Ginza Iwa sushi, Tokyo

Our last dinner in Japan was sushi at Ginza Iwa – a fitting finale to a great trip.

We got a bit lost as we walked through the small backstreets of Ginza in search of the storefront pictured on the printout our concierge helpfully gave us, but eventually located it.

We were seated at one end of a 6 person sushi counter, in front of Iwa-san’s apprentice, who was quite friendly and spoke English well (he spent time as a child in the Bay Area).  As Iwa-san also has a restaurant in Hong Kong, his apprentice often holds down the fort in Ginza.  We had him to ourselves for almost our whole meal.

To start, we had some sashimi and small dishes, including a delicious and delicate uni custard, scallop sliced and pressed between nori sheets, and torigai sashimi (the same clam we’d had at Sawada – must have been a seasonal highlight).

And we had sake, of course; as usual, we asked them to choose different sakes and serve by the carafe.

For sushi, we had about a dozen pieces: tai snapper, sawara (Spanish mackerel), shiro ebi (white shrimp), akami (lean tuna), otoro (fatty tuna), kohada (pickled shad), scallop, tiny ice fish pressed on a cherry leaf, ebi, uni, tuna roll, anago, and finally a square of tamago flavored with sweet shrimp and honey.

Akami

Beautifully cut kohada

Uni

Tamago

With an admittedly small sample size of two meals, I feel fairly safe in saying that any of the top small sushi ya in Tokyo will provide similarly fantastic sushi ingredients that are beautifully suited to the season.  The differences are more in the setting, the personality of and interactions with the chef, and the beginning courses of the meal (whether small appetizers, sashimi, or both).

As we finished our meal, a group of four Italians arrived to take the rest of the seats at the counter, so we watched our chef prepare more sashimi while relaxing and sipping our miso soup.

Then we headed back to our hotel, stopping along the way to admire Ginza at night.

Reservations:  Reservations are accepted on the first of the month for anytime the following month (so March 1 for anytime in April).  Our hotel concierge made the reservation for us on March 1.  My mother recently called from the US to make lunch reservations about 5 weeks in advance, so with some Japanese you can make this reservation on your own (vs via hotel).

Tips on finding it: Take the metro to Ginza station and use the B7 exit.  Walk southwest on the street that’s between the Hermes and Sony stores (on the main Harumi Dori street). You’ll see the S.T. Dupont store (it sells pens!) on a corner, continue on, and Iwa will be a few storefronts along on the same side of the street, after a florist, right next to a “30” painted on the street (8 Chome-5-25 Ginza).

Google street view – in this photo Iwa’s metal gate is down