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Feudal Japan has long held fascination for westerners, from our admiration for the samurai code of honor, to our jealousy over the samurai code of wearing bathrobes around all day. Now, cinch up and eat that fascination, at Kushi.

A wide-open restaurant anchored by a massive, 3-sided robata and decked out with a fusion of reclaimed bamboo and sleek metal, Kushi's a modern take on the feudal Izakaya: small, residential pubs that sprung up in the 15th century to serve peasants traveling to Edo (now Tokyo) to pay their taxes in rice -- bounty that no doubt went straight to governmental pork. Flown in twice-weekly from a Tokyo fish market, the sushi's kept clean and simple, with maki like lump crab and pickled daikon, and nigiri/sashimi like squid legs, geoduck, fluke fin, and fatty tuna, which happily jumped into the net just to escape getting teased by everyone in his school. Warm-blooded offerings include tender, skewered Berkshire pork belly, Wagyu short ribs, robata-skewered Moulard duck thigh, and Heritage Breed chicken breast served with marinated cod roe (which is weird, because Heritage has always been anti-Roe).

To wash the authenticity down, they've got nearly 20 on-theme brews (from Japan's vaunted Hitachino Nest to Rogue's Morimoto Soba Ale), plus ~50 almost-hard liquor options from Ken "Sword" Junmai Daiginjo sake to Ryukyu Ohcho shochu; try them all on a work-night, and the honor of spending all day in a bathrobe might be closer than you think.

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