New York City: Kappo Masa (December 2017)

Kappo Masa – Loved Our Sushi Omakase Lunch
My spouse and I dined at Kappo Masa for lunch on a Saturday afternoon in early December 2017. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner on Mondays through Saturdays (closed on Sundays). We made a reservation online using the Open Table system.
Kappo Masa opened in late 2014 on Madison Avenue (between 76th and 77th Streets) on the Upper East Side. It occupies the subterranean level of the Larry Gagosian Gallery/shop, across the street from the Carlyle Hotel. Chef owner Masayoshi “Masa” Takayama also operates other NYC restaurants including Masa, Bar Masa, and Tetsu; he also has two restaurants in Las Vegas (Bar Masa and Tetsu). Mr. Gagosian’s part-ownership in Kappo Masa is visible in its artistic elements.
You enter the restaurant through the gallery shop, then descend a grand L-shaped staircase open to the floor below. Magically, the restaurant interior makes you forget that you are in the basement. Large paintings and immense vases of foliage decorate the various areas. A trendy bar at the base of the stairs offers a place to enjoy a drink. A sushi bar area offers a few small booths, but the best seats in the house are at the adjacent semi-circular sushi counter. The main dining room offers seating at teak tables with yellow leather seats wall banquette benches. Most seats are within view of the restaurant’s many workspaces, whether the sushi bar, the open kitchen, or the secondary sushi roll counter. The word “Kappo” in the restaurant’s name refers to the cooking techniques of grilling, frying, steaming, braising, simmering, and stewing, and you can observe Kappo chefs performing all of those methods.
Kappo Masa offers contemporary Japanese cuisine including both hot and cold and raw and cooked options. Note that the 2-course (affordable) bento box lunch menu options posted on the restaurant website are not available for lunch on Saturdays; you must order from the regular (expensive) dinner menu. We had planned to order from the bento box menu, so when we were alternatively faced with so many offerings on the regular menu, we decided to request the sushi omakase lunch. We loved each bite that the chef personally prepared and handed to us, and it was fun to interact with him on a two-on-one basis. We tasted about 13 items (including fatty tuna, striped jack, scallop, shrimp, amberjack, squid, mackerel, fluke), two rolls (uni hand roll and spicy tuna), followed by a palate-cleansing sushi bite (rice wrapped in a sisal leaf), and a dessert of hot soba tea and icy persimmon chunks. Next time, we want to try some of the composed dishes; we are particularly intrigued by their trademark surimo noodles made from fish protein. Likely we will pass on the pricier items like white truffle sushi ($35), lobster risotto ($58), truffle fried rice ($120), beef tataki wagyu ($150), and caviar- topped tuna maki roll ($240)!
We loved our omakase sushi-tasting lunch at Kappo Masa – delicious food, great service, and beautiful surroundings.










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