Nozomu Abe runs his Upper East Side flagship behind an unmarked door at 181 East 78th — a fourteen-seat hinoki counter assembled in Japan without a nail, where two nightly seatings work through five or six otsumami plus a dozen-plus nigiri at $550 a head. The Hokkaido-born Abe trained under Naomichi Yasuda before opening Noz in 2018; Michelin awarded the first star in 2019 and elevated it to two in 2023, where it has held through the 2025 NYC guide. The program is hushed kappo-Edomae — slow, traditional, the kind of room where the woodwork itself is part of the credential. Abe has since extended the Noz universe with the casual NOZ Market and 1-star Noz 17 in Chelsea (chef Junichi Matsuzaki), but the East 78th flagship is the program. For traditional Edomae omakase in a room built as a temple to the format.