Yamazato: Hotel Okura Manila's Space for Delicious Rituals

You know it's a different kind of restaurant when you walk inside and the outside world collapses.

- IGAN D'BAYAN

You are transported away from Manila's frantic chaos and that ever-present grayness, and your surroundings dissolve into warm wood tones, soft light and the disciplined stillness of a sushi counter where knives glint gracefully against fish. There's something ritualistic in the air — like a sacred tea ceremony or that balletic duel with chopsticks to get to that last bit of holdover morsel.

We are at Yamazato in Hotel Okura Manila. (The royal "we" meaning all three of us: yours unruly, Avee T. the photographer, and Julius the abstractionist, a fan of all things Nippon.) Our friends at Megaworld and Newport World Resorts have pulled out all the stops to ensure that we experience Yamazato in all its fiery glory and ocean freshness with all three Yamazato chefs taking part in preparing the menu.

At the counter, specialty sushi chef Ikuma Sato stands with quiet authority, his hands moving with the precision of a calligrapher. "So today," someone asks, "where is the fish from?"

"From Kumamoto Prefecture, Kyushu Island."

The answer is simple, but the story it holds is vast: early morning markets, the frantic energy of fish auctions, the silent transactions of seafood flown across the seas. Here at Yamazato, Sato's sushi is a meditation on that journey — where a single piece of toro is less about indulgence and more about what an artisan can conjure with the watery harvest.