After spending a decent and satisfying chunk of time back home in the Las Vegas Valley, my next trip is already underway. Shortly before heading out, I dined at Kabuto Edomae Sushi in the Chinatown neighborhood of the unincorporated town of Spring Valley for one of my last meals in town until my return. I opted for the premium chef’s omakase experience, labeled on their menu as the namesake “Kabuto course.”
The meal began with an assortment of appetizers. Out of these appetizers, the tofu particularly stood out—I think this is the best tofu I’ve ever had in my entire life, and it tasted like they had compacted about five times the normal tofu flavor into a single slice.
Next was the warm dish, chawanmushi. Japanese steamed egg custard is usually the color of scrambled eggs, so it was interesting to see it come out very dark brown.
This was a traditional Japanese omakase experience, so while we were eating, we were able to watch the chefs prepare food for us and the other diners.
The following course was a trio of sashimi. This sashimi was exactly as you’d expect from a high-quality sushi restaurant—thick, fatty, and rich in flavor.
Next up was the seasonal grill item, fish with asparagus and ginger. The fish was remarkably tender and took “melt in your mouth” to a whole new level, while the vegetables had the perfect balance of crunch to add some variety to the texture of the fish.
By this point, the chef had finished preparing the slices of fish for our nigiri.
After finishing our grilled fish, the premium selection of nigiri service began.
Each piece had a very generous portion of fish. It is often considered to be Japanese etiquette to consume each piece of nigiri in one single bite. I managed to do this and get an abundantly pleasurable mouthful of fish each time, but I wouldn’t blame someone if they had a smaller mouth capacity and need to eat each in two bites.
After five pieces of nigiri, we took a quick break for some ikura and uni.
Shortly afterwards, we finished nigiri service with our final few pieces.
The subsequent course was a hand roll. It was just a regular roll with some cuts of tuna belly inside, which we had already eaten earlier during the dinner, but I still appreciated the added variety of style of preparing the items.
As a bonus after the conclusion of the sushi items, we got a prism of tamago. I don’t know if it’s because I just finished eating a large portion of amazing sushi so it was just a matter of bias through comparison, but this tamago was somewhat underwhelming and didn’t taste special at all.
There were two different omakase experiences—the full Kabuto option and the abridged Yoroi option. I saw the chef preparing some more sea urchin and salmon roe, and my guess is that this was for the diners on the opposite side of the sushi bar who had opted for the Yoroi course.
As our second-to-last course, we received clam miso soup. We had an option to pick between mushroom and clam; it’s rare to have a non-vegetable version of miso soup, so I opted for the clam.
To accompany our dessert, we received some tea.
Dessert was an assortment of three sweet and fruity dishes.
All the fruit was explosively packed with flavor. The sweetness also had an interesting phenomenon where it had very high intensity of sweetness, but that intensity didn’t come with any of the usual downsides of excessive sweetness that makes it overwhelming and “too” sweet.
| Chef’s premium omakase ×2 | $ 350.00 |
| Sales tax (8.375%) | $ 29.31 |
| Gratuity | $ 50.00 |
| Total | $ 429.31 |
The table to the right shows how much we paid.
I thought this was a very well-rounded traditional Japanese omakase experience that perfectly captured what you’d expect from high-quality Japanese fine dining, both in the cuisine and in the impeccably attentive service.
There was nothing particularly innovative or revolutionary about this dinner, but that’s okay—sometimes you just want a predictable and straightforward Japanese meal, and Kabuto Edomae Sushi satisfyingly fulfills all those checkboxes.
My friend and I were seated at the edge of the sushi bar, which made for a nicer experience—we had an effortless view of all the chefs in the bar area, and it made for a slightly more private meal as a result of not being surrounded by other diners.
With that being said, Kabuto also has regular tables set up behind the sushi bar, and the isolation of those tables from the chefs means that diners seated there will just chatter among themselves. I think I just got unlucky, as there was a particularly loud group of young adults at one of those tables that came in about half an hour into our meal. Hopefully this doesn’t sound too bratty, but I think the omakase diners would have appreciated it if the wait staff asked that group to avoid yelling and keep their voices at a volume suitable for indoor dining in order to maintain the classiness of the environment.
Overall, this was a fantastic experience. Japanese is my favorite type of cuisine, and it was great having this meal be one of the conclusions of my stay before heading out for my next leg of travels. Paying over US$200.00 per person for a meal is a sizeable amount, but if that is within your budget, I think Kabuto Edomae Sushi is a solid option if you’re looking for a great traditional omakase restaurant.