Minato Caesarea: Twenty Years of Tokyo Tradition at a Highway Crossroads

The salmon arrives on a wooden board, five slices of sashimi fanned like a hand of cards, each piece so translucent that the grain of the wood shows through its edges. Behind the counter, a pair of hands works in deliberate silence: pressing a thumb into a mound of vinegared rice, laying a ribbon of tuna across it, and brushing the surface with soy in a single fluid motion. The whole operation takes four seconds. Around the bar, half a dozen guests sit close enough to feel the cool draft from the fish case, watching the choreography of a kitchen that has been running this routine since 2004. This is Minato Caesarea on a Wednesday afternoon, and the quiet confidence of the place tells you everything before the first bite.

Minato means "port" in Japanese, and the name carries a story. Chef Aki Tamura is a fourth generation sushi craftsman whose family operated a restaurant in the Minato ward of Tokyo for over ninety years. He arrived in Israel more than thirty years ago, bringing with him the methods his parents drilled into him from the age of twelve: how to select fish by the clarity of its eyes, how to season rice so the vinegar lifts without overpowering, how to cut at an angle that maximizes the surface area against the tongue. Co founders Matan Rosenthal and Kobi Ninio built the business around Tamura's expertise, and the Caesarea location became the original flagship before a second branch opened in Herzliya seven years later.