Chef's Omakase at Sushi Isshin

It's Yoko, the food blogger who can't eat sashimi unless it's fresh!

The other day I went to dinner at Sushi Isshin, in the Sanno Kenpo Kaikan building, where I'd stopped for lunch after a health checkup!!

Sushi Isshin is a sushi restaurant you can only enter if you belong to the Kanto IT Software Health Insurance Society (ITS Kenpo), or are accompanied by someone who does!

The other restaurants in the Kenpo Kaikan building are Ookarou (Chinese), Al Faro (Italian), Kotoritei (Japanese kaiseki), and Bar Blossom, and all of them are super cheap!

Courses start at ¥1,000, and for ¥3,000 you can get a really impressive meal.

Of them all, Sushi Isshin is by far the hardest to book!

It's affiliated with Sushi Kanesaka in Ginza, which holds two Michelin stars, and perhaps for that reason weekday evenings are almost always booked about a month ahead.

This was a Friday night, and I lucked out when a cancellation opened up and I slipped in.

Let's start with the elegant entrance of Sushi Isshin.

We had counter seats.

You get your sushi freshly made, and it's fun to watch the chef at work!

This time I chose the ¥5,400 chef's omakase course.

Appetizer	One dish
Sashimi	Assortment of four
Grilled dish	One dish
Steamed dish	One dish
Sushi	Twelve pieces
Roll	Half a roll
Soup	Miso soup
Dessert	Ice cream

Starting with sashimi and going all the way to twelve pieces of sushi is a hefty amount of food, so my expectations were high!

Drinks are extra, but they're very cheap too.

Soft drinks are in the ¥100s... I was shocked when I saw the menu (lol).

I went with Suzune, a sparkling sake.

I usually start with sparkling wine, but unfortunately they were out.

Suzune is a little sweeter than ordinary sake, and delicious.

The appetizer was water octopus.

It's dressed with bonito and pickled plum, and the excess moisture has been drawn out. The texture is sticky and the flavor concentrated!

Flounder (hirame), kept light with salt and wasabi.

Cured mackerel (shime-saba). Rich and fatty. I love silver-skinned fish!

Bonito (katsuo), topped with a mix of chives and ginger.

It has a garlicky flavor. The slices are nice and thick, which feels luxurious!

Smoked Spanish mackerel (sawara).

This was right up my alley!

Apparently the prep takes a huge amount of work, about five hours starting from the morning.

When the fish is fatty, the moisture doesn't leave easily, they said.

Shako (mantis shrimp) from Aichi (bottom right in the photo), simmered.

Clear soup with clam and shijimi clams. The clams are plump.

Cutlassfish (tachiuo) pickled in shuto (salted bonito innards). The flesh is fluffy!

I was already completely satisfied before the nigiri even began.

Even the sashimi is smoked or otherwise prepared in different ways, and you can feel the effort to keep you from getting bored.

And now the sushi begins!

Kasugo sea bream (kasugo-dai).

The chef put something on top of the rice when making it, so I asked what it was.

It's pureed shiba shrimp, flaked into a fluffy topping (oboro). It adds umami.

Yellowtail (buri). It's very fatty, so thin slices are layered to keep it from feeling heavy.

Lean tuna (akami).

Medium fatty tuna (chutoro), from the cut called kamashita.

Kohada (gizzard shad).

Fatty tuna (otoro), taken from the block near the belly.

Simmered kuruma prawn.

I savored it so slowly that the rice nearly fell apart...

A gunkan (battleship roll) of sea urchin and salmon roe.

Either one is delicious alone, but together they're even better...

It felt like a wave of concentrated ocean flavor came crashing into my mouth.

Conger eel (anago). So soft and fluffy!!

It seems the upper half of the eel is shaped skin side out, and the lower half flesh side out.

A roll stuffed to the brim with tuna!

It was so big I couldn't eat it in one bite! (lol)

The tamago (egg omelet) was so sweet and fine-textured that I wondered if it was pudding.

Vanilla ice cream, the real kind with vanilla beans in it.

The chef who made our sushi was fun to talk to, and I ended up staying until almost closing time.

I want to go back right away! Next time I'm planning to order the Isshin special course, limited to 10 people a day!

If you belong to ITS Kenpo but have never used the restaurants, I highly recommend checking them out!

You might change jobs or your company might switch insurers, and who knows whether you'll be able to use them forever...

Please do go at least once!

Sushi Isshin

1F Sanno Kenpo Kaikan, 2-5-6 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Weekdays 17:00-22:00
Sat, Sun and holidays 11:30-14:00, 17:00-22:00
03-5570-1921
*Reservations by phone only