Manchester’s most exclusive restaurant, serving omakase sushi to just four customers a week

At a time when sushi restaurants are opening in Manchester more often than I open my fridge, it’s becoming difficult to stand out from the crowd.

But boy oh boy have we found a newcomer that will change all of that, and a new favourite Japanese spot has entered the region.

Sushi Pod is quite possibly the most exclusive restaurant experience in the entire country, seating just four guests per week.

Those lucky few who manage to secure a table (and at the time of writing, you can still book in for dinner in the coming weeks) will be whisked through a whopping 20 courses in a full omakase experience.

Omakase loosely translates to ‘I’ll leave it up to you’ – you just pull up a seat and watch the chef work their magic on the finest quality seafood available.

At Sushi Pod, tucked upstairs above the brilliant Grape to Grain wine bar on Bury New Road, you sit mere inches away from chef Artur Wacewicz.

You have a true front-row seat as he delicately slices tuna, deftly rolls sushi rice into nori sheets, and blow-torches sugar onto exotic fruit.

Artur has teamed up with Grape to Grain founder Tom Sneesby for the Sushi Pod omakase nights – while one is plating up perfect bites of world-class fish, the other is topping up your glass with perfectly-paired wines from downstairs.

And while the experience truly is world-class, it’s not remotely stuffy or formal.

Can’t use chopsticks? Don’t even worry about it – Artur will make you up his special ‘baby chopsticks’, wrapping a napkin around one end so they basically turn into a giant pair of tweezers.

Never eaten uni before (it’s literally the gonads of a sea urchin…)? Again, Artur will talk you through every ingredient, even happily whipping out his phone and flicking through his pictures to show you exactly what part of the animal you’re eating.

This is a man who has worked alongside the legendary Terry Huang, of former Umezushi fame, which was considered to be one of the best sushi restaurants not just in Manchester but in all of Europe.

Artur also works with Out of the Blue fishmongers in Chorlton, rising before the crack of dawn to make sure he has the freshest, best-quality seafood ingredients possible.

And because of this ‘what-have-you-got-today’ approach, the omakase menu from Sushi Pod changes all the time.

For our visit, we had (to name but a few) sweet scallops, bluefin tuna, mackerel, eel, different cuts of salmon, caviar, prawn, and so much more.

The first dishes are presented as sashimi, with Artur simply slicing off pieces of fish and placing them in front of you beside a wedge of lime and a scoop of wasabi so that you can tweak each bite to your own tastes.

Then comes the nigiri portion, where expertly-prepared sushi rice spiked with vinegar is rolled up, dotted with wasabi or a soy sauce reduction or lime zest, then topped with different seafood ingredients.

And finally comes the tamaki section, when Artur literally hands each course over to you neatly tucked into sheets of nori – no plate.

To go alongside this wonderful sushi journey, there are a few different menus of wine or sake pairings, usually kicking off with a champagne before touring some of the world’s finest white wines.

And again, Tom is on hand to explain exactly what is in your glass and why it’s the perfect match, with no stuffy wine lingo chucked in.

At £90 per person, it’s a darn sight more accessible than a lot of other Omakase menus in town, but with no compromise on quality.

You can book in for Sushi Pod’s Omakaze Night at Grape to Grain here – but be quick, this one’ll book up fast.

And if you DO miss out, you can always order yourself a grab-and-go sushi selection to collect from either Grape to Grain in Prestwich or Out of the Blue in Chorlton.

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Featured image: The Manc Group