Sushitetsu

Sushitetsu describes its own cooking with a phrase worth keeping: "Hiroshima-wan mae-zushi" (広島湾前鮨) — sushi of Hiroshima Bay, a deliberate local answer to Tokyo's Edomae. It is a claim about geography as much as craft. Where the capital's tradition was built on the catch of Edo Bay, this eight-seat counter near Ginzan-cho builds its season on the water just beyond the city: oysters and anago (穴子), yonaki-gai (夜泣き貝) sea snails, and the small ko-iwashi (小鰯) sardines that are a genuine Hiroshima signature, prized when others overlook them.

The kitchen works with wild-caught seafood only — no farmed fish — and the discipline shows most clearly in the rice. Sushitetsu runs a dual-shari system, switching between a red-vinegar aka-shari and a clean white-vinegar shiro-shari depending on what each piece of fish asks for. That kind of deliberate matching is among the surest tells of a serious counter: it means the chef is reading the fish and answering it, rather than pressing every neta onto the same default rice.

Expect a course of a few tsumami opening into a long run of nigiri — the ¥15,000 tier reportedly stretches to around fifteen pieces — across three price points that make the room accessible at several budgets. The feel is a working craftsman's counter rather than a hushed temple: focused, unfussy, and rooted in the bay it is named for.

The honest caveat is one of timing. The long service window of 16:00 to 23:00 raises the real possibility of a double seating, and a second-turn slot can carry a faint sense of the room being turned over. When you book, ask whether your reservation falls in the first or second seating, and aim for the earlier one if an unhurried pace matters to you. Photography is unconfirmed but, given the volume of guest photos online, likely tolerated — confirm at booking to be sure.