Suki Desu
Suki Desu is a relatively newish sushi restaurant that has a few branches opened in Manhattan. It has a small menu, consisting of mainly kaisen don though it does offer alternatives if you’re not a fan of raw fish. Kaisen don is basically raw seafood on top of rice. Their goal is to make rice bowls with authentic Japanese flavors accessible to everyone. Like the recent trend of hand rolls, this one brings raw fish rice bowls at a very affordable price.
Ambiance & Service
This Upper East Side location is quite small. There are like 10 counter-top seats and 2 group tables in the back. Definitely don’t come here with a larger sized group. Also, the interior is quite dark and potentially claustrophobic due to it being a very small sized restaurant with not much lighting.
They play some music over the speaker, but this is probably not a place for a comfortable dinner. If you sit at the bar like we did, the seats are just stools. This place is definitely meant to turnover seats somewhat quickly.
The service as expected was very quick. The small menu helps keep things contained and straight forward.
Food
The Melon Cream Soda ($5) we learned had 0% juice in it, and it does have high fructose corn syrup.
The Unagi Tamagoyaki ($10) came with eel, sweet omelet, and salmon roe. This is basically the typical eel slice on top of a sweet egg (tamago) with some salmon roe. I made the mistake of trying to grasp the egg and using that as the vessel for everything else. Instead, I should’ve used the spoon to prevent spillover of the salmon roe or total collapse of the sweet egg.
The Hamachi comes with the $28 “fresh from the sea” bowl and is served with sesame dressing on the side. The hamachi was fairly fresh, but just know you get what you pay for. For most people, the hamachi grade will be acceptable for this price range. The sesame dressing is similar to the dressing you may use in shabu shabu (Japanese hotpot). It seems to be a mix of soy sauce and sesame dressing.
The Fresh from the Sea ($28) came with salmon, tuna, crab, ika (squid), botan ebi (sweet shrimp), hotate (scallops), cucumber, pickled daikon, shiso leaf, sesame seeds, and nori sheet. In addition, this bowl comes with ikura (salmon eggs) and uni. This small mound mixture of seafood was actually seasoned and fairly tasty. My partner was pouring some of the soy sauce on top, but I really don’t think you need any. The mixture of seafood tasted pretty fresh without fishy flavors. I really liked the shiso leaf and seaweed to offer additional ways to wrap the rice and seafood contents.
One interesting thing to this bowl is halfway through your bowl, you can ask them to pour hot soup into it to allow you to finish the rest. This soup reminded me of a strongly flavored miso soup. The miso soup was good and salty in flavor. My partner really enjoyed this even though they previously mentioned they disliked miso. The hot miso soup will cook some of the fish, where it does start to get a little bit rubbery. I honestly don’t think the miso soup is needed, but if you really want to have a porridge-style finish, that’s OK too. I could’ve easily finished the kaisen don bowl without any miso soup if I wanted.
Overall Impression
Suki Desu was a surprisingly very good alternative to the hand roll trend that’s going on. The fish was pretty fresh, and the flavors were very well balanced. The miso soup added to the rice gives it a nice umami, salty flavor if you need it to finish the rice bowl. In addition to the very small menu, it helps with any indecisions. Definitely check out this restaurant if you’re near the MET or in the Chelsea area and are looking for a cheap, casual sushi-like restaurant.
Yelp & Google Jabs
The kaisendon was filled with seafood (unfortunately forgot to take a picture!) but I think there was a bit too much rice! Don’t get me wrong! They were pretty generous with the seafood but there was just too much rice which made the seafood to rice ratio a little off.
I disagree with this Elitist. They give a lot of seafood, so the rice helps fill you up with the starch. Otherwise, you’d be complaining that you’re hungry. If it weren’t for the rice, there’d also be no need for the miso soup.
We opted for the #2 which came with hamachi ($25), highly recommend getting bc that was such a good piece of fish.
For just a few more dollars, I’d recommend getting the #3. The hamachi quality is what you would expect at this price point. The ikura was very good, and it added a nice salty, umami flavor on top of the bowl. The uni was pretty decent, though it was mostly drowned by everything else. Regardless, for a few extra dollars, mind as well get the best of it all.
Revisions
- Mar 28, 2026 - Initial revision.