Shoji at 69 Leonard St.

Though you can’t get dinner for less than $190 at Shoji, “there should be no empty seats,” said Pete Wells in The New York Times. In the year since Derek Wilcox took over the 12-chair tasting counter in Tribeca, “he has firmly placed it in the top tier of the city’s Japanese restaurants”: It serves sushi that very few rivals can match, and “for sushi embedded in a longer kaiseki-derived menu, it has no parallel.” Wilcox, who acquired his mastery while working seven years in Kyoto and three in Tokyo, might start with bafun sea urchin over chilled noodle-like coils of eggplant. Next up: eel with pureed salt-cured plums and a lick of wasabi. He knows precisely which seafood specimens are most worth tracking down and serving on any given day, so my cuttlefish was “meltingly soft,” and one mixed plate included “the most flavorful piece of octopus I have ever put in my mouth.” The standard menu is $252, drinks not included, and that does leave seats unclaimed. Grab one, because Wilcox— right now—is staging a “spectacular” oneman show. 69 Leonard St., (212) 404-4600 “What gives?” Nakazawa, whose Manhattan flagship restaurant earned a rare four-star rating from The New York Times’ Pete Wells, is perhaps being punished for opening this handsome offshoot in D.C.’s Trump International Hotel. But there are other hurdles: a co-owner (Alessandro Borgognone) who was once dubbed the most hated restaurateur in America; the $150 price on the sushi bar’s omakase menu; the speed with which the omakase flies by; and the general manager’s demand for precision, even from diners. If, however, you visit despite all that, “you’ll encounter a 20-course parade of some of the very best sushi in Washington.” The chef, an alum of New York City’s Sushi Nakazawa, is Masaaki Uchino, and he’s