The quietest door in Roslyn may soon be the hardest reservation on the North Shore. Koyu, a new omakase experience built beneath Okaru at 1401 Old Northern Blvd, has set its opening night for November 5, and reservations open on October 22.

Okaru is the two story modern Japanese restaurant that Marc Spitzer, the executive chef and longtime partner behind BondSt in Manhattan, opened in the village in January 2025 with Northern & Main Hospitality Group. It filled an 1890 building on Old Northern Boulevard with about 110 seats, a sushi bar, a chef's table and a patio. Koyu is what the team has been building underneath it.

What is coming to the space below

The restaurant is keeping most of the details close, which is half the point of a room like this. What its own announcements establish is the shape of the thing: an intimate omakase counter below the main dining room, led by Spitzer alongside chef Bryan Yee, with its own name and its own reservations. The team describes it simply as omakase beneath Okaru.

Chef Bryan Yee, arms crossed, behind the sushi counter at Okaru in Roslyn
Chef Bryan Yee at Okaru in Roslyn.

Omakase means the chef decides. There is no menu to order from. You sit at the counter, the chef serves a procession of courses built around what came in that day, and the meal unfolds one piece at a time, usually over a couple of hours. It is the most personal format in Japanese dining, and the small basement room with a dedicated counter is its natural home.

A step up from the counter upstairs

Okaru already runs serious sushi service. The dining room offers an eight piece chef's selection at $78 and a kitchen wide tasting at $195, alongside a full menu of modern and traditional dishes. A separate, named omakase room is a different tier: fewer seats, one seating rhythm, the chef in front of you all night. Pricing and seat count for Koyu have not been published yet, and the smart money says the room will be small.

Spitzer spent years behind BondSt, the NoHo sushi institution, before bringing his own name to Long Island. Okaru was the proof that the North Shore would support that cooking seven nights a week. Koyu is the format a 110 seat restaurant cannot fully run upstairs.

The dates that matter

Reservations go live on October 22 through the restaurant's own channels, and the first seating is November 5. If the room is as small as these rooms tend to be, the first few weeks will likely be spoken for quickly. Roslyn has watched a steady run of openings this year, from Greek kitchens to coffee bars, and a dedicated omakase counter puts a night out in the village in the same conversation as a trip into Manhattan.

For anyone who has been meaning to try omakase without the drive into the city, the calendar is simple: set a reminder for October 22, and aim for a seat in the first week of November.