My wife and I eat sushi for dinner about once a month, which I admit isn't exactly a cheap habit. My usual order at Taro, our go-to place in Brooklyn, is the "edomae chirashi" bowl, which costs $30. It has variety of 10 pieces of fish from mackerel to toro (fatty tuna cut from the belly of the fish) and uni (sea urchin) served on a bed of rice and seaweed. I find it a perfect balance between price and value. Our bill usually comes in under $80, tip included.
I know that sounds incredibly expensive, but New York has some of the most expensive sushi prices in the country.
Dinner at the Hinoki Counter at Sushi Noz in Manhattan consists of a six-course tasting menu and a selection of nigiri, a single piece of fish served on rice, for $300 per person. The beverage pairing costs an additional $175 per person. A two-hour dinner at Masa costs $595 per person, not including beverages and tax. (Gratuity is not accepted at either restaurant.)
But one of the more famous names in sushi is Nobu Matsuhisa, the chef who co-owns more than 40 Nobu restaurants and hotels around the world. At Nobu Downtown in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood, the average check is $135 per person, according to a spokesman for the restaurant, more than three times what I usually spend on sushi. A single piece of toro there costs $17.
So why is Nobu so expensive, and is it worth the money? Watch the video above to see what happened when chef Nobu invited CNBC Make It to his downtown NYC restaurant to eat some of his most expensive sushi.
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