One of the hottest tsukemen restaurant in Tokyo right now, featuring a neat chicken-based soy sauce flavored dipping soup.
I visited this restaurant once, and it tasted sooo good, but if you are unlucky, you will have to wait in line for over an hour.

@leo saito thank you for your review. How do you compare it to top places like Honda, tomita, michi?

It's a clear chicken broth so the flavor you get from "Michi" and "Tomita" tsukemen is totally different.
Of clear broth tsukemen, I think "Honda" and this restaurant, "Uchoku", are the two best in the city.
I think it might be pretty interesting to pay both restaurants a visit.

There are no plans to visit at this time.
Heard that the quality of the neta and the style of the sushi have not changed much from the previous place.

Cool for those living in Japan, probably not all that useful for overseas visitors.

Why is it not useful for overseas visitors? Omakase is already effectively a lottery for the most popular restaurants that actually regularly open for reservations. The system doesn't change when you can book for, it's just like priority boarding on an airplane. I've been hoping they'd bring in something like this for a while. Hopefully it will help with the problem of the system falling to its knees at 12pm on the first of every month and it takes out all the stress of fighting for a seat - you can just apply by lottery at your convenience and even if you don't win, at least you were in with a chance. A very welcome improvement! Looks like Niitome is already using it and Pellegrino will start later today.

The startup that runs omakase was acquired by a major Japanese IT company. (Reported last month)
The operation of omakase is expected to become fairer and more stable in the near future.

Probably not that useful for visitors because, as per the omakase site "It is not always possible to prepare the schedule / number of people you want" (必ずしもご希望どおりの日程/人数ををご用意できるわけではございません) - so, for those who have a very limited timeframe visiting Japan, it will probably still be hard to match available booking dates with travel dates. I hope I'm wrong, we'll see. In any case, it is a welcomed improvement to a pretty terrible system.

Don't think it will help with that but doesn't make it worse. I agree that more could be done to help overseas visitors.

How do we know that the raffle will be a completely fair one? How are the winners chosen? Since many restaurants in Japan and Omakase website already have a system of favouring regulars and/or locals. Are we certain that it is completely random lottery and those individuals won't be favoured in this raffle system as well?

@thetokyogourmet I agree. If anything I guess it helps a bit overseas visitors given they won't necessarily have to wake up at impossible hours to try making a reservation, and won't suffer from lower latency during booking rush.

"Entries will be accepted once every 24 hours. The more entries you submit, the higher your chances of winning." - I bet some shady folks are already getting bots ready to submit entries on their behalf. Has Omakase implemented a simple measure like captcha to prevent bot bookings yet? If not, why?

"If not, why?" - ps: that was a rhetorical question, btw. We already know the why: because Omakase aims to please the restaurants, and don't seem all that concerned about the end-user experience. Personally,

You don't really need to bot a 24 hour window though

Of course you don't... but it makes it easier.

I failed at the Pellegrino lottery (4 coupons) :D Anyone lucky with this? Curious to know how the next steps are like.

I have no luck with Pellegrino either, but win the raffle for Niitome. People winning the raffle can make their reservation 1 hour ahead of others. For example, the reservation webpage will be open to the winners at 11:30am and then to others at 12:30pm for Pellegrino. Clearly no seat will be available at the round of 12:30pm...

From what I know, this is not something new at Omakase Japan. They used to give regulars or preferred guests at least one-day advantage to book Hashimoto.

"They used to give regulars or preferred guests at least one-day advantage to book Hashimoto."

I'm sure that is still happening now. Three tier system: regulars first, then lottery winners, then everyone else fighting for scraps (or bots scooping up the scraps before everyone else has a chance to, more like).

Two main things need to be observed in order for the sushi to qualify as orthodox, traditional Edomae sushi:

1 - The neta should be sourced (or at least have been sourced once) from Tokyo bay or nearby area. Any neta that was not once available from Tokyo bay would not be considered traditional Edo style.

2 - Some type of preservation process (marinated in soy sauce or vinegar, simmered in broth or cured in kombu or salt) should be applied to the neta. Raw, unaltered neta is rarely, if ever, used in traditional Edomae style sushi.

At a minimum, Edomae style sushi should at least have: Kohada, Anago (no unagi, no hamo - that's kaiseki), hamaguri (when in season), kanpyo (and a rendition that is not mushy, not too sweet or too salty or extremes in both), and tamagoyaki (done in a very thin layer style, such as Shimizu, Bentenyama Miyakozushi).
There are schools that also measure a restaurant by their maguro, and I may be missing a few others. If a very strict traditional old school place, there will be ebi oboro also (but that's a dying art). The anago tsume is a reduction made with anago (and bones), and continuously simmered down over time (for the few of you from Asia or South East Asia, think of the parallel with the master stock in Chiu Chow cuisine for simmered eats such as goose, handed down the generations). If the master stock (ni-jiru) for anago is too young (e.g. a young restaurant) it will not be complex enough and will certainly lack the right viscosity. There is a variation of anago prep (sawani) that is white and it involves sake, which Benetenyama Miyakozushi offers that rendition (but that's a seemingly niche offering).

The issues I see with 1) in the modern world is that some of the premium seafood used by top restaurants come from other parts of Japan and cannot be found in Tokyo Bay, so it depends on the philosophy of the chef and the restaurant if they want to recreate Edomae or in the vein of Edomae style. For example, most of the high end sushi restaurant anago come from Tsushima in the past few years. Some of the best aji comes from Izumi, and kohada from Amakusa. Many of you already saw Jiro Dreams of Sushi where some ingredients just cannot be found in Tokyo Bay anymore, so akagai would have to come from another nutrient rich part of Japan like in Miyagi prefecture. At the same time I doubt the current old school masters (or those trained old school) are specifically asking their fish vendors if their seasonal catch at the moment is from Tokyo Bay and shunning seasonal seafood that are classic Edomae ingredients from elsewhere, most of them buy what they can get with the trust of their supplier. So therefore, Edomae in a sense needs to be redefined as the methods of preparation as applied to whatever the customer will end up eating at the restaurant.

And yes, anything that involves preparation/cooking techniques such as salt curing, konbu jime/kelp marination, vinegar marination, simmering, hay smoking e.g. katsuo tataki etc, would also fall under Edomae, but I guess it also depends on the execution and resulting flavor..... I once had the unfortunate opportunity to try a kelp marinated hirame sushi at a now closed local restaurant, it tasted like it was marinated overnight so it was bitter. Chef took out a blowtorch, and seared it very quickly then added lemon juice on top....

Thank you both for your reply. This is such a knowledgable community! I would love to visit Tokyo again soon. Anyone know any update on their policies toward foreign visit? Or any vaccine passport policy?

I haven't had the chance to visit it yet, but it seems to have a pretty good reputation.
If you are looking for kaiseki restaurant in Tokyo now, Ogino is one restaurant you should consider.
However, I heard that reservations are already pretty much booked up.
(I heard that the next reservation for those who visited in March was in November.)

In Japan, the vaccination of the people has been delayed due to the poor response of the government, so it may be quite difficult for travelers to enter the country in October.