100 Very Best Restaurants 2017: Sushi Taro

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Sushi Taro's omakase seafood selection. Photo by Scott Suchman

No other restaurant offers personalized service like Sushi Taro’s six-seat omakase counter. Every party gets its own chef in the hidden-away dining room. A parade of dishes highlights delicate flavors and rare ingredients, such as young ginkgo nuts or Virginia red crab. But the real fun begins when your chef presents a series of boxes filled with seafood—including still-squirming shrimp, rare cuts of fish such as fatty tuna jaw, and other hyper-seasonal specialties—then transforms your selections into sashimi and sushi in a skilled knife show. The tasting, which books a month in advance, is the ultimate way to experience Sushi Taro. However, the main dining room also serves pristine sushi and unusual Japanese dishes. Make sure to check out one of the “traditional rare delicacies,” such as preserved sea urchin or soy-cured abalone liver. Very expensive.

Also great: pine-mushroom soup (Omakase); house-made hot udon; made-to-order tofu; sushi and sashimi, including king salmon and scallop.


Ann Limpert
Executive Food Editor/Critic

Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.

Food Editor

Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.

Jessica Sidman
Food Editor

Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.

Kristen Hinman
Articles Editor

Kristen Hinman has been editing Washingtonian’s features since 2014. She joined the magazine after editing politics & policy coverage for Bloomberg Businessweek and working as a staff writer for Voice Media Group/Riverfront Times.