Photos by Sebastian Lucrecio
MIAMI
Matsuyoi Arrives with Caviar, Midori, Pharrell Williams, and Moonlight Vibes
156 NE 41st St | Website | Instagram
By Eric Barton | March 24, 2025
There’s a new Japanese restaurant in the Design District, but don’t expect the usual omakase suspects or a DJ booth wedged between tables.
Matsuyoi is the latest from the Nami Nori crew—Lisa Limb, Taka Sakaeda, Jihan Lee, and Pharrell Williams—the same team that gave us that cheerful temaki party downstairs. This one’s upstairs, moody, hushed, and deliberately slow-paced. Like if Nami Nori is the daytime beach hang, Matsuyoi is where you go when the sun sets and you’re pretending not to text your ex.
There’s a 10-seat counter that you’ll need a reservation to join. You’ll be served a multi-course menu built around Nami Nori’s open-style temaki, with starters like a precise little cube of potato pavé topped with caviar and ao nori, and a Caesar that swaps out anchovies for bottarga and hallabong vinegar. The temaki arrive one at a time: fatty toro with more caviar, shiso-wrapped madai, and anago with cucumber. Dessert is a sundae with Hokkaido milk ice cream and hojicha “pocky,” which somehow makes perfect sense.
You’ll enter through a cocktail lounge that actually makes you want to hang out. The drinks lean Japanese: one martini comes with chili oil and the option to add caviar, because apparently that’s the kind of night you’re having. Another, called Between Strangers, has lemongrass vodka, sesame, Suze, and yuzu—basically a spa day disguised as a cocktail. There’s also Midori, so points for that.
The name Matsuyoi comes from Japanese words for “to wait” and “evening,” and the design nails that vibe—quiet, cinematic, a little romantic. It’s a different kind of vibe for Miami. Which, honestly, we could use more of, you know, for nights when you don’t want to dance on the same table where you just had dinner.
Reservations are on OpenTable, walk-ins welcome for the lounge, and more details at matsuyoi.co.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist. He lives two floors up from a Midtown Miami brunch place, where the smell of frying bacon assures he starts every day famished. Email him here.
