Why you should experience Daiwa Sushi in Tokyo, Japan.
Daiwa Sushi is a storied sushi counter where Toyosu's wholesale-market culture, three generations of the Irino family, Edomae technique and direct access to exceptional Japanese seafood converge inside Tokyo's principal food market.
Set inside Toyosu Market's Fruit and Vegetable Building near the Market Station pedestrian deck and just steps from the market's waterfront edge, the restaurant places diners within the distribution system supplying fish across metropolitan Tokyo. Counter seats face chefs working through tuna, shellfish, uni, silver-skinned fish and anago in rapid succession, preserving the directness that defined the restaurant decades before the market left Tsukiji. The move to Toyosu expanded the physical operation without separating Daiwa Sushi from the professional fish trade around which its reputation developed. The result is a Toyosu sushi counter where the Irino family's craft remains inseparable from the wholesale market that has sustained it since 1962.
What you should know about Daiwa Sushi.
Daiwa Sushi is best known for beginning inside Tsukiji Market in 1962 under Shinichi Irino and developing from a counter serving seafood professionals into one of the market's most sought-after sushi restaurants. Until around 1990, much of its clientele came directly from the trade, including ryotei proprietors who gathered after purchasing fish and used the counter for food, drinks and professional exchange. Japan's 1990s gourmet boom altered that audience as Tsukiji's working restaurants drew growing public attention for their proximity to the seafood trade, and Daiwa became particularly associated with long queues beside fellow market sushi specialist Sushi Dai. The restaurant remained in Tsukiji until the wholesale market closed in 2018, then followed the trade to Toyosu and reopened in the Fruit and Vegetable Building after the new market began operations on October 11. Shinichi continued working at the Toyosu counter alongside the next generation, and sons Mitsuhiro and Shigehiro Irino now lead the business after more than half a century of family operation. That generational continuity acquired an unusual cultural footnote through comedian Katsutoshi Okabe of Hanako, who worked around Tsukiji before his group won King of Conte in 2018 and later named Daiwa's ikura and tekkamaki among the foods inseparable from those formative years.
Omakase puts the counter in control, allowing the morning's fish to determine a progression that can begin with tuna before moving through squid, kuruma ebi, uni and seasonal pieces. Honmaguro provides the richest development through akami and fattier cuts, with Daiwa giving particular importance to domestic bluefin and the clean transition between lean flesh and melting otoro. Silver-skinned fish receive Edomae treatment through techniques including su-arai, a vinegar washing method Mitsuhiro Irino has used to sharpen the character of sardine. Anago closes the sequence softly after the firmer textures of shellfish and tuna, its cooked flesh bringing warmth and tenderness before maki returns rice and nori to the foreground. Daiwa Sushi keeps the meal centered on the relationship between fish selection and restrained intervention, letting cutting, vinegar, temperature and timing reveal why a market counter can remain compelling across generations.
How to fold Daiwa Sushi into your trip.
Daiwa Sushi works as the opening meal for a morning devoted to the wholesale-market machinery and waterfront transformation that turned Toyosu into the successor to more than eight decades of trading at Tsukiji.
Begin at Toyosu Market Fisheries Wholesale Building, where the 2018 market created an 125,000-square-meter facility for seafood trading, including dedicated tuna-auction and live-fish areas that carry Tokyo's wholesale fish trade into its contemporary home. Continue to Toyosu Market Rooftop Green Space, reached above the Fisheries Intermediate Wholesale Market Building, where the elevated lawn opens the market complex toward Tokyo Bay and connects directly with the surrounding waterfront park system. Conclude at Toyosu Senkyaku Banrai, opened in February 2024 beside the market as a food-and-bathing complex conceived around an Edo-period streetscape, adding a public-facing destination to infrastructure originally dominated by wholesale commerce. The progression moves from the working mechanisms of seafood distribution through the market's elevated waterfront landscape into its newest public district, showing how Toyosu expanded Tokyo's historic fish-market culture into an entire bayside quarter.
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