Is This Guy The Most Hated Restaurateur In America?

The sushi joint in TRUMP’S D.C. hotel comes with a side of politics.

- Jeff Gordinier

Nakazawa is the most controversial new restaurant that will open in the United States of America in 2017.

Had it arrived two years ago, with the same sushi, in the same place—the grand Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.— you can be sure that tantalizing pictures of chef Daisuke Nakazawa’s hay-smoked skip jack and still-alive-and wriggling tiger shrimp would have graced the Instagram feeds of every food-media mandarin in the country. After all, the restaurant’s New York City forerunner, Sushi Nakazawa, received a rare four stars from The New York Times in 2013. This is nigiri at its most exciting and exquisite.

Instead, Nakazawa and the streetwise 36-year-old entrepreneur behind it, Alessandro Borgognone, might just get the silent treatment from more than a few gastro-influencers. Sushi lover and gonzo food sage Anthony Bourdain has already declared that he plans to boycott the place; he has a low opinion of Borgognone. “I will never eat in his restaurant,” Bourdain told the blog Eater at the end of 2016. “I have utter contempt for him, utter and complete contempt.”