Hamasei restaurant was opened in 1974 and is one of the oldest and most well-known Japanese restaurants in Rome. The place is a branch of the restaurant of the same name in Tokyo, located in Asakusa. The interior is typically Japanese: spacious, minimal and refined. It has two main rooms, bigger than the others, a tatami room and a sushi bar, which makes up about 100 total places. The staff is efficient and very kind.

And what about the menu? It’s a wide traditional one, with some rarely known dishes to the Italian clientele. You can go for a traditional sushi (no Chinese influence, which is recently spreading), sukiyaki (thin meat layers with rice spaghetti, mushrooms, onions and soya puddings), vegetarian tenpura and teppanyaki. You should also taste shabu shabu, prepared with beef or pork and vegetables, that you taste boiled in a light broth.

At lunch you can go for the “sushi lunch”, the “yakizana lunch” (with grilled fish) or the sashimi lunch, together with something fried and broth weeds. In this case, prices are about half the sum of dinner menus, therefore very convenient. You can taste these delicacies together with a good wine, a Japanese beer or some sake. This restaurant is pretty busy so you’d better reserve in advance.