keep the acidity of the vinegar.
08:42 You can't keep it open.
08:43 This is the rice washing process.
08:47 Sushi rice is a little sticky.
08:48 It's mainly because of just the natural starch on the rice.
08:51 You see the starch coming off right now.
08:53 You don't want it to be too sticky
08:54 where it's unmoldable.
08:56 You also don't want it to be too soft, too hard,
08:58 so it's so technical to get this part right.
09:01 I always equate nigiri to clay work,
09:03 which is what I love doing in pottery.
09:05 You're just molding the rice,
09:07 and the better the rice, the better clay,
09:09 the better your product.
09:10 But this is the most technical part of the day, actually.
09:13 Rice is way more important than the fish.
09:15 Obviously, you need great fish, great product
09:17 to make great sushi, but if you don't have good rice,
09:20 it doesn't matter how good the fish is.
09:24 So rice is straining for eight minutes.
09:26 Hey, timer just went off.
09:28 Gotta cook the rice.
09:30 This is the rice net.
09:31 We use the net so we can easily pull it out.
09:33 Otherwise, the rice kind of sticks to the pot.
09:35 Do 36 minutes in this gas cooker.
09:38 Always double-check that the flame's on.
09:40 In the beginning, I have hit that switch,
09:42 and the flame did not go on.
09:43 And then 36 minutes later,
09:45 you're left with some really wet, raw rice
09:48 and a really, really messed-up day.
09:50 While the rice is cooking, let's go over here.
09:54 This is another sushi apprentice, Elmer.
09:55 He's been with us for over a year.
09:57 Started as a dishwasher, super skilled.
10:00 He is taking all that toro,
10:01 that muscle part that's super chewy, scraping all out.
10:05 And then he's gonna go in it again
10:07 to take out even more connective tissue.
10:09 So it's like a super labor-intensive process.
10:11 This takes a lot of time, a lot of effort.
10:13 But if a restaurant can do this,
10:15 that's how you utilize a whole tuna.
10:17 Rice is cooking.
10:19 While that's cooking, this is the dry-ager.
10:21 Dry-ager built for beef, but I mean, I think, and fish.
10:29 Dry-aging, what it does is it concentrates the flavor.
10:33 This, oh, this is the kue.
10:36 You saw one of these earlier,
10:37 so you can kind of see how it's completely dried out,
10:40 leathered out.
10:41 This is the ichigaki dai.
10:44 The way we cut it, we retain the flavor
10:46 we're gonna use later.
10:46 So it looks like I'm like the fish,
10:48 Hannibal Lecter in a way, right?
10:50 This is the aged bluefin tuna.
10:53 Beautiful piece, so we're gonna use this tonight.
10:55 I'm gonna cut into it.
10:57 Got 15 minutes till the rice is done,
10:59 and I'm gonna have to do the sharizu,
11:00 so let's break this down.
11:02 This is not every day that I use aged tuna.
11:03 I just started incorporating it.
11:05 It's very different than beef.
11:06 There's no fungus or mold that you're trying to build up.
11:10 That doesn't form on here, and you don't want it.
11:12 I mean, this is gonna be eaten raw.
11:14 Coming through, rice.
11:18 If you're here.
11:19 Rice is cooked.
11:26 This is the sharizu.
11:27 This is the process of incorporating
11:29 my rice vinegar mixture into the rice.
11:32 It has to happen right now when it's steaming.
11:34 This process is important, one, for germification.
11:37 The acidity prevents it from building up mold
11:40 or building up any bacteria.
11:42 The other process, it encapsulates every grain of rice
11:44 and it protects the flavor,
11:46 and it makes it super malleable, so.
11:48 This thing, the hungiri, is made of Japanese cypress wood.
11:51 Super resistant to rot, warping, mold.
11:54 It doesn't have so much of a fragrance,
11:56 so it's great to do rice in it.
11:57 This thing itself, the size, is like $500, $600.
12:00 So these things you try to keep for years.
12:02 What a lot of people don't know about sushi
12:04 is sushi actually means sour rice, so.
12:06 Originally, before nigiri sushi became a thing
12:09 where it's pressed molded, but I do it omakase,
12:12 sushi was a fermented fish.
12:14 They took fish, they took rice, salt, vinegar,
12:17 and they essentially barreled it up for years.
12:21 And the lacto-fermentation from the rice
12:23 would ferment the fish, and then they would grill it later.
12:25 So we're gonna let this sit for about 10 minutes,
12:28 air out, flip it, then put it in the warmer.
12:31 All right, one o'clock.
12:36 Still a lot to do, but caviar should be here any minute.
12:39 Gary, yeah.
12:40 - What's going on?
12:41 - Got the goods?
12:42 - I brought you some of the delicious caviar.
12:46 We got the premium acetra from Italy.
12:50 Very nice texture.
12:51 - We're gonna use these in the next five days
12:53 between omakase and izakaya.
12:55 So on any given piece,
12:57 you're probably gonna get that much caviar.
13:00 I don't believe in, I hate it when you get two grains,
13:02 and I'm like, what is that?
13:04 - Amazing.
13:06 - It's perfect, thanks.
13:08 - Like always.
13:09 - It's 1.30.
13:14 - It's time to get slicing on some of this fish,
13:16 get ready for service.
13:17 So first I'm gonna start with the king salmon belly
13:19 from New Zealand.
13:20 This is a Yanagi, Japanese fish slicer, single bevel.
13:23 It's a special Damascus metal.
13:26 You can kind of see that design, it's made from the nohi.
13:28 This one takes like a year or two to get.
13:30 I like it 'cause it's just very agile.
13:33 I do a lot of unique slicing based on the fish,
13:36 based on the way it eats, the texture,
13:38 if it's gonna get torched or not, presentation.
13:41 You'll see some pieces get double cut.
13:43 That's either for looks,
13:44 or it's also in case there might be a pin bone
13:46 that broke off.
13:47 So if you do a double slice, you'll catch that.
13:49 Also just looks so pretty.
13:51 I'll say omakase sushi is just raw fish.
13:53 That's why you gotta make it look pretty.
13:55 It's only eight seats.
13:56 It's only 16 seats a night.
13:57 It's only one of me.
13:58 It's 2.45.
14:07 We're in the izakaya.
14:08 I'm here with Chef Justin.
14:09 He runs the izakaya menu, I run the omakase.
14:12 Justin and I have been working together for a few years now.
14:15 He's super talented.
14:16 We depend on each other for each other's opinions
14:19 on the food.
14:20 It's nice to kind of have that backing
14:22 or that person to bounce ideas off of.
14:24 - So we're doing yaki gyutan, which is grilled beef tongue.
14:27 We braise the beef tongue,
14:29 and then it is marinated in mirin, soy, and sake.
14:33 And then there's two sauces.
14:34 There's a salsa matcha, and then there's a shio negi,
14:38 which is like the traditional Japanese garnish
14:40 for this dish.
14:41 Charred scallion, raw garlic, sesame,
14:43 some lime to tie the two sauces together.
14:45 - That sounds really amazing.
14:47 - So while I'm a sushi chef, restaurateur type of person,
14:50 I also love photography,
14:51 and I do all the social media photography for the restaurant.
14:54 So let's head on upstairs to get this shot.
14:57 So we're in my office right now,
15:02 staying right on top of the izakaya.
15:04 This is where I do all my photography
15:05 to get all the specials done, to get the menu photographed.
15:08 I got my light box here, big diffuser.
15:12 This is my Canon R6 Mark II.
15:15 I just upgraded, finally.
15:16 I go for up close and personal.
15:19 Normally, if we have an izakaya special,
15:21 I'll set aside about 10, 15 minutes to get it photographed.
15:24 I do have to upload this on my computer, get it edited.
15:27 I'll send it over to my GM, Nicole,
15:30 and she'll get it up on Instagram.
15:32 It's 325.
15:34 We still got a lot more to do.
15:36 What I'm working on right now is the omakase menu.
15:38 It's dated, so I do it every day.
15:41 And obviously, there might be some changes.
15:43 I have to do it right now to get it to the team
15:46 so they can print it, get it folded,
15:47 stamped, and ready to go.
15:49 So let's get going.
15:52 Four o'clock.
15:56 Let's pop into the kitchen.
15:57 This is my father, Masaharu Ito.
16:00 He's from Japan.
16:01 He taught me everything I know.
16:02 Sushi master, making the tamagoyaki for tonight.
16:06 This is a very technical thing.
16:07 He's way better than me.
16:09 - Not exactly.
16:10 I think he did very well.
16:12 I think couple more years to come,
16:13 his prime time will come.
16:15 He have to think about what he gonna do rest of life.
16:18 [laughs]
16:20 But I'm very happy right now, yeah.
16:23 - Working with my dad in this context is much easier.
16:26 You know, back in the day when he was teaching me,
16:29 I was a resentful, young, cocky kid.
16:33 Now it's great.
16:34 He gets to go home early.
16:35 I handle all the problems, and it feels good.
16:39 This tamagoyaki is essentially like
16:41 a sweet, savory egg omelet.
16:43 It's the most technical egg omelet you can make
16:46 just because of the motion required to do it.
16:48 You can see he's gonna do this flipping motion
16:50 in a square copper tamagoyaki pan.
16:53 So it's very technical, very hard to get that motion down.
16:56 [upbeat music]
17:00 Okay, it's 4.30.
17:02 I'm going upstairs to take a 20 minute break.
17:03 This is the only time I get, so let's go.
17:06 Gonna eat my lunch.
17:07 Ooh.
17:12 [upbeat music]
17:14 Okay, 5 o'clock.
17:23 Got my break, Ray do final prep.
17:25 We got an hour to go, 30 minutes 'til pre-shift,
17:27 so I just have a couple things I still have to cut.
17:30 I got the squid, I got the live scallop.
17:32 Botan and I do the shrimp.
17:33 Been doing this for a long time,
17:34 but there is a lot of pressure to execute.
17:36 [upbeat music]
17:41 [upbeat music]
17:44 It's 5.30, time for pre-shift.
17:51 I'm here with Samantha, she's my omakase server.
17:53 My wingman, she's been here for seven years,
17:55 working with me.
17:56 What do we got tonight?
17:57 - So, two allergies tonight.
17:59 One guest at six o'clock has a mackerel allergy
18:02 and another guest at six o'clock can not eat shrimp.
18:04 That is all.
18:05 Today we are booking Tuesday, February 20th
18:08 and Wednesday, February 21st.
18:10 - That's pretty far out.
18:11 - It's the first date we have available.
18:13 - Great.
18:14 For tonight, the shima-aji, the kuei, the ichigakidai,
18:17 noriguro, and the akami and toro are all dry-aged.
18:22 For add-ons, I have the A5 wagyu,
18:26 caviar toro, Hokkaido uni, so I have a very special one
18:29 in case people wanna get it.
18:31 We have the spicy crunchy tuna temaki,
18:34 toro uni caviar temaki, and my dad's tamago.
18:38 It's 5.40, we got 20 minutes 'til service starts.
18:41 Samantha, we can start seating 10 up, so in 10 minutes.
18:45 Otherwise, you know, we're about to do what we do every day.
18:47 The show begins soon.
18:49 [upbeat music]
18:52 Momokase is a performance in the sense that
18:54 everything leading up to it is very physical,
18:57 technical, fast-paced, precise work,
19:01 and the clock is just ticking, ticking, ticking.
19:05 And everything leads up to this one moment
19:06 where the show begins, the guests are seated,
19:09 and we get going.
19:11 At that point, everything's pretty much prepared.
19:13 It's just assembling the nigiri,
19:15 but the assembly part is, to me, it's like a dance.
19:18 Kumamoto oyster with toro tartare to start.
19:22 Use your hands, make sure you do one bite, okay?
19:25 It's all best eaten in 30 seconds.
19:26 The omakase is also a performance in the sense that
19:30 I am directly engaging with all my customers.
19:34 I am live for them, and if there's any type of emotion
19:38 in the day or any type of thing that's on my mind,
19:41 I have to clear that, and I have to be ready.
19:43 This is the katsuo tataki, charred Japanese bonito.
19:47 These people have waited months to get in
19:49 to experience this with me, and they're paying
19:51 a lot of money, and it's important to make sure that
19:54 energy-wise and personality-wise,
19:56 I'm there too to be with them.
19:58 I want it to be a great experience,
19:59 and part of what makes omakase great is
20:02 you are right there with the chef
20:04 who you're watching them make every piece.
20:06 They can explain to you what's going on.
20:08 You get to see the process, and they can explain to you
20:12 the best way to eat it in their mind,
20:14 and that's a very special connection.
20:16 (upbeat music)
20:19 (upbeat music)