This Sushi Restaurant in NYC Is the Most Expensive in the Country

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Sushi Restaurant in NYC Is the Most Expensive in the Country

© Courtesy of Henry B. via Yelp

There are 140,000 restaurants in the U.S. People can go to the local Olive Garden and have a complete meal for $35 or less. Really expensive restaurants cost a good deal more. The most expensive restaurant in America carries an average dinner price of $750 to $950. And that is for just one person. Welcome to Masa, a Japanese restaurant in New York City. Its specialty is sushi. (It is easily one of the best sushi bars in America.)

Masa is located in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in New York, at the low end of Central Park on the West Side. It is adjacent to one of the most expensive residential complexes in the city, part of the complex known as Time Warner Center, after the company that was once headquartered there. (These are the most expensive Michelin three-star restaurants in the world.)

Owner and chef Masayoshi Takayama grew up in a small area of Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. His family had a fish market there. He studied under Sugiyama Toshiaki, the head chief at Tokyo’s Ginza Sushi-ko restaurant. He opened Masa in 2004.

People who would like to dine at Masa need to remember three things. The first is that a reservation is impossible to get. Another is that it is not open often – only on Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 2:30 p.m. and from 5 to 8 p.m. It is closed on Thursday for lunch. It is not open Sunday and Monday. Third, people should be “conscious of the amount of perfume or cologne you apply before your meal.” It can spoil the meal of other guests.

Masa is not entirely unique. Celebrity chefs at some of the nation’s top-rated restaurants these days offer multi-course meals that cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars – for one person, not including beverages, tax, or tip.

24/7 Tempo combed lists of pricey restaurants in the U.S. to find the most expensive ones. Most of the places on our list have earned the accolade of two or three Michelin stars, considered the ultimate acknowledgement of restaurant quality in the gastronomic world (Masa has three), and almost all of them serve only fixed-price menus, though a few may offer à la carte options as well.

Click here for the 24 most expensive restaurants in the U.S.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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