New York City seemingly has an endless number of super-premium sushi restaurants nowadays where $400 per head for an omakase dinner (before drinks, tips and taxes) is not that shocking. While my wife Jun and I love sushi, we have been reluctant to shell out that much money when we were in the city. On the other hand, DC certainly has no shortage of sushi restaurants but the number of places offering premium-grade fish is much smaller, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you cannot find a quality omakase experience. One restaurant that I have been looking to check out is the fairly new Omakase @ Barracks Row by chef Ricky Wang, who used to work at Sushi Nakazawa before opening his own place on Barracks Row. The entire omakase menu is still at a fairly reasonable price of $180 per person, and Jun and I had plenty to like from the offerings of chef Ricky.

The meal at Omakase starts with a few small-sized otsumami dishes before transitioning to nigiri pieces. First came octopus tako salad with seaweed, followed by hamo (pike conger eel) tempura with chery tomato and okra, and then a mini donburi with sea urchin, sea grape and ikura. All three dishes had balanced flavor and texture raising expectations on what chef Ricky will bring to the table. Most of the fish from the nigiri series are sourced from Japan. I would probably say the size of each piece (both the fish and the rice) was slightly smaller than what I remembered eating at other sushi restaurants, but the quality of the fish was generally high while I really liked the texture of the koshihikari rice from a giant pot at the center of the counter. Some of my favorite pieces included red drum (from the Atlantic Ocean, not Japan), cured in sakura leaf that gave a fascinating cinnamon flavor, horse mackerel (aji) with ginger and seared king salmon from New Zealand with summer truffle from Italy on top.

Other more conventional pieces were also delicious and well-executed with moderate seasoning and freshness of the fish consistent throughout our meal, most notably honmasu (Japanese trout) with citrus and bamboo salt on top, madai (red sea bream) with sake sauce and kelp, blow torched gindara (sablefish) with citrus and flaked salt and straw smoked sawara (Spanish mackerel). This being the mackerel season, in addition to the horse mackerel and Spanish mackerel I mentioned, chef Ricky also brought out a unique box-style pressed sushi (oshizushi) with cured shime saba (blue mackerel). For the o toro, he used a double piece of tunas to show that even within the fatty tuna grade, there are different levels of fattiness you can appreciate. We also opted for a supplement of wagyu beef (from Okinawa) with caviar and it was a luxurious treat. Our meal concluded with a piece of tamago and a dessert of peeled strawberry, strawberry yuzu sorbet and crumbled coconut egg roll cookies.

Omakase has quickly risen to become a hot sushi destination in DC, so I would definitely book in advance (the reservation opens two weeks in advance each morning at 8:45 a.m.). I liked the minimalistic setting of the counter located on the second floor where chef Ricky’s craftmanship is the center (as it is supposed to be) of the entire experience. There is a decent list of sake options, both available by bottle and glass options. I do wish the restaurant would give more efforts to expand the wine list for those who enjoy complementing their omakase dinner with a crisp glass of champagne or white wine. Chef Ricky was very friendly and whenever we had questions about a particular dish he was glad to answer them. Jun actually recognized him serving us on our past visit to Nakazawa, so that was a nice surprise, too. Overall, we were very impressed with our experience at Omakase. Perhaps we would love to see a few more showstopper pieces but I am confident that Omakase will be one of our go-to options when we need a sushi fix.

KenScale: 8.25/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.25/10)

Address: 522 8th Street SE, Washington, DC 20003

Website: https://omakasedc.com/

Reservation via Resy