Three Japanese Chefs Got Their Own Rooms at One Bryant Park

Eater New York updated its venue page for One Bryant Park on November 3. The Bank of America Tower, at 135 West 42nd Street in the old Aureole rooms, holds three Japanese restaurants under one roof: a kaiseki dining room that keeps the tower’s name, Kumiko Room’s omakase sushi bar, and Kappo Sono, which Resy now puts at a November 18 opening. The floor covers about 10,000 square feet over two levels. Bloomberg, a day earlier, had already filed the complex as part of a Midtown habit of stacking a whole night into one building.

KwangHo Lee, the restaurateur behind Momoya and Listen & Feel Hospitality, told Crain’s New York in September why the floor is split. “We didn’t create three restaurants to cover more ground,” he said in a statement Sinvin carried. “We did it because our three chefs, Chikara Sono, Yoshihiko Kousaka, and Tadaaki Ishizaki, each had a distinct vision, and each deserved a room of their own.” Each kitchen has its own Resy page. If the confirmation only says One Bryant Park, check which door it means before you go.

The largest room is the one that kept the address. Culinary director Tadaaki Ishizaki came over from Odo in Flatiron, where Hiroki Odo holds two Michelin stars; those stars stay with Odo’s room. Ishizaki also cooked at Joël Robuchon’s château restaurant. Executive chef Shuji Furukawa runs the line after Restaurant Yuu and Kyo Ya. The house team page lists sixty seats in the dining room and twenty at the cocktail bar under an oak-slat canopy by Studio Canall.

This is where Midtown groups land. The restaurant’s current menu posts a five-course Selection for $175 and an eleven-course Tasting for $265, both built on seasonal Japanese ingredients with French technique. Bread is part of the meal either way. Daichi Ebato, the New York–raised baker on the team, sends a Hokkaido brown mochi-rice loaf from a clay vessel and a take-home box with anpan and melon pan, as Grub Street reported before opening. Dinner runs Tuesday through Saturday from 4:30 to 10, with last seating at 8:30, and the bar opens at 4. It is the room where conversation can share the floor with the food.

Kumiko Room is the quieter room next door, named for the wooden lattice Studio Canall set into the walls. Yoshihiko Kousaka is at the counter. Michelin’s 2019 New York announcement described him as Jewel Bako’s head sushi chef for eleven years, then as the chef who opened Kosaka, which that guide gave one star. Kosaka remains in the guide under Masatomo Soma. The star stayed with that room; Kousaka moved here.

Robb Report priced the seasonal counter omakase at $325 on October 3: three small dishes, ten to fourteen pieces of nigiri, soup, and dessert. Kousaka told the magazine he wanted an older omakase built on rice and fish, after years of counters that load snacks first. The Infatuation lists eighteen courses at the bar for $325, or twelve to fourteen courses at a table for $200. Crain’s also counted about twenty seats beside the fourteen at the counter, so ask which seats you are holding. Dinner here is built around the fish and the pause between pieces.

Kappo Sono is the third door, and it is still arriving. Restaurant posts and Resy put the grand opening at November 18; reservations are already live. Chikara Sono is moving his intimate kappo counter from the East Village into roughly ten seats. Crain’s and later reports say the menu turns over about every two weeks with Japan’s twenty-four-season calendar. Kappo means cooking and cutting in front of the guest, so the room stays small on purpose.

The Banquet reported that Resy had the full kaiseki at Sono’s previous twelve-seat room near Union Square at $350 before tax and tip. Coverage of the new counter has not fixed a price. Read Resy before you quote anyone a number. After November 18, it suits a small table that wants the chef a few feet away and a menu that will look different a fortnight later.

So far the published tickets run from $175 for five courses in the dining room to $325 at Kumiko’s counter. Sono’s old $350 suggests the third room will sit in that same high band once the page fills in. Those figures come from menus and preview reporting dated October and early November; a new house can reprint by Friday. Confirm on Resy the night you book.

For a table that needs room to talk, and likes the take-home bread box, the dining room is the easy pick. Kumiko is the counter for Edomae sushi without a long run of small plates first. Kappo Sono, once it opens, is for anyone who wants the chef close and a menu that changes every couple of weeks. Midtown finally has all three on one block. The reservation still has to name which one.