Hide Sushi Offers a Notable New $120 Omakase (and Yes, It’s Hidden)

Photo: Mari Taketa

Honolulu’s newest omakase is aptly named Hide Sushi—first, because it’s hidden, and second because it’s the latest opening by restaurateur Hide Sakurai. The list of eateries he’s launched in the city starts with the OG Shokudo near Ala Moana Center in 2005 and continues across the next 20 years with Buho Cocina y Cantina, Sky Waikīkī (which he took over and revamped in 2020) and La Bettola, for which he brought over Japan’s most venerated Italian chef. In April, in a light-filled space behind Sky’s open-air bar 19 floors above Waikīkī, Sakurai opened Hide Sushi.

Tsukasa Okino with the day’s offerings. Photo: Mari Taketa

It’s already noteworthy. Hide’s $120 price ranks it among Honolulu’s more affordable omakase offerings, despite its fairly generous volume and flying in seafood not from one wholesaler, but a slew of sub-specialists at Tokyo’s Toyosu Market. The chef is Tsukasa Okino, who trained at Maru Sushi with Takeshi Kawasaki, whose Sapporo sushi bar earned a Michelin star. Under Okino, Hide’s approach is traditional and seasonal, with “fish you don’t really see in Hawai‘i,” Sakurai says.

A recent spring selection of hassun appetizers. Photo: Mari Taketa

The menu is coursed like kaiseki: a range of opening bites, then sashimi, ramping up to a grilled dish and the main event of 10 sushi, followed by a denouement of miso soup and simple, light desserts. On a recent tray of seasonally changing hassun appetizers at a meal Sakurai’s invited us to, standouts are fried mehikari or deep-sea green eye, sweet and fluffy inside a crisp batter; hotaru ika firefly squids with vinegared miso, and a custardy macadamia nut tofu.

Photo: Mari Taketa

The sashimi course is a contrast in belly meat: mild, velvety sawara and flame-seared honmaguro Pacific bluefin tuna, softer and more delicate than ‘ahi. The highlight of the grilled course, the sweet fish amadai, is the rapid, repeated ladling of hot oil that makes the scales as wispy and crispy as chips.

SEE ALSO: Where to Park in Waikīkī

Photo: Mari Taketa

The 10 sushi also ramp up in richness, from fresh scallop nigiri and madai snapper cured between kelp for two days to Kaua‘i shrimp, vinegared saba presented as old-school oshizushi and the Hawai‘i favorite, Hokkaido uni.

Photo: Mari Taketa

Sakurai, after opening Shokudo, scored its first profit when he brought in towers of honey toast, a simple dessert for home toaster ovens in Japan. At Hide Sushi, his signature move may be AYCE dessert—an LOL detail at a traditional sushi counter but one that might quell the worry local diners bring to omakase sushi: Will it fill you up? And as a veteran of Shokudo, he understands volume and pacing: There are no chilled displays of pristine fish fillets under glass at this counter. Instead, seafood is pre-sliced for quicker service at its eight seats and the three sofa tables that line the windows.

Photo: Mari Taketa

As for the $120 price in a town where you’d expect to pay $150 or more for a similar omakase, it’s because the rent is essentially paid—Sakurai has been leasing the entire nineteenth floor of Waikīkī Business Plaza since he took over Sky—and he works the two nightly seatings as Okino’s assistant.

SEE ALSO: Honolulu’s Omakase Obsession

Parking for Hide Sushi is in the same building; the restaurant will validate. Advance reservations are required, and if you want a nightcap after, be warned that this sushi counter is open every night except when Sky Waikīkī is busiest. It’s closed on Fridays and Saturdays.

2250 Kalākaua Ave., 18th floor, @hide_socialsushi bar, reservations on OpenTable

Mari Taketa is editor of Frolic Hawai‘i and dining editor of HONOLULU Magazine.