The 15 Best Japanese Restaurants In Philly
photo credit: NICOLE GUGLIELMO
Sometimes you need a quick, budget-friendly spicy tuna roll. Sometimes life calls for a steamy bowl of ramen. And other times, you yearn for an indulgent experience at a pricey omakase counter. Occasionally, you want it all—and all at once. Since Philly is the food town that never lets you down, we have fantastic Japanese spots that make sense for any and every occasion. If sake, gyoza, chicken karaage, and chirashi bowls are your love language, this list is for you.
Unrated: This is a restaurant we want to re-visit before rating, or it’s a coffee shop, bar, or dessert shop. We only rate spots where you can eat a full meal.
Royal Sushi & Izakaya in Queen Village is one of the best restaurants in town, and it has two distinct moods. In the izakaya section, you can sit in a booth and watch anime, pay as little as $4 for a beer, and eat life-altering karaage wings. But when you want to have a night where you're catered to like Oprah’s favorite spaniel, try their 17-piece omakase menu, if you can (it’s near-impossible to get into). You’ll have dishes like scallops topped with a layer of creamy sea urchin. Each experience works for different occasions, but they’ll both give you memories you’ll be thinking about all week.
Royal's sushi omakase is the single hardest reservation to book in Philadelphia. (At the end of the meal, diners can rebook for the following month, and many do—thus creating a defacto club of omakase regulars.) Open slots become available 30 days in advance, so we suggest setting an alarm or 10 and signing up for the waitlist notifications. It's rare, but not unheard of, to get a last-minute reservation. Alternatively, you could dine in the walk-in-only izakaya portion of the restaurant, get “lost” heading to the bathroom, and try to blend in with the Eagles player gulping toro.
During lunchtime, this Chinatown restaurant can get packed. But once you get a whiff of miso in the air and taste the steamed shrimp shumai and ramen, you’ll know it’s worth the wait. Most things on the menu are under $15, and you’ll be thinking about the spicy miso ramen through dinner time. With curly noodles, heaps of cabbage, fried burdock root, onion, and chashu swimming in the bowl, the only thing that’ll hold you back is deciding whether to use your spoon or chopsticks for the first bite.
Thanks to its massive windows, low lighting, and long, U-shaped bar, this Japanese spot is always full of dates drinking sake and eating spicy crab rolls. You should be one of them—Tuna Bar in Old City serves some of the best sushi in the neighborhood (our favorite is the citrusy, salmon-filled Rittenhouse Toll). Plus, you can usually stop by without a reservation, order a few snacks like crispy miso brussels sprouts and soy-drenched oysters, and spend the rest of the night drinking junmai sake and popping maki. Come in the spring and you'll have a great view of the cherry blossom trees or a Ben Franklin impersonator.
After 23 courses of nigiri, a few composed plates, drinks, and tip, you're looking at $280-ish per person at this Old City sushi omakase spot. That price includes excellent and friendly service, suede towels to warm your hands, and $25 apricot highballs (or the additional $65 sake pairing that comes with detailed placemats describing each). There's a mix of straightforward cuts—think Spanish mackerel or Australian lobster topped with dry soy sauce or lemon—and more creative dishes, like Japanese firefly squid with white ponzu sauce and rice cracker balls. You may find similar quality for less elsewhere, but not the atmosphere that makes you feel like a VIP.
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Terakawa is a small, casual spot in Chinatown that always has a line outside of it that rivals the one in front of the Love Sign. The rich broths come filled with things like roast pork belly, mushrooms, and soy egg, but there are also bigger dishes like curry platters and donburi rice bowls, as well as a long list of appetizers if for some reason you went to a ramen place but aren’t in the mood for soup. The space is on the cozier side, but it can work for a small group of your friends that spent the afternoon arguing over which wine goes best with spicy tan tan ramen.
Hiroki's $155, 20-course omakase has been around forever, and on most nights, it's still worth the money. You might eat expertly cooked wagyu beef tongue covered in white bean foam and gold flakes, and spongy matcha tea cake to end your anniversary or birthday dinner. And whether you’re at the crowded sushi bar watching the chefs precisely slice salmon or sitting at one of the intimately lit tables with a group of friends, you’ll feel like everybody working at the Fishtown restaurant can somehow read your mind. Come here if you have something to celebrate, but heads up—sometimes we leave hungry.
The name says it all. This walk-in-only Chinatown spot serves the biggest hand rolls in the city. Located upstairs at Chubby Cattle, you’ll find a stylish, wooden sushi counter and a dining room full of booths where friends try to make the impossible choice between 24 hand rolls on the menu and which sake to pair them with (we suggest the sweet miso butter cod and the floral house sake). If you can, grab a seat at the chef’s counter to watch wagyu get torched, spicy mayo zig-zagged over fresh scallops, and to cut down the travel time between these seaweed-wrapped beauties leaving the chef’s hands and reaching your mouth.
Yakitori Boy is a karaoke lounge and izakaya hybrid, and it’s been a mainstay of Philly nightlife for years. The Chinatown spot has full dinner service downstairs, with things like brothy shrimp tempura udon loaded with scallions and broccoli, spicy salmon rolls, and tangy chicken teriyaki, which you should get for the table. Upstairs you'll find spacious, private karaoke rooms—full of big screens and neon lighting—that can hold up to 20 of your closest friends for a sake bomb-fueled night and your best impression from The Voice.
Philly was missing a handroll spot. And Kensington was missing a good place to eat miso cod. Now, the city and neighborhood have both. Yuhiro looks like any other minimalist, wood-covered sushi place, but it stands out for its U-shaped handrolls made with quality fish. On one side of the room, there's a counter dedicated to a $68 sushi omakase that mixes handrolls, nigiri, and creative dishes like tasty uni on a truffle cone. But if you want to focus on handrolls, sit in the separate area where you can eat a marathon of a la carte raw fish wrapped in seaweed like precious babies.
Double Knot is one of the first spots that comes to mind when you want to eat in Midtown Village–and not just because it has as much range as Beyonce’s discography. Hang at the first floor cocktail lounge and sushi bar, or head downstairs to the intimately lit izakaya that looks a bit like Dracula’s dungeons. For a little taste of everything, get the $65 chef’s tasting menu, which includes 10 selections plus dessert. Try the dreamy edamame dumplings, crispy Japanese fried chicken, and finish with larger dishes like the Japanese scallops in an onion ponzu. You need reservations to get into the vampire’s lair, but you can always pop in for sake and hand rolls up top.
There are a lot of weird, cool things under the El: a dive bar with a heavy metal night, a high-end event venue attached to a high school, and at least three hidden rooftops. Then there's DAWA, a reliable sushi and ramen spot. The restaurant is split into two separate experiences: there’s a room with 16 tables where people order shoyu ramen and yellowtail handrolls, and then there’s a seven-seat sushi bar where the owner serves 15- to 24-piece omakase meals all by himself. And aside from feeling like you’re part of his crew, you’ll get to eat fatty tuna, king salmon rolls, and lemon-spiked scallops. FYI—they only offer the omakase Thursday through Saturday, and you have to call to book your spot.
Offering both indoor and outdoor dining, and more sake options than the game piece count on the municipal building courtyard, the menu at this Japanese spot gets creative with things like a grilled avocado stuffed with salmon, tuna, and yellowtail, and ZFC (Zama fried chicken). But they also do more straightforward dishes well, too, like the spicy crunchy yellowtail with jalapeno mango roll, and the shrimp tempura rolls. With lunch deals running through 5pm, we drop in here between calls or sneak out of work a little early for a drink and a few snacks.
Tomo makes fantastic sushi, and they have an especially impressive selection of vegan rolls. But it's the ramen that makes this BYOB a standout in Old City. The tonkotsu is the perfect cloudy soup for every cloudy day. The rich, creamy broth comes topped with bamboo shoots, scallions, red ginger, and some notably tender pork belly. The latter is what you'll be thinking about after you leave.
There’s gas station sushi (get over it, we’ve all done it), and then there are high-quality omakase meals that can cost as much as a pair of over-ear headphones. Sakana is the latter. The BYOB sushi restaurant in Headhouse Square is the perfect place to bring a bottle of sake to pair with their $178, 21-course experience. All of the raw fish is stellar, whether you’re eating Japanese scallops, toro topped with caviar, or sweet shrimp with gold leaves.
This Japanese BBQ chain in Logan Square gets busy, so we suggest making a reservation if you're bringing a group or coming during Happy Hour. Inside there’s a small bar and a few booths where you can grill your own meats for around $40 a person. You’ll see all of the Japanese BBQ headliners here, like sukiyaki, bone-in kalbi, toro beef, umakara ribeye, and seafood—all marinated in miso, shio, or sweet soy tare. The quality of meat is good for the price. Just don’t burn it while telling a story about that weird thing you saw online.
