When Manhattan’s first-ever Wegmans opened at 770 Broadway back in October 2023–complete with artisanal cheeses, seafood imported from Japan, and their iconic bakery section–the news kinda broke the internet. And though it’s been open for about a year and a half at this point, we still can’t get enough of it. But the beloved Rochester-born supermarket is giving us more to explore this April!
A previous liquor license application had noted that the new market would be home to a 2,637-square-foot seafood restaurant serving sushi and sashimi, seafood platters, and raw oysters, and though some of the logistics have changed since the original announcement, the restaurant is on track to open at the end of this month!
On Wednesday, April 30th, Wegmans will open a fancy sushi restaurant in its Manhattan store. Dubbed Next Door, the restaurant will house a sushi counter and custom-built robata grill, and it’ll serve fresh fish from Japan, New Zealand, and Norway alongside contemporary Japanese dishes such as oysters and caviar, duck foie gras, chirashi, Alaskan king crab legs, and koji-marinated grass-fed rib eye.
And though the restaurant may seem a bit out of left field since most of us are used to heading to Wegmans for its cheeses, pastries, and pantry staples, the grocery chain is no stranger to sushi.
Chef John Emerson, a 27-year Wegmans vet and now the senior vice-president of restaurant foods, helped the chain introduce sushi prepared in-house to the Princeton, NJ location, and it was then introduced across the chain in 2008. They’ve even formed a relationship with vendors at Tokyo’s Toyosu market, the biggest fish market in the world, and they source their koji from a vendor in Kyoto, so yes, they’re the real deal.
As for the restaurant itself, it’s pretty different than its fluorescently lit grocery counterpart. The Art Deco-inspired space will feature tall windows, ocean-inspired artwork, velvet banquettes, and artificial live oaks. And though this is the first Wegmans restaurant in NYC, it’s not the chain’s first–back in 2002 Wegmans opened its first restaurant, Tastings, in Rochester. View the full menu on Next Door’s website.
While you’re in the area be sure to check out the Astor Place Cube, we hear some people are kind of obsessed with it…
📍 770 Broadway (restaurant entrance located inside Wegmans)