Looking Back on 10 Years of Royal Sushi & Izakaya

Jesse Ito at Royal Sushi & Izakaya / Photograph by Justin James Muir

On the phone, Jesse Ito asks me, “Do you remember the first time you came in here?”

And I do, absolutely. It was early. Very. Probably October or November of 2016. And back then, you could just walk right into Royal Sushi & Izakaya. I mean, you can still do that today. They still serve walk-ins all the time. But these days there are lines, waits, crowds that pack the place from open to close. These days, reservations for a seat at Ito’s omakase are booked months in advance. There’s a waiting list of over a thousand names.

Royal Sushi & Izakaya, Jesse Ito’s first restaurant, opened 10 years ago. On September 23, 2016, to be exact. My first meal there was probably three or four weeks after they opened. I drank Japanese beer and gin and tonics, ate eihire yaki and pork jowls with soy sauce, Japanese potato and apple salad, little Kurobuta sausages, knife-scored and dragged through hot mustard, and the best shumai I’d ever had in my life.

My second, a couple nights later. My third (if I remember correctly) was at the sushi bar, sitting with Lê from Hop Sing, the night after that. And I remember thinking that it was really good — really, really good. And that this Jesse Ito kid, who’d only ever worked before at his parents’ sushi place in New Jersey, was pretty talented. That he was probably going to do well with this little neighborhood Japanese spot behind un unmarked blue door on 2nd Street.

Jesse Ito and his father, Massaharu, at the Royal bar in 2016 / Photograph courtesy of Jesse Ito

Ten years ago, Royal was unique. Daring. There wasn’t any place in the city like it, and certainly not any place that pulled the kinds of crowds it did — neighbors and friends, the curious, the food-obsessed. Every evening, it would fill with anyone who wanted to be in the place where everyone wanted to be. At night, entire restaurant crews would roll in to drink pull-tab sake, eat blistered shishitos and tekka maki and chirashi, and stare at the anime projected onto the brick walls by the bar.

“Every year it gets busier,” he tells me, which seems impossible because it was so busy, right from the very start, but it’s true. “We’re always working. Always improving something.”

The place ran non-stop, it sometimes seemed. There was always something new, something different (like skate-wing jerky, or natto, or firefly squid), something you couldn’t get anywhere else. And with its success, it shaped our dining scene. It showed people not from here that Philly was about more than just Yuengling and cheesesteaks. And it proved to all the rest of us that a place like this — with its dedication to sourcing the best product, wild menus, and high/low split between the cloistered perfection of the omakase service and the nightly riot on the izakaya side — was not just viable, but that it could kill it every night of the week.

Jesse was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2017 (the first year he was eligible); didn’t win, then went on to be nominated eight more times. Every year the JBF handed out awards, his name was on the list. And this year, he finally brought one home, winning Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic for 2026.

Jesse Ito and his mom who was able to retire when Royal Izakaya opened. / Photographs courtesy of Jesse Ito

Over the past decade, things have changed. The lines have gotten longer. The prices have gotten steeper. The restaurant has gotten better in almost every way. The omakase service has become legitimately famous — not just here, but nationwide. COVID happened and almost closed Royal down, but Jesse and his crew pivoted to take-out, went viral online with massive sashimi platters that went for hundreds of dollars, and came back stronger, with better systems, more help, and a reduced schedule.

Jesse partnered up with Justin Bacharach (who started as a chef on the izakaya side at Royal) and opened a second restaurant, dancerobot, in Rittenhouse. And Royal went from being this really fun, quirky Japanese izakaya and sushi bar beloved by industry lifers and the Queen Village neighbors, to one of the best restaurants in the city, to one of the best restaurants in the country — the kind of place where people fly in from the West Coast for a standing reservation every three months.

And now, with 10 years behind them, Jesse and the team are marking the occasion with throwback menu items, old-school merch — and a brand-new chef de cuisine coming on board, too.

“It’s not just to celebrate,” he tells me. “It’s about getting back to classics. More authentic. More traditional. The whole menu is going to be changing in a couple weeks. Well, not the whole menu, but a lot of it. It’s about getting back to doing something that’s more like straight Japanese.”

Those changes will largely be falling to the new CDC Duane Le, who’s coming over from dancerobot (which will be celebrating its own first anniversary next week) to run the izakaya kitchen. Jesse tells me that every new chef who takes over that line brings their own experiences with them — their own tastes, their own specialties.

Nigiri tray / Photograph by Jesse Ito

Talking to Jesse about some of the dishes he’s putting back onto the menu feels a lot like talking about the old Royal. Those Kurobuta sausages that I fell in love with on my first night at the bar? Those are coming back, done in a honey-soy glaze this time, served with a smear of that same hot mustard, plus a side of peppers and onions in a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Italian classic. The kitchen will be doing tan-tan noodles, too; whole grilled squid just like the old days, and mentaiko pasta in a cacio e pepe riff with a cod roe cream sauce. For those of you who want something less … temporary than a plate of sausages or squid to mark the inexorable passage of time, Royal has also got a limited number of 10-year anniversary T-shirts for sale.

When I ask Jesse if he has anything else planned, he runs down a list of all the things he has on his calendar — menus that need changing, meetings that need attending, a collab dinner at Smithereen’s in New York’s East Village, a trip to Tokyo that he’s guiding for Bon Appétit. When I stop him and say, No, I mean for Royal’s anniversary, he laughs.

“It’s hard to even think about it,” he says. “So much has happened. I mean, it’s a lot of feelings, right?” But right now, it’s Thursday. He has prep to worry about. A full reservation book. A weekend coming. It’s been 10 years, sure, but you know how a restaurant like Royal makes it to 10 years? One day at a time.

“Maybe on Monday I’ll have time to process it.”