Why Japanese Cuisine Is Shaping America’s New Dining Era

A New Wave of Japanese Influence

“People love comfort food, but they also crave discovery,” says Hiroki Odo, chef of both the two-Michelin-star kaiseki restaurant Odo and the more casual lounge HALL, both located at 17 West 20th Street in Manhattan’s Flatiron District in New York City. At HALL, he grills Japanese-inspired burgers with hybrid patties like American sirloin and Japanese Wagyu, slathered in soy glaze or sansho pepper sauce. “I think people are realizing how diverse and adaptable Japanese cuisine truly is,” says Odo, noting that many guests discover this at HALL, often telling him they’ve never been to a Japanese restaurant but appreciate tasting new ingredients in a familiar dish. “I like the idea that something as approachable as a burger can quietly introduce people to new flavors and traditions,” he adds.

The rapid rise in Japanese-influenced restaurant openings includes the August debut of Itameshi Albany, bringing Italian–Japanese cooking to upstate New York; Philadelphia’s dancerobot, which blends izakaya traditions with playful Japanese comfort food; and the expansion of LA’s famed Yamashiro to Miami, where its Japanese-American legacy continues. The momentum predates this year: Chicago’s Gaijin introduced okonomiyaki and kakigori to a wide American audience in 2019; Santa Monica’s Shirubē brought a modern izakaya approach to the West Coast; Washington, D.C.’s Cranes introduced its Japanese-Spanish menu in 2020; and more recent openings include Chotto Matte in San Francisco, Budonoki in Los Angeles, and Kiko in New York City, all contributing their own interpretations of contemporary Japanese-rooted dining.

While many of these concepts may once have been labeled “fusion,” the term has lost relevance in today’s globalized dining landscape. “The word fusion feels dated,” says Kilgore, who describes the Itameshi style as “more of a conversation between two culinary philosophies rather than a collision of them.”

Rethinking Fusion and Culinary Identity

At Chotto Matte, the conversation centers on the Peruvian–Japanese interplay of Nikkei cuisine, with dishes like Pollo den Miso: garlic-miso–marinated boneless chicken thighs slowly grilled skin-side down over charcoal, dressed with Peruvian yellow chili yogurt, and topped with pickled grated green tomato, carrot, and daikon, finished with chives.

In Chicago, one of Gaijin’s best-selling dishes is the Beef Osaka-style okonomiyaki, topped with slow-cooked beef neck, roasted garlic, cabbage, scallions, eggs, dashi, pickled ginger, kewpie mayo, tempura, and bonito flakes. Chef Paul Virant uses a menu annotated with definitions, diagrams, and graphic designs to help diners understand okonomiyaki, which he describes as “savory pancakes” or “the pizza of Japan.”

At Cranes, chef Pepe Moncayo blends Spanish and Japanese flavors by cooking sushi rice in a paella pan with white ponzu and dashi broth, then finishing it with wasabi mayo, grilled fatty unagi, pea shoots, and red shiso to create one of his most popular dishes, Unagi Paella.

Justin Bacharach, chef-owner of dancerobot, blends multiple styles of Japanese cuisine, drawing influence from izakaya, kissaten, itameshi, and lesser-known Japanese comfort dishes like kare pan, mentaiko cream pasta, and hamburg steak. “What’s cool is that because their original inspiration is Western-style dishes from the 1950s and 1960s, they tend to taste nostalgic even though most of our guests have never had them before,” says Bacharach.