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.
