Sushi Kubo

Sushi Kubo is the newest serious counter in the prefecture, and the most quietly ambitious. Chef Kubo Naoya (久保直也) trained in Japanese kappo and washoku kitchens outside Kochi before returning home to open his own room in January 2024, and he works alongside his father — a father-and-son pairing whose combined experience runs past forty years. That lineage shows in the discipline of the nigiri: the rice and fish are calculated, in the chef's own phrasing, to melt together in the mouth, with the thickness of each cut adjusted to its fat, the fish rested, hidden knife-work tucked beneath the surface where the eye never finds it.

The room itself is a small argument for Tosa craft. The counter is ten seats of Tosa hinoki (土佐桧 cypress), set against Tosa shikkui plaster and Tosa washi paper — a deliberate frame of the prefecture's traditional materials, photogenic in a way the chef welcomes rather than tolerates. Photography is actively encouraged here, an openness that is rarer than it should be at counters of this caliber and a genuine comfort for a traveler who wants to remember the meal. At ¥18,000 the omakase lands squarely in the satisfaction band; a pairing course with seven sake runs to ¥24,000.

Here is where honesty is owed. Kubo's stated sourcing is the finest, whether from within the prefecture or beyond — and its signature material is bluefin tuna from Miyagi (宮城), a thousand kilometers up the archipelago. By the framework's reckoning this is the counter's real weakness: chi-no-ri, the advantage of place, is thin here. You can eat extraordinarily well at this counter, but you may not be eating Kochi. If the local Pacific — the katsuo, the kinmedai, the warm-current fish that are the whole reason to travel this far south — is what you came for, say so when you book and ask that the course lean toward Tosa fish.

The remaining caveats are the ordinary ones of a young restaurant. Opened in 2024, its review record is still thin, and a service charge is not clearly stated — confirm both the final price and any service charge at booking, by phone. What is not in doubt is the seriousness of the work: this is a properly made counter run by people who have spent their lives learning how, and in a prefecture structurally short on small-box omakase, that alone earns it a place on the map.