The World’s Top-Selling Sushi Restaurant Is Coming to New York
Expect conveyor belts, shari robots, and a 200+ item menu.
In a city where chef-directed, $500-plus omakase meals rank among the hottest reservations in town, one of Japan's largest sushi companies is betting on the opposite approach. This fall, Sushiro will make its U.S. debut in New York City's Times Square with a three-level, 9,000-square-foot flagship at 8th Avenue and 42nd Street. The affordable kaiten (conveyor-belt) sushi restaurant will launch with a sprawling 200-plus-item menu, mixing traditional nigiri with ramen, fried chicken, and even French fries, with dishes starting at $5.
The New York flagship will have 150 seats spread across its first two floors, with a contemporary aesthetic defined by rows of blonde wood and charcoal-gray booths and large digital touchscreens suspended above each table that serve as menus. Diners order via the screen and dishes arrive on a conveyor belt that runs in a personal lane alongside each table.
Sushiro's supersized menu will resemble those at other Sushiro locations, spanning traditional to more modern. A plethora of familiar sushi subjects like seared salmon and bluefin otoro appear alongside more specialized nigiri, such as engawa (fluke fin), and unconventional bites topped with beef galbi. A small selection of cut maki comes filled with cucumber or tuna, but don't come looking for an overstuffed dynamite roll.
A rendering of Sushiro's coming U.S. flagship Credit: Courtesy of Sushiro
The menu extends well beyond fish over rice, too, with cooked Japanese dishes including chawanmushi, a steamed egg custard, and almost a dozen noodle dishes including a shoyu tonkotsu ramen. For dessert, there's a matcha parfait with soft jelly-like warabimochi and a Hokkaido milk mille crêpe cake. While the drinks list has yet to be announced, other locations offer options such as yuzu soda, sake, a Japanese whisky highball, and Suntory The Premium Malt beer.
The restaurant will use rice grown by Japanese farmers, while seafood and other ingredients will be sourced through the company's extensive global supply network. That scale — and buying in bulk — helps Sushiro keep costs down, as does its reliance on automation. Shari robots form consistently sized portions of sushi rice, each capable of producing more than 3,600 pieces per hour; humans take it from there, adding the neta — the fish or other topping — and finishing each piece by hand.
Bluefin Akami at Sushiro Credit: Courtesy of Sushiro
That high-tech approach is a long way from Sushiro's humble beginnings. The brand traces its roots to 1975, when sushi chef Yoshio Shimizu opened a traditional sushi counter in Osaka, Japan. Nearly a decade later, he embraced the then-increasingly popular kaiten format, opening the conveyor-belt restaurant that would eventually become Sushiro. More than half a century later, the concept has grown to more than 900 locations worldwide, with restaurants throughout Japan as well as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea.
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Across Asia, where sushi restaurants are ubiquitous and diners have no shortage of options, Sushiro has built a massive following by making quality sushi affordable, casual, and entirely up to the diner – –not chef. It's also ranked as Japan's top-selling conveyor-belt sushi chain, holding the top spot in annual sales for 14 consecutive years, according to data from Fuji Keizai's Foodservice Industry Marketing Handbook covering 2011–2024.
And the company is betting that New Yorkers will embrace the same formula — despite the fact that conveyor-belt sushi has historically lacked staying power here.
The style of quick and casual dining took root around the late 2000s with kaiten spots like Sakae Sushi opened in the Chrysler Building in 2008 (and another in the West Village), Yushi in 2009, and Sushein opened in 2011. Since then there has been Yo! Sushi in 2017, followed by another noticeable wave beginning around 2023, including Kura Sushi in Flushing and Kaiten Zushi in NoMad, both of which remain open today.
Whether Sushiro can make conveyor-belt sushi stick in New York remains to be seen. In an omakase-infatuated city, there's something appealing about the opposite proposition: no months-ahead reservation, no $500 check, and no chef deciding what you eat next. Just tap that screen and order another plate of otoro.
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