Moody Tongue Sushi
A Chicago brewery opened a sushi room in the West Village and brews sixteen beers to pour against the fish. The MICHELIN inspector rates the pairings. Bryan Kim rated the room 6.8 for The Infatuation. What you order here decides which of them was right.
Why go
Jared Rouben brews and Hiromi Iwakiri runs the sushi, and they build to each other. Rouben brews one lager for this room and nowhere else, shaved black truffle over rice. The room is small, brick walls and parquet floors, and there is an eight-seat hand roll and martini counter next door. Moody Tongue Brewing owns the place and sent its beer program east.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a nigiri set with its beers. Ora king salmon meets the Sour Watermelon Saison. Madai with orange zest meets the Orange Blossom Blonde. Jumbo shrimp under Hokkaido uni and caviar meets an oak-barrel Flanders red.2
- Avoid: the specialty nigiri ordered piece by piece. Individual pieces ran $6 to $30 in March 2023, and that is where the bill gets away from you.1
What locals & experts say
- Bryan Kim, The Infatuation, 23 March 2023, 6.8:
Most of the specialty nigiri feels unnecessarily complicated, and you can easily spend $150 on an underwhelming meal for one.
1 - MICHELIN Guide, New York 2025 selection, on the same menu:
There is an a la carte menu, but the way to go is their nigiri sets creatively paired with beer.
2
Good to know
- Booking: worth doing. It is one small room plus the hand roll bar.
- Closed: Mondays.
Verdict
could-visit — Go for the pairings and stop there. Drink the way the kitchen tells you to, and accept that the sushi will be the second-best thing in the room.