They send you home with a box. Walnut and red-bean anpan, a black-and-white melon pan, a buckwheat focaccia with shishito. That is a strange last course for a kaiseki, and it is why I would book the dining room at One Bryant Park before I booked the sushi counter next door. Both started seating on 15 October, ground floor and lower level of the Bank of America Tower, 135 West 42nd Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. The dining room is One Bryant Park. The counter is Kumiko Room. A third kitchen, Kappo Sono, has put the same street number on its site and told people it will see them again soon. Eater has that opening in mid-November. Tonight, the page is still a closed counter with a forwarding address.
KwangHo Lee, who also runs Momoya, told Crain's in September why the floor is split. "We didn't create three restaurants to cover more ground. 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."
The rooms have had other names. Aureole was here from 2009 until 2020, when Charlie Palmer turned it into a steakhouse. That steakhouse served its last meal on 29 February 2024. Crain's put the new tenancy at about 10,000 square feet and a 15-year lease. What you can hold tonight is the kaiseki room and the 14-seat counter, at an address Midtown already uses for the tower.
The bread is the tell
The team page puts the dining room at 60 seats, with a 20-seat cocktail bar beside it. Tadaaki Ishizaki is culinary director. He comes from Odo, the Flatiron kaiseki restaurant with two Michelin stars in the New York guide, and from Joël Robuchon's château restaurant in Tokyo. Hiroki Odo is the chef of record on those two stars. Ishizaki was a culinary director in that kitchen, which is a different job from owning the stars, and worth saying before anyone books him as if the plaques moved with him. Shuji Furukawa cooks this room. The house lists him as the former executive chef of Restaurant Yuu, Gallery by Odo, and Kyo Ya.
The homepage talks about eight seasonal menus, drawn from Japan's 72 microseasons. Grub Street, on 7 October, reported the opening prices: five courses for $175, eleven for $265. Both include bread. Daichi Ebato, the baker, was born in New York, and the course is a loaf of Hokkaido brown mochi rice and stone-ground wheat, baked in a clay vessel.
"I really wanted that perfect balance of 'It's bread but it's also rice.'"
Daichi Ebato, to Grub Street, on the mochi-rice loaf.
The box in the photograph is what follows: the anpan, the melon pan (his nod to a New York cookie), the shishito focaccia. Eat it on the walk to the subway if the eleven courses already did their job. Pastry is Allen Cheung, and the house has mentioned afternoon tea. I would ask whether that service is actually on the book before I planned a daytime visit around it.
There are more than 500 wines and sakes on the publicity list, plus Japanese whisky, and cocktails from John Shin, who opened the bar at Torrisi. Hours were missing from the homepage on opening day. Reserve on Resy under One Bryant Park, and read the times there before you leave the office.
The counter is a different night
Kumiko Room opened the same afternoon, at the same address, with its own site and its own Resy page. The name is the wood lattice in the room. Yoshihiko Kousaka is at the counter. Michelin's 2019 New York announcement described him as head sushi chef at Jewel Bako for 11 years, then as the chef who opened Kosaka, which that guide gave one star. Kosaka is still starred. Masatomo Soma, who apprenticed under Kousaka, is the chef on the current guide page. The star stayed at Kosaka. Forty-second Street has the chef.
Robb Report, on 3 October, put the seasonal omakase at $325: three small dishes, then 10 to 14 pieces, soup, and a dessert. Kousaka said he was going back to an older omakase, rice and fish, after a run of counters that pile snacks on before the nigiri. The preview included striped jack, and bluefin marinated five hours in bonito broth, soy, and cooking wine. À la carte pieces come after, if you still want them. Crain's also described about 20 seats at tables beside the 14 at the counter. Ask which of those you are actually holding.
Kappo Sono's previous room was a 12-seat counter on the sixth floor of 39 East 13th Street, near Union Square, and Resy had the full kaiseki there at $350 before tax and tip. That room is closed for the move. The new site gives the 42nd Street address and nothing else: no seat count, no price, no hours. Chikara Sono is the name attached to it. Mid-November is the date in print. I would look again before I promised anyone that table.
The B, D, F, and M stop at 42nd Street-Bryant Park. The library is across the park if you are early. Take the dining room one night and the counter another. Omakase Left Tokyo. It Survived. is the longer map if you are choosing among the city's $300 counters, and Book Named Asian Tables Before the Season Fills covers the other New York rooms that still need a calendar.
The $175, the $265, and the $325 were reported in the week before the doors opened. Read them on the booking page before you send anyone. A new restaurant can reprint a menu by Friday.
