[Asakusa Restaurant] Hinatomaru Sushi – The Best-Value Fresh Tuna Sushi Restaurant Near Tokyo’s Sensoji, Recommended by Locals

Baek’s rating ★★★★★

Hello.

This is Baek’s Food Michelin.

I’ll continue sharing restaurant posts from my enjoyable 2024 Christmas-season hotel staycation~!

I was a little disappointed that the views were lower than expected.. haha. There was a post about a place known among locals for monjayaki and okonomiyaki....

Today, I’ll be introducing a sushi restaurant—the Japanese food that probably comes to mind first.

Hinatomaru Sushi

ひなと丸 雷門柳小路店

This is a great sushi restaurant near Asakusa Station, where you get off to visit Tokyo’s Sensoji Temple.

I actually visited in 2023, and I thought it was truly outstanding at the time. I was genuinely, genuinely impressed by the place.

It’s a place where you can enjoy generous amounts of fresh tuna at great value—something that is genuinely difficult to find even at most sushi omakase restaurants in Korea.

Location: 1 Chome-20-3 Asakusa, Taito City, Tokyo 111-0032, Japan

It’s easy to find after about a five-minute walk from Asakusa Station.

It has a Google rating of 4.4!! Isn’t that pretty good? haha

By the way, I often get off at this station because of Tokyo’s Sensoji Temple, which has such a calm atmosphere. This time, I also stopped by Kitchen Town and bought two beautifully crafted Japanese kitchen knives made by artisans. I brought home some incredible knives unlike anything I had ever seen before.. They even sliced gimbap smoothly in a single stroke.. haha. Western visitors seemed to love them, so I recommend them to anyone looking to buy a good kitchen knife!

Exterior

It had been about a year and a half since my previous visit, and the restaurant had expanded to twice its original size.

Originally, it was a relatively small restaurant occupying only the left half, with counter seating only.. But it had grown symmetrically!!! It really does seem to be a restaurant loved by locals.

There were also many Western visitors, so I wondered whether it had become an international favorite. haha

I’m not at all fluent in Japanese, but those who may find it useful can take a look.

This was the large menu board outside, and the very bottom says “à la carte dishes.” haha

For reference, I was introduced to this place by a friend who was studying abroad locally, and I knew it as a place where you could generally enjoy plenty of delicious fresh tuna.

Interior

As you can see from the photos, there were many local Japanese customers, as well as many Western visitors.

It was truly fascinating....

The restaurant is really, really clean. The chefs were also dressed in very neat and tidy uniforms, which made me feel reassured.

There were no seats available when we visited in the afternoon, so we waited for about ten minutes before going in.

This is the menu at Hinatomaru Sushi, a popular sushi restaurant in Asakusa.

The menu is helpfully written in Korean as well, which makes it easier to understand.

The top row is the tuna menu, right? I highly recommend trying plenty of the tuna options.

What about the popular menu items?

That’s right. They’re offered as set menus, haha, so you don’t have to struggle over what to choose....

I usually enjoy the tuna sushi set at the top.

I especially recommend the five-piece set. Five pieces for 1,450 yen seems like an easy choice.

Let’s start eating!!!

Draft beer

We start with a draft beer!!! I didn’t write down the price, but I think it was just over 6,000 won..

A cold beer whets the appetite before the sushi. Our love is always like a refreshing glass of draft beer~

When you first sit down, you receive an order sheet. The sushi comes out on one plate according to the items you check on the sheet.

There are a lot of tuna sushi pieces, aren’t there? haha

This was one plate ordered by my wife, who doesn’t eat quite as much sushi as I do~

This was the plate of sushi I ordered! Can you see the five-piece tuna set? haha

Shall we try them one by one~~

I think I’ll use this photo as the thumbnail. haha

It may look a little intense (?) at first glance, but each piece of sashimi looks even more beautiful and vivid in person.

The actual sushi also looked quite similar to the pictures on the menu, so it was generally easy to tell what each piece was at a glance. haha

I called it a fresh-tuna sushi restaurant in Asakusa.. but it looks like a seafood market, doesn’t it?? ㅠㅠ

Red sea bream sushi (250 yen)

This piece even included the elegant fish skin. Red sea bream sushi was once my favorite.

It may be the most delicious type of white-fish sushi.

One thing I notice when eating Japanese sushi is that it feels full of freshness, almost like live fish, compared with Korean sushi, which seems to feature more aged fish. Sushi topped with generously thick sashimi feels wonderfully substantial in your mouth!!

It’s hard to believe it costs only 250 yen. Eleven pieces would be around 25,000 won, so the price is similar to a tray from the sushi section at E-Mart..... Can you get a sense of it?....

Flounder sushi (300 yen)

Flounder sushi is said to be easy even for sushi beginners to enjoy.

My wife had ordered it wisely again. It had a mild, familiar flavor~ haha

Egg sushi (70 yen)

It feels almost awkward to write down the price.... Sushi for just 70 yen.

It wasn’t an incredibly soft, ultra-premium egg sushi, of course, but it was a pleasantly nutty and sweet tamago sushi.

Amberjack (250 yen)

We ordered amberjack sushi because it was winter.

In Korea as well, winter amberjack is famous for its rich, savory flavor~

In Japan too, winter amberjack had that characteristic richness and was full of appeal.

The slice of fish seemed quite large. Don’t you think?

Golden-eye snapper (350 yen)

I think this was my first time trying this sushi. Since it’s a type of snapper, perhaps it’s similar to flounder? haha

The red skin and red flesh were striking.

The flavor seemed fairly ordinary..... haha. Now, let’s move on to the tuna sushi~!!

Tuna lean sushi (250 yen)

The first of the five tuna varieties was tuna lean sushi.

I would describe the flavor as having a lot of acidity. When you eat it, it feels moist and melts in your mouth before gently disappearing. It wasn’t seasoned separately, but its freshness gave it a distinctive deliciousness.

Tuna belly sushi (400 yen)

The fact that you can enjoy fresh tuna belly for less than 4,000 won is almost absurd.

My wife loved the tuna belly sushi so much that we each ordered one additional piece.

Make sure to eat plenty of this.... It’s genuinely rich and delicious. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say this alone is worth visiting for.

Tuna otoro sushi (550 yen)

This one was a little more expensive than the tuna belly sushi above.. It was otoro sushi.

The color really.... leaves you speechless.

The layers of fat between the tuna flesh create an exceptionally rich flavor.

As I’m sure is true for many people... this is my favorite cut in the five-piece tuna set.

Seared tuna belly sushi (450 yen)

This was tuna belly sushi lightly seared over a flame.

Adding a touch of smoky flavor makes it feel like a completely different piece of sushi, doesn’t it? haha

The combination of fresh tuna’s richness and acidity with the smoky flavor!! Excellent!!

Tuna belly gunkan-maki (250 yen)

This gunkan-maki seems to be made from leftover pieces after the fish cuts have been prepared.

It has a distinctive appeal of its own, haha. The finely chopped texture is somewhat like salted pollock roe.. and it gently melts in your mouth.

Come to think of it, ordering the five tuna pieces together costs only 1,450 yen.. That’s astonishing.....

We were able to get five pieces of sushi worth 1,900 yen for 1,450 yen.

Then.. I guess we should order more?

The two of us ordered one more plate.

The sushi was so fresh that we didn’t get tired of eating it......... As you can see, we added some blue-backed fish.

Horse mackerel sushi (150 yen)

Horse mackerel sushi is also commonly served at sushi omakase restaurants in Korea.

The price was.. actually even cheaper than flounder or red sea bream. Only 150 yen..... Like the fresh tuna sushi, horse mackerel sushi made me think that Japan is a wonderful place to enjoy this fish at a reasonable price.

It was pleasantly rich and delicious, with the slightly crisp texture that makes you think, “Yes, this is horse mackerel!!”

The value is truly.... incredible even when I look at it again.

This is Hinatomaru Sushi, a popular Asakusa sushi restaurant I’m happy to visit.

Vinegared mackerel (150 yen)

I ordered this after trusting the Google reviews, but I kept worrying: What if it tastes fishy?....

As you can see, it looked just as we would expect.

Fortunately,

just as hoped,

it wasn’t fishy at all, and I could enjoy only its rich, savory flavor. The price was also very appealing, and it was delicious.. I recommend it too!

Gizzard shad sushi (250 yen)

Isn’t gizzard shad something you can eat only in autumn? haha

My wife, who was already full and couldn’t eat any more sushi, didn’t get to try it.

This fish has a firm texture and becomes richer and more savory the more you chew it.

It was the final plate of sushi, offering a different appeal from the tuna we had at the very beginning.

We had another truly delicious meal today!

Conclusion

A fresh-tuna sushi restaurant worth visiting.

This was a place I had wanted to write about ever since my previous visit.. When I returned to Hinatomaru Sushi, the fresh-tuna sushi restaurant in Asakusa, after a year and a half, it had already expanded dramatically and become a new restaurant twice the size.

Even so, the owner’s sushi-making skills were unchanged, and it was still a restaurant that became more satisfying the more you ate.

Fresh tuna sushi is surprisingly difficult to find in Korea. It is usually not available at all at sushi omakase restaurants in the low 100,000-won range for dinner. You will probably find it at places costing more than 200,000 won.

Of course, it tastes different from frozen tuna, right? No matter how hard you try... nothing can quite match the flavor of fresh tuna. This is a place where you can enjoy that flavor generously at a reasonable price. Visit Asakusa sometime!

Taste: ★★★★★

Value for money: ★★★★★

Accessibility: ★★★★★

Facilities: ★★★★☆

Parking: No parking available.

When assigning the ratings, I debated whether to give the “taste” category four or five stars.

Honestly, the fresh tuna sushi was more delicious than expected, but you might find the other sushi options ordinary.. Perhaps that’s because the quality of sushi in Korea has improved remarkably since the COVID-19 period, raising consumers’ expectations? Still.. I don’t think this is a place you visit only once, and it was the restaurant that showed me the essence of a fresh-tuna sushi restaurant, so I’m boldly giving it five stars!

Thank you for reading another restaurant post featuring a meal I paid for myself.

I’ll strive to become a memorable restaurant coordinator through carefully selected posts. :)

This has been Dr. Baek, a dentist dreaming of becoming an implant specialist and a gastronome.

Thank you.!!