New York City / Japanese
Best Japanese Restaurants
in NYC
Izakaya, yakitori, soba, kaiseki and sake bars — and the two happy hours that actually exist.
Two Japanese happy hours run in this city — Rule of Thirds and Bar Goto, both from 5pm.
- 18 verified rooms
- 2 real happy hours
- skewers from $5
- open till 2:50am
The short version
- Only two happy hoursBar Goto (daily 5–6pm) and Rule of Thirds (Mon–Fri 5–6:30pm). That is the complete list.
- Best value splurgeOdo — $150 lunch kaiseki against $270 at dinner. Same kitchen.
- Best cheap mealHi-Collar’s $19 omurice, or Sakagura’s $18 Tokudashi — 11:30 to 12:30 weekdays only.
- Get the address rightAngel’s Share is at 45 Grove St now, not Stuyvesant St. Walk-in only, max four people.
- Latest closeSake Bar Decibel runs to 2:50am, six nights a week.
The best Japanese restaurants in NYC right now are Sakagura for sake, Yakitori Torishin for skewers, Odo for kaiseki, Rule of Thirds in Greenpoint and Katana Kitten for drinking. This is the whole-cuisine guide — izakaya, yakitori, soba, udon, tonkatsu, kissaten counters, kaiseki and sake bars — so if you specifically want sushi we have a sushi guide and an omakase guide that go deeper. One finding worth stating plainly: across eighteen verified venues, exactly two publish a happy hour. Sixteen publish none at all. If a page tells you a specific New York izakaya does $5 highballs, that number did not come from the restaurant. Every price below came off an official menu in August 2026, and where a restaurant publishes nothing we say so.
At a glance
What to order and when the room is actually open. Tap a number on the map to place it.
| Restaurant | What to order | Days | Hours | $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rule of Thirds | Happy hour Mon–Fri; $5 skewers | Mon–Fri | 5–6:30pm | $$$ |
| Bar Goto | Happy hour 5–6pm; Sakura Martini | Tue–Sun | 5–6pm | $$$ |
| Sakagura | $18 Tokudashi lunch (11:30–12:30 only) | Mon–Fri | lunch and dinner | $$$ |
| Yakitori Torishin | Pre-theater course $107; walk-in Sake Bar | Daily | from 5pm | $$$ |
| Yopparai | Sake, staff-selected; no published prices | Mon–Sat | from 5:30pm | $$$ |
| Ariyoshi | Izakaya; lunch service daily | Tue–Sun | 11:30am–10/11pm | $$$ |
| Raku | Handmade udon | Daily | 12–9/9:30pm | $$$ |
| Soba Totto | Handmade soba and yakitori | Daily | call ahead | $$$ |
| Katsu-Hama | Tonkatsu; lunch special | Daily | call ahead | $$$ |
| Hi-Collar | Omurice $19; siphon coffee | Daily | 11:30am–4pm, 5:30–11pm | $$$ |
| Okonomi / Yuji Ramen | Ichiju sansai by day, ramen by night | Daily | 9am–3pm, 6–10pm | $$$ |
| Osakana | Takeout nigiri and sashimi | Mon–Sun | 12–7pm | $$$ |
| Odo | Lunch kaiseki $150 vs dinner $270 | Tue–Sun | fixed seatings | $$$ |
| Tsukimi | $250 counter tasting, prepaid | Wed–Sun | 6:30pm / 5:30 and 8:15pm | $$$ |
| Katsuno | Chirashi / nigiri / sashimi dinner all $43 | Wed–Sun | 5:45–9pm | $$$ |
| Angel’s Share | Cocktails; walk-in only, max party of 4 | Tue–Sat | from 5pm | $$$ |
| Katana Kitten | Toki highball $19.50; beer from $8 | Daily | to 2am | $$$ |
| Sake Bar Decibel | Sake; latest-closing room here | Daily | 6pm–2:50am | $$$ |
Map: where these 18 spots are
East 9th Street is the spine — Hi-Collar and Decibel sit on the same block, with Tsukimi, Raku and Osakana minutes away.
Pins are numbered to match the table above – tap any pin for the detail and directions.
The only two Japanese happy hours in NYC
Both verified on the venues’ own sites. Sixteen of the other rooms in this guide publish none. More discounted windows in our best cocktail bars in NYC guide.
Rule of Thirds On now
The $5 skewer still exists in New York, and this is where. Binchotan chicken meatball with worcestershire yolk jam, $5. Duck hearts with soy, garlic and chilli, $5. They sit on the same menu as a $169 three-course Buddhist duck and a $57 wagyu sukiyaki, which tells you exactly how wide this room’s range is. Happy hour runs Monday to Friday, 5 to 6:30pm, confirmed on the restaurant’s own menus page. The honest caveat: the window is published but the discounted items live only in a downloadable PDF — nobody says what is actually reduced or whether it is bar-only. Call before you build a night around it. Cocktails otherwise run $12 to $20.
Bar Goto On now
The other published Japanese happy hour in New York: 5 to 6pm, every day they are open, at both the Eldridge Street original and Bar Goto Niban at 474 Bergen Street in Brooklyn. Order the Sakura Martini, which the bar itself calls an undisputed modern classic and which is the reason people cross town for this room. Food is proper Japanese bar snacks — okonomiyaki, spicy miso things. The honest caveat, and it is a planning problem: one hour, walk-ins only, no reservations at either location, closed Mondays, and small rooms. Five o’clock sharp on a Tuesday is the only version of this that reliably works. Nobody publishes what is actually discounted.
Izakaya, yakitori and sake
Skewers, small plates and bottle lists. See also best Asian restaurants in NYC.
Sakagura
You walk into an office lobby on East 43rd, take the stairs down, pass a wall of sake barrels, and arrive somewhere that feels nothing like Midtown. There is no street-level signage. Over 260 sakes by the restaurant’s own count. The deal, and it is narrow: the Tokudashi lunch set is $18 and served 11:30am to 12:30pm on weekdays only, with a different dish every day. Walk in at 12:45 and you are ordering from the $23-and-up teishoku bowls instead — ten don $24, oyako don $23, kaisen don $42. The local move: book the 11:30 slot on Resy, take the Tokudashi, and get a glass of something you have never heard of.
sakagura.com · See our Midtown happy hours
Yakitori Torishin
By its own account the first yakitori restaurant in the United States to hold a Michelin star, and it has held one for seven consecutive years. There are two completely different experiences here and picking wrong is the mistake people make. The Select Counter and Chef’s Counter are reservation-only through Resy and are the Michelin version. The Sake Bar takes walk-ins with no booking, but carries a $40 per-guest minimum, so it is not a casual one-beer stop. The local move: if you are seated at the Sake Bar by 6:30pm the Pre-Theater Course is $107 and you are a block off Eighth Avenue with time to make a curtain.
torishinny.com · See our Hell’s Kitchen happy hours
Yopparai
The premise is that you do not order sake here so much as get walked through it — the staff talk you through bottle stories and pairings rather than hand you a list, and the ingredients come from local farmers’ markets or direct from Japan. It is a genuinely lovely way to spend three hours on Clinton Street. The honest caveat, and it is the whole risk: nothing is priced online. Not one bottle. Your bill depends entirely on which sake they talk you into, and they are persuasive. The local move: set your own number before you sit down and say it out loud when they ask what you like. Reservations through OpenTable.
yopparainyc.com · See our Lower East Side happy hours
Ariyoshi
One of very few Japanese rooms in this guide serving a real lunch every day it is open, which on Queens Boulevard makes it genuinely useful rather than merely good. The honest caveat, and there are three: it is closed Mondays, the doors shut by 11pm even on a Saturday, and the official site publishes no menu prices at all — so you are budgeting blind. The verdict: worth the 7 to 40th Street if you are already in western Queens or want an izakaya dinner that does not start at 6pm and end at a $19 highball. No happy hour is published.
ariyoshinyc.com · See our Long Island City happy hours
Soba, udon and tonkatsu
The noodle-and-cutlet half of the cuisine, which New York under-serves. Ramen has its own guide: best ramen in NYC.
Raku
Handmade udon is the whole proposition and it is worth queueing for. Four NYC locations — East Village on 6th Street, SoHo on MacDougal, Midtown on 9th Avenue, and Brooklyn on Bridge Street. Read that last one carefully: the Bridge Street address is pickup and delivery only. There is no dining room there, and people turn up hungry and confused. SoHo runs latest, to 10pm Friday and Saturday. The honest caveat: the site prices nothing, so you are budgeting blind, and reservations go exclusively through SevenRooms and DoorDash Reservations, opening two weeks ahead.
rakunyc.com · See our best ramen in NYC
Soba Totto
Handmade soba in the Kyoto style, plus a yakitori grill and a serious bar of premium sake, shochu and cocktails, a short walk from Grand Central. Two honest caveats and they are both about information. First, it shares a street address with Sakagura — both are 211 East 43rd Street — so check which door you actually want before you go down the wrong stairwell. Second, the official site says only “we are open everyday” and publishes neither specific hours nor a single price. You are calling ahead whether you like it or not, which for a soba lunch near Grand Central is more friction than it should be.
sobatotto.com · See our best lunch in NYC
Katsu-Hama
Tonkatsu is the reason and it is good. The honest caveat is unusual enough to be the headline: their own online menu is broken. Some items render in dollars and others in Japanese yen — tonkatsu displays as “150.00 JPY”, the chicken don as “1000.00 JPY”. The only plausible dollar figures on the page are a $15 lunch special and a $12 hot-pot katsu-ni, and we are not printing either as fact without a phone call. The site also publishes no hours and tells you to ring for same-day questions about seating and takeout. The verdict: good tonkatsu, unusable website. Call first.
katsuhamanewyork.com · See our best lunch in NYC
Japanese for under $20
Counters, kissaten and one fish shop with no seats. More in best cheap eats in NYC.
Hi-Collar
One small East Village room running two restaurants: a kissaten until 4pm and an izakaya and sake bar from 5:30. Order the omurice with the original tomato sauce — Japanese omelette over tomato rice with chicken soboro — at $19, and get the siphon coffee with it. There is live jazz nightly from 7:30 to 10. The local move: the $19 omurice is a lunch play; the same dish in hayashi form at dinner runs $26 to $29. The honest caveat: walk-in only at dinner, and walk-in only for daytime service Monday through Wednesday, in a small room on a busy block. At 8pm you are waiting.
hi-collar.com · See our East Village happy hours
Okonomi / Yuji Ramen
Twelve counter seats and two completely separate restaurants sharing them. Until 3pm it is Okonomi, serving traditional ichiju sansai — one soup, three sides — with last seating around 2pm. From 6pm it is Yuji Ramen, last seating 9:45. The honest caveat, and it catches people every week: show up at the wrong hour and you get ramen when you came for the set meal, or the reverse. Check which service you are booking. Reservations open on Resy two weeks ahead with a handful of walk-in seats held back. A takeaway-only Okonomi Market opened at the same address in February doing bento, rice bowls and mazemen.
okonomibk.com · See our Williamsburg happy hours
Osakana
A Japanese-style fish market whose stated purpose is making high-quality takeout sushi and sashimi accessible, which in practice means nigiri, rolls and sashimi from a case rather than rice bowls or donburi. Two locations: the East Village shop on St. Marks and a Midtown counter inside the Katagiri Japanese grocery on Lexington, which keeps much longer hours. The honest caveat: there are no seats. None, at either address. You are eating this in Tompkins Square or at home. And nothing is priced online, so it can run higher than the word “takeout” suggests. For sit-down sushi, we have a whole guide.
osakana.nyc · See our best sushi in NYC
Kaiseki and the special occasion
Where the money goes, and the one lunch that halves it. Sushi counters are covered separately in best omakase in NYC.
Odo
The best value at the top end of Japanese dining in New York, and almost nobody uses it: six-course lunch kaiseki is $150 against $270 for the eight-to-nine-course dinner. Same kitchen, same room, $120 less. Reservation only, Tuesday through Sunday, with fixed seatings at noon and 1:45pm for lunch and 6pm and 8:30pm for dinner. Two honest caveats. You eat on their clock, not yours — two seatings a service, so the pace is set. And the entrance is behind a bar called HALL; there is no separate street door, which catches out most first-timers standing on West 20th looking for a sign.
odo.nyc · See our best Michelin star restaurants in NYC
Tsukimi
A twelve-seat counter and a single tasting course at $250 per person before tax and gratuity. Wednesday and Thursday there is one seating at 6:30pm; Friday through Sunday there are two, at 5:30 and 8:15. Closed Monday and Tuesday. The honest caveat, and read it before you book: reservations are prepaid and all sales are final. Rescheduling may be honoured with at least 72 hours’ notice — may, not will. If there is any real chance your evening falls apart, book something else, because this one costs you $250 either way. When it works it is one of the best counters in the city.
tsukimi.nyc · See our best omakase in NYC
Katsuno
Kaiseki-inspired plates alongside Tokyo Edomae sushi and sashimi, with fish imported from Japan, in Forest Hills. The pricing is unusually clean: the chirashi, the nigiri dinner and the sashimi dinner are all $43. Small plates run sensibly too — edamame $6.50, hijiki $9, tamagoyaki $11, agedashi tofu $13, karaage $14, shrimp tempura $18, chilled steamed octopus $19.50. The honest caveat, and it is a hard one: reservations are by phone only, between 9am and 4pm. There is no online booking. If you cannot make a call during the workday, you cannot eat here. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
Japanese bars, and where to drink late
Highballs, sake and the only rooms here still open at 2am. See also best speakeasies in NYC.
Angel’s Share
Get the address right, because most of the internet still has it wrong. The original at 8 Stuyvesant Street closed in March 2022 after an eviction and Yelp still carries that listing as closed. It reopened at 45 Grove Street in the West Village in June 2023 with 65 seats, run by Erina Yoshida, daughter of the founder. The house rules are posted verbatim and enforced: no reservations, walk-in only, no more than four people to a group, no standing, no split parties. The local move: no standing means when the seats are gone you wait on the street, and the line builds. Arrive near 5pm or come on a weeknight. Closed Sundays and Mondays.
Katana Kitten
One of the best bars in New York and, price-wise, one of the most misunderstood. A highball at a serious Japanese bar is a splurge, not a bargain: the Toki Highball is $19.50, the same as both boilermakers. The hinoki martini is $23, the ichigo fizz $21. The local move: beer is where the value is — house IPA or pilsner $8, Orion lager $10 — and the food is the other value: the mortadella katsu sando is $16 and the XO soba $13. That is a genuinely good $30 evening in the West Village. Open to 2am six nights a week, which very few Japanese rooms in this city are.
Sake Bar Decibel
The latest-running Japanese room in the city. Open every night from 6pm and running to 2:50am Monday through Saturday, 12:50am on Sunday, when most Japanese kitchens on this page have been dark since 10. A basement sake bar on East 9th Street, on the same block as Hi-Collar, which makes a dinner-then-drinks night a thirty-second walk. The honest caveat: the official site publishes its hours and its phone number and literally nothing else — no sake prices, no cover policy, no reservation policy, no cash-only policy. If any of that matters to your night, call first. If none of it does, just go down the stairs.
Japanese food in NYC: FAQ
Do any NYC izakayas have a happy hour?
Only two publish one. Bar Goto runs 5 to 6pm daily at both 245 Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side and Bar Goto Niban at 474 Bergen Street in Brooklyn, walk-ins only, closed Mondays. Rule of Thirds in Greenpoint runs Monday to Friday 5 to 6:30pm. Neither publishes what is actually discounted. Across the other sixteen venues verified for this guide, none publishes a happy hour at all.
Where can I eat Japanese food in NYC for under $20?
Sakagura’s Tokudashi lunch set is $18, but only 11:30am to 12:30pm on weekdays and the dish changes daily. Hi-Collar’s omurice with original tomato sauce is $19 at lunch. Katana Kitten’s mortadella katsu sando is $16 and its XO soba is $13. Rule of Thirds prices binchotan skewers at $5 each.
Is Angel’s Share still open, and where is it?
Yes, and it moved. The original at 8 Stuyvesant Street closed in March 2022 after an eviction, and it reopened at 45 Grove Street in the West Village in June 2023 with 65 seats, run by Erina Yoshida. Many listings still show the old address. House rules are strict: no reservations, walk-in only, maximum four people per group, no standing, no split parties, closed Sundays and Mondays.
What is the best value fine-dining Japanese in NYC?
Odo’s lunch kaiseki at $150 for six courses, against $270 for the eight-to-nine-course dinner from the same kitchen. Katsuno in Forest Hills is the other one: chirashi, the nigiri dinner and the sashimi dinner are all $43, though reservations are by phone only between 9am and 4pm.
Where is Japanese food open late in NYC?
Sake Bar Decibel at 240 East 9th Street runs 6pm to 2:50am Monday through Saturday and to 12:50am on Sunday. Katana Kitten on Hudson Street is open until 2am six nights a week. Almost everything else in this guide stops serving by 10 or 11pm.
Last updated: August 2026. Prices and hours change – confirm with the venue before you go. Spot something out of date? Let us know.
