Prices went up at Shimazu in Tokyo. I still go back.

Grilled cutlassfish and sea bream to start

Shimazu is a sushi counter in Shirokane, Tokyo, named after owner-chef Shimazu Yukichika’s surname.

Got there five minutes early and the door was still locked. The glass and fittings at the counter used to look a bit cheap to me. The food has buffed my perception, I guess, because now they don’t.

Something was already on the grill, so I thought: sanma, Pacific saury? Or kamasu, barracuda? Sanma’s my favorite and kamasu isn’t, so I had mixed feelings. Once they plated it, it was neither. Cutlassfish. Why chop it so small? Last month’s was huge. It came with grated daikon in something like ponzu, but the shichimi did more for it. Grilled cutlassfish in Japan rarely wows me anyway.

For once the sashimi wasn’t grouper. Shimazu serves grouper so often that I’d just assumed. For a first bite I prefer sea bream anyway, with its clean sweetness and no lingering finish. The wasabi was weak for Shimazu.

Sea bream with surf clam made me think of Sugita, where I went recently. The man’s back in form, like Faker at Worlds 2023. The surf clam’s seasoning was more Sushi In than Sugita, though.

Modori-gatsuo, not fatty yet

Modori-gatsuo literally means returning bonito. They swim north when it’s hot and get caught on the way back down, so think of it as bonito after summer. The colder water puts fat on them. Spring bonito is all sharp acidity. This keeps some of that and adds fat, which I love.

Look at that oil, the green sheen like a fly’s back. Tasting it, though, it wasn’t that fatty yet. The layer under the skin was pretty thin too.

Whale, unusually tender today

Shimazu’s whale turns up almost year-round lately. Usually it’s nitari, nagasu or iwashi kujira, the huge ones like Bryde’s and sei whales. Today it was iwashi kujira, sei whale.

I already love this. It’s normally a little chewy with great seasoning, almost like Korean beef tartare. Today it was unusually tender, and one bite in I’d decided to order it again as nigiri.

Only one matsutake dish, luckily

Hairy crab with uni, Tosa jelly and shiso flowers. I’ve seen this combination a lot at sushi places in Korea. Even the bit of shell catching on my tongue felt familiar.

The steamed egg was the only matsutake dish. Matsutake usually pumps up the course price without doing much for the flavor, and this same friend and I got burned by that once at Honkogetsu in Osaka. Then again, every matsutake dish I had in Tokyo this season was good.

Ikura is Shimazu’s real star this season

I love this moment, when they put the whole basket of salmon roe on my plate. I asked for a spoon to dig in and they whisked it away.

I called it matsutake season, but this is the star here. Its season runs longer than most, sure. For sheer impact it’s up there with the whale, maybe better. Even if it were served year-round, it would still make picking the best bite hard.

Last month I brought a friend who was trying Shimazu’s ikura for the first time and asked the chef how it’s made. Shimazu-san gave the basics. The questions got more detailed, and then Shimazu-san looked over at me, eyes darting. I shut the interrogation down.

Grouper, then a thumbs-up for shima-aji

Nigiri opened with ara, grouper, so that’s where the grouper went. Its sweetness is a very different thing from sea bream’s. Then shima-aji, striped jack, with just the right texture and enough flavor in the flesh. First thumbs-up I’ve given shima-aji in a while.

There was aji too, fattier than the sardine, even though last month they made it sound like the season was over. Different suppliers, slightly different seasons.

Shimazu is almost the only place where I enjoy kasugo, young sea bream. Lately even Sugita’s has gotten good. Nine or ten years ago, when I’d have called dying on the way home from Sugita a good death, I still didn’t like Sugita’s kasugo.

The alpha and omega of tuna, revisited

Back in 2024 I titled my Shimazu blog post “the alpha and omega of tuna”. Lately, though, Shimazu’s tuna hasn’t wowed me much, so my hopes were low. Then the first piece, chu-toro, made me go: oh? Not wow. Just oh? Is this the power of low expectations? Nice sweetness in the fat.

The akami was clean and soft. Not my favorite texture, but it tasted good. When the tuna’s good, the otoro I used to dream about as a kid usually shines too, so I got my hopes up. Yep. Gotta manage those expectations.

Some background: Shimazu-san and Arai-san both trained briefly at Kyubey in Ginza, at different times, and Shimazu-san also spent under a year at Sushi Arai. So whichever way you look at it, Arai-san is the senior.

Koiwashi, and prawns with a pun

People see this and think kohada, gizzard shad. I clocked it during prep: koiwashi, little sardines. The garnishes confirmed it. It tastes like firmly cured kohada, with more vinegar and that anchovy aroma than Shimazu’s usual kohada, but more juiciness and sweetness too. Complex and intense.

Swap the prawn in that hand for a salmon and you’ve got a bear. So here’s the teddy bears’ handiwork: kuruma prawns. Shimazu-san serves prawns with a Korean pun, “annyeong-ha-saewoo” (hello plus saewoo, Korean for shrimp), and tells foreign guests in English that these are “Toyota Shrimp”. Just seeing them lined up I can smell the head innards, and the innards go inside the nigiri too. Cook them properly, keep all that, serve them warm. That’s how I like them.

Aka uni was owari

The uni on the crab earlier was murasaki uni, purple sea urchin. This gunkan was bafun uni. I’d been hoping aka uni, red sea urchin, wasn’t done for the season yet.

Even after the bafun came out I didn’t give up. Sometimes there’s only enough for extra orders, and that’s happened before. When I asked at the end: owari, all gone. They made it sound like the season was over, but on Instagram and at other sushi places it was still around. By my next visit it’ll probably really be finished.

Anago, then extra orders

Shijimi clam soup, a little sweeter here than elsewhere, means the meal’s almost over.

Then anago. My younger friend has come here with me so many times the girlfriend has changed along the way, and now he goes: was the anago always this good? Yes. It was.

He asked if the whale is good as nigiri. Of course it is. I ordered it and got the very last piece. It looked like plenty was left when they were slicing, but that was for the second seating. With no aka uni, I added the sea bream I’d liked as sashimi. And more ikura. Even with a long season you never know when you’ll hear owari, so I order extra whenever it’s here.

Other places still have uni. Nobody else has this ikura, and I can’t find anything close. See? At a sushi-ya it’s the cooking that counts, not the ingredients.

¥167,000 for three

2026/10 video

What looks like pretty pumpkin castella is sweet grilled egg, a little pre-dessert. Then brown-sugar ice cream, and the course is really done.

Three of us went, me plus my friend and his girlfriend, and paid about ¥167,000. I didn’t drink, so my share was probably around ¥55,000.

When I wrote about Shimazu on my blog in 2024/11, two of us paid ¥72,000. That price is gone.