Masayoshi Takayama built the room that every American omakase still measures itself against — a twenty-six-seat hinoki counter where the commotion of Columbus Circle dissolves into something closer to ceremony. His is a style many have copied and none have matched: foie gras nigiri, toro crowned with caviar, white truffle and abalone, much of it flown daily from Tokyo's Toyosu market. He earned three Michelin stars for fifteen years — the first Japanese restaurant in America to do so — and holds two today. At a thousand dollars and up, with no photographs and no rush, it is less a meal than a discipline. You come for Takayama's hands, and the quiet certainty that nobody does this quite the way he does.