SoraNews24 —Japan News—

Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.

TOP

» Japan
» Akihabara restaurant with 1.7 million sushi bowl options will have us coming back again and again

Featured

Weird
Studio Ghibli
Jobs

Akihabara restaurant with 1.7 million sushi bowl options will have us coming back again and again

Casey Baseel a few minute ago
Tweet

A virtually inexhaustible addition to our to-eat backlog was hiding on the quiet side of Akihabara Station.

Variety is the name of the game in Akihabara. Tokyo’s anime/video game district offers an amazing selection of both new releases and classic titles and merch waiting to be discovered by discerning fans in second-hand shops, allowing you to find the exact mix of things that appeal to you.

And there’s a similar situation going on at a sushi bowl restaurant in Akihabara, one that we didn’t know about until a recent walk through the neighborhood.

Uodon, whose name literally translates as “Fish Bowl,” opened in 2025, but its location means that a lot of visitors to Akihabara might not have noticed it. It’s only about two blocks from Akihabara Station, but it’s to the east of the station, whereas most of the tourist-attracting stores and arcades are on the west side.

Like a lot of restaurants in Japan, Uodon has a signboard out front showing some of its menu items. Unlike most restaurants, though, Uodon’s board has about 150 different options on it.

And yes, this still only counts as “some” of what you can order. By picking and choosing your own sushi rice bowl toppings, you can actually make more than 1.7 million different combinations, the restaurant says.

While some people might revel in this sort of fish-selecting freedom. Uodon does also recognize that having so many choices could also have a paralyzing effect on some people, hence the 150 suggestions on the board. The restaurant also lists the top three most popular orders among male and female customers, and our Japanese-language reporter P.K. Sanjun decided to take their advice and order the most popular bowl for guys, the Seared Salmon Belly with Mayo and Hidden Negitoro, for 930 yen (US$5.85).

Mayonnaise, as you’re probably already aware, isn’t a conventional condiment for sushi, but P.K. could see why it’s popular with this restaurant’s clientele. Diners in Akihabara tend to gravitate more towards “grub” than “cuisine,” and restaurants with filling, strongly flavored dishes tend to do well here. So while this is definitely a break with tradition, he was willing to give it a chance.

Placed before him, the Seared Salmon Belly with Mayo and Hidden Negitoro Bowl certainly looked the part of a sushi bowl given a junk food remix. With the glistening mayo dotted with a generous shake of black pepper, he braced himself for the possibility of all those seasonings being employed to mask the unpleasantness of some sub-par fish…

…but, thankfully, this turned out to not be the case at all! While Uodon does have non-traditional menu items like this, they also have classics of vinegared rice and fish without any unusual innovative flourishes, so the fish has to be good enough to stand on its own merits. The salmon in P.K.’s bowl was actually quite good, just given an extra impactful punch with the contributions of the mayo and pepper.

As he dug deeper into the vinegared sushi rice, he came to the negitoro, minced fatty tuna with green onion, buried under the top layer of grains. P.K. felt that the negitoro was on the greasy side, though it’s hard for us to say how much of that might be from mayo dripping down into it, but the tuna’s delicious flavor was still intact.

Fully satisfied, P.K. soon came back to Uodon to try something still creative but a little less outlandish, a marinated chirashi (mixed sashimi) bowl with avocado, which was excellent too.

P.K. later learned that Uodon is actually a chain, though they only have about 50 locations nationwide, and most branches tend to be farther outside the city center than Akihabara. Because of that, it might take a little extra walking to get to one, but the quality of their food has won P.K.’s heart and stomach, and with so many options to choose from, he’s going to be able to make a whole lot of return trips until he runs out of things to try.

Restaurant information
Uodon (Akihabara branch) / 魚丼（秋葉原店）
Address: Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Kandaizumicho 1-1-15
東京都千代田区神田和泉町1-1-15
Open 11 a.m.-10 p.m.
Website

Photos ©SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
[ Read in Japanese ]