Sushi Dai

The tamago is competent and no more — a sweet, dense square that reads like a palate-cleanser rather than a statement, and at a counter where every other bite is arguing for itself, the egg is the one place the kitchen stops arguing. It is fine. It is also the weakest thing on the tray.

The approach is across a covered walkway from the Shijo-mae station side of Toyosu, through a building that looks and smells like what it is — a working wholesale market with a public floor built above the trading floors. Signage in Japanese and English points to the third floor, past the tuna-viewing windows and along a corridor of eight or nine small restaurants. The queue outside Sushi Dai is the first sign of arrival.

The access model rewards the traveller with one flexible morning and a willingness to lose sleep for it, and it excludes almost everyone else — the family with a child who will not queue in the dark, the diner arriving by taxi at nine, the person who assumed a Michelin-style booking window exists somewhere. It does not. Sign-ups happen in person at the storefront on the third floor of the Fisheries Intermediate Wholesale Market Building, starting at 5 AM. You write your name, they give you a return time, and you leave to eat something else in the market while you wait. Arriving at 5 AM is the honest floor; earlier is safer, and by six the morning's seats are usually gone. The restaurant is closed Sundays, Wednesdays and public holidays when the market itself is dark — check the market's own calendar before you set the alarm, because a holiday closure catches out more travellers than the queue does. Bring cash. Cards, IC cards and QR codes are all refused, and the nearest ATM is not next door.

Widen out and the rest holds: the uni is generous, the kohada is cured by someone who has done it thousands of times, and the finishing-fish choice is a piece of hospitality most counters at this price would monetise. The scallop add-on is the only line that reads at market rate rather than under it, and it is still worth ordering.

The kohada finisher was the right call the first time, and it is the right call the second time too — but a return visit is where the horse mackerel or a second piece of uni goes into the finishing slot instead of a repeat, because the sequence rewards a diner who already knows how the middle of the tray reads. A grilled anago on the side, if it is on that morning, is the other move.