Cover Sushi Sakuta chef-owner Yoshio Sakuta (Photo: Sushi Sakuta)
Sushi Sakuta chef-owner Yoshio Sakuta (Photo: Sushi Sakuta)
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After earning two Michelin stars and moving to Millenia Walk, Yoshio Sakuta continues to present his pure and precise omakase menus at Sushi Sakuta
A two-Michelin-star promotion is, for any restaurant, as much a trigger for pressure as it is a cause for celebration. In a dining city that hadn’t seen such an honour since 2022 until last July, when chef Yoshio Sakuta walked the Marina Bay Sands stage to accept these two hallowed stars for Sushi Sakuta, the stakes were high. How would he maintain his newfound stars? Would he ramp up the luxury ingredients? Complicate his recipes? As it turns out, the key was to simplify. To let the sushi remain pure and sincere. To let the food speak for itself.
You’ll see Sakuta’s pared-down elegance in his new space. In November 2025, Sushi Sakuta moved from the Capitol Kempinski Hotel Singapore to Millennia Walk, bearing all of his designs. Sukiya-zukuri, the Japanese architectural style responsible for the stately houses hosting dignified tea ceremonies, takes breath in the five-metre hinoki counter, the sugi cedar and Ajiro bamboo accents, and washi paper lanterns.
Read more: Michelin Guide Singapore 2025: Sushi Sakuta gains two stars, Omakase@Stevens debuts with one
Sushi Sakuta is known for its pure and sincere sushi
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Calm, measured and restrained—all adjectives you might use to describe Sakuta, crafting your sushi behind the counter with deft movements and singular focus, a conversation unfolding from his fingertips to the perfectly-formed nigiri that he places right in front of you. You would never have guessed that the eponymous itamae used to have an aversion to raw fish.
How was it possible that someone so repulsed by raw fish could become such an acclaimed sushi chef? The answer is in the irony: Sakuta’s sensitivity to texture and aroma sharpened because of his dislike. Under his intuitive hands, shaped by his experiences across Japan, San Francisco and Singapore, freshly-caught fish is salted, cured and sliced into aphorisms of purity. Otoro revels at room temperature for its full indulgence. Yellowtail needs to go with warm rice to reveal its latent sweetness. Embellishment is not the word of the day here; precision is.
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Above Sushi Sakuta’s new space at Millenia Walk
Sushi Sakuta’s new space at Millenia Walk
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Thus it is that Sakuta brushes his sushi with soy sauce in Baccarat bowls. That you’ll be served deceivingly simple dishes painstakingly presented in handcrafted bowls made from Sakuta’s artisan friend from Sapporo. That you’ll find carefully-composed sushi rice—Hitomebore and Sasanishiki grains mixed with red and white vinegars—unveiled in a custom double-lidded donabe. These are luxury touches, certainly, but dignified in their quietly confident statements (and never grandiloquent declarations of bravado), undertaken, of course, in service of the sushi, unadorned and distilled to its simplest essence.
At Sushi Sakuta, you can expect no less than this exacting standard.
Credits
Images: Sushi Sakuta
Ethan Kan was Tatler Singapore’s dining writer.
