Leave it to the season.
Eighteen pieces served one at a time across a single hinoki counter. Fish chosen at dawn, rice seasoned with three-year aged red vinegar, and a chef who will remember your name.
- Course
- $295
- Seatings
- 5:30 & 8:30
- Counter
- 10 seats
A room built around one counter
Kiyo is a single hinoki counter, planed from one 300-year-old Kiso cypress. There is no dining room, no table service, no second menu. You sit, the chef begins, and the evening unfolds at the pace of the fish.
Four seasons, four courses
Shun is the moment an ingredient is at its best. Our course changes completely four times a year, and in small ways every night.
Spring
Sakura-cured sea bream, firefly squid, bamboo shoot grilled over binchotan and the first katsuo of the year.
Summer
Shima-aji and kinmedai, ayu sweetfish from the Nagara river, chilled somen and yuzu kosho.
Autumn
Sanma pike, modori-gatsuo, matsutake dobin-mushi and salmon roe at its peak. Our current course.
Winter
Kan-buri yellowtail, fugu, kegani crab from Hokkaido and the richest tuna of the year.
Chef Kiyoshi Arai
Trained for eleven years under a Ginza master before he was allowed to touch the rice, Kiyoshi opened Kiyo in 2019 with one rule: never serve a piece he would not eat himself, at that exact moment.
“The fish tells me what it wants to be. My job is mostly to listen, and to keep my knife sharp.”
Tonight, at the counter
A few pieces from the autumn course — photographed exactly as they reach your plate.
Said at the counter
“The kohada alone was worth the flight from Chicago. Quiet, precise and unexpectedly warm.”
“Chef noticed I’m left-handed after the second piece and turned every nigiri for me. That is the whole evening in one detail.”
“Ten seats, no music, just the sound of the knife. The best two hours of eating I have had in New York.”
From the journal
Ten seats. Two seatings.
One evening that will not happen twice.
Seats open on the first of each month for the following month, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. Counter dining for parties of one to four.