Atsui: looking beyond the sushi counter

Japanese dining in São Paulo is often discussed through the sushi counter. Atsui widened the frame, keeping some familiar Nakka preparations while giving the hot kitchen a larger role.

WAYFARER’s April 2024 report described the project by Roberto Nakamori and Rodrigo Rossi Nakamori, with Hermes Takeda leading the kitchen. The restaurant’s name, associated with heat, signalled the intended shift without making raw fish disappear from the menu.

A broader sequence

The dishes recorded in the archive ranged from ceviche and scallop carpaccio to kale with tahini, pork ribs with house-made barbecue sauce and a wagyu burger on brioche. Bluefin tuna and quail-egg sushi supplied continuity with the group’s earlier restaurants.

The combinations made the menu less a statement about purity than an account of a São Paulo appetite. Different cooking traditions could share the table without requiring every dish to follow the same format.

Desserts included sweet Japanese rice with vanilla and yuzu, and chocolate cake with crème anglaise. Jessica Sanchez’s Marmalade Nº1 and Rubens Lima’s Yuzu Sour extended the same approach to the drinks.

The industrial room

Naoki Otake designed the interiors, using glass, steel and wood. The material palette gave the broader menu a coherent setting.

These are dishes and design details from the 2024 account, not promises about a current menu. Atsui’s interest lies in the change of emphasis: the Japanese restaurant understood as a whole kitchen, rather than a category defined by one counter.

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Adapted from the WAYFARER Brazil archive, first published 2024-04-03. English adaptation: 6 October 2026. This is an archival account, not a report of a new visit. Exhibitions, collections and menu details are described in their original context, not as current availability.