Skip to content
Where to Eat in Tokyo A restaurant guide for visitors

3 July 2026

What Is Omakase, Really?

The word has come to mean "expensive sushi" in English. It does not mean that, and the difference is worth understanding before you book.

Omakase means, roughly, "I'll leave it up to you." It is not a style of food and it is not a price point; it is a way of ordering, in which the guest does not choose individual dishes and the chef decides the course, based on the season and what is good that day.

Outside Japan the word has drifted to mean, specifically, an expensive sushi tasting menu, and that usage is now common enough that arguing with it is a losing battle. But omakase is not sushi-specific. A yakitori counter working through a whole bird in sequence is omakase. A kappo restaurant cooking in front of you and deciding the next dish based on how the last one landed is omakase. The word describes the relationship between kitchen and guest, not the ingredients.

The practical consequence is that you are trusting the chef with decisions a Western tasting menu would usually let you make in advance: what you will eat, in what order, and often at what price, since some of the most traditional counters still do not publish one. That trust is the entire point, and restaurants that are good at omakase are good at reading a table quickly. Tell the chef, at the start, anything they need to know — allergies, what you have already eaten that day, whether you are very hungry or already full from lunch.

Omakase and a fixed tasting menu can look the same from the outside. At some counters the chef adjusts the course as the meal goes on; at others, omakase means a set course chosen by the chef in advance. Either way, you are not choosing the dishes.

None of this means you should stay silent. Omakase is not a test of whether you can eat everything without comment. If something genuinely does not work for you, say so before the next course arrives, not after the meal. The whole system depends on that information flowing back to the counter in real time.

Continue from here

Next guide

Halal Food in Tokyo