Smartly dressed Bliss Han of Edgewater, an omakase diner at Shumi Leonia, nibbled a morsel of raw Japanese eel off her chopsticks. “Mmm,” she cooed. “I love this.” Bliss is seven years old. She’s one of numerous New Jersey youngsters who crave omakase, the rarefied, multicourse, chef’s-tasting meal that typically runs $125 to $150 and is offered at a smattering of high-end North Jersey sushi restaurants. Omakase is a Japanese dining experience in which the chef creates the menu for diners. The term translates to “I choose for you.”
“When I opened Shumi Leonia’s omakase room in 2021, I wasn’t sure of the audience for its rare raw fish, found only in Japan,” says co-chef and owner David Seo. “I couldn’t believe it when some of my most devoted omakase eaters turned out to be kids.”
This is no surprise to Dr. Maricel E. Presilla, a cultural historian and chef/owner of Hoboken’s multiple-James Beard Award-winning Cucharamama (now closed). “The world is in New Jersey, and international dining adventures are everywhere you look,” she says. “Our kids grow up with global appetites.” For the upscale foodie families who can afford it, “the omakase meal is a family value: a shared experience and an investment in the kids’ cultural education,” Presilla says. “Many kids today are open to unfamiliar cuisines because food is ubiquitous in youth culture.”
As Chris Cannon, a Mountain Lakes dad and owner of Morristown’s Jockey Hollow Bar & Kitchen, observes, “Japanese cooking is ultra-trendy on social media.” Eating omakase in Japan is a strong TikTok meme, says Cannon. “My kids were dying to do that, and we did. Even for a foodie family, this was a whole new level of discovery.” His son Gabe, now 15, started enjoying sushi at four. “Tokyo omakase fish is exquisite and unforgettable. It set the bar high. Now I think of the Philly sushi roll, with cream cheese, as baby food,” Gabe says.
Chase Park and Noah Sharon Photo: Andy Foster
The fact is, most omakase kids start as sushi babies or toddlers. “When I was little, like, two,” says still-little Bliss Han, she and mom Cindy dined nightly at the sushi bar of a Manhattan Japanese restaurant that dad Danny co-owned. “Now,” reports Cindy, “Bliss asks me all the time if we can please have omakase at Shumi Leonia tonight.” Laura Klein of Woodcliff Lake says her son Noah loves omakase. “He started on sushi at two, partly to keep up with his older brother, Ariel. But he dove into omakase when Shumi Leonia opened.” Noah’s mantra at 14: “I could eat omakase every week.”
Bliss Han with Anushka and Surya Pullatt Photo: Andy Foster
Now 13, Anushka Pullatt of Watchung took to sushi at age four. Her family’s pizza Fridays became sushi Fridays “and sometimes omakase Fridays,” she says, at Ai Sushi in Somerville and Shumi Leonia. “Omakase is a delicious and beautiful ritual,” Anushka says. “The chefs’ knives that practically dance, the handmade plate for each course, the artistic garnishes on every piece.” Opines Anushka’s brother, Surya, 9, “Everything is different in omakase. Some pieces are sweet, some are salty. Uni melts in my mouth like ice cream. The fish egg pops when you bite it. Omakase is so much better than pizza or even dessert.”
Surya Pullatt Photo: Andy Foster
Other omakase kids’ epiphanies happened later, in elementary school. For Chase Park of Ridgewood, now 12 and a Shumi Ridgewood regular, omakase was love at first sight—and first bite. “I was ten and ordering sushi rolls when I noticed a photo of uni [sea urchin] on a menu. It’s cool and different, kind of an orange blob,” he reflects. “I ordered a piece. It was squishy, but not slimy. It tickled my mouth and reminded me of swimming in the ocean. Now uni is my favorite sushi, and it’s included in omakase. For me, the squishier, the better.”
Jennifer Zimmer of Verona says that in preschool, her sons craved Japanese gyoza dumplings, then easy sushi like California rolls. Her son Nate, now 18, says that “in middle school, my friends and I would go to lunch at the sushi place next door. The first time, I didn’t bring any money.”
“When Umai opened near us in 2022, the boys discovered more exotic sushi and finally, their omakase,” says Jennifer. Her son Ben, now 15, finds it “amazing to watch the omakase chef turn a slice of fish into something spectacular that I get to eat.”
Alexander Love, 12, of Summit, made the leap from sushi to omakase on a 2021 visit to Vancouver. “There’s a whole world of cuisine out there that we want our kids to experience,” says mom Anna Dover. Alexander, who knows the Japanese word for every fish served in Umai’s omakase meal, says he loves omakase as much as roller coasters. “Now I want to try the food in places like Morocco and Peru.”
As Presilla notes, family omakase meals become “not just a cultural legacy but a bonding experience.” New Jersey’s omakase kids are lucky, and they know it. Affirms Anushka Pullatt, whose gratitude was echoed by every young person in this story, “I know that omakase is a special privilege that not a lot of people can have. I feel very thankful to my parents for giving us this opportunity. It’s a gift.”
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