Fujiya Japanese Restaurant has been on Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue since 1993, which makes it roughly as old as the internet and considerably more reliable.
The place does not trade on novelty. Walk in on a Tuesday evening and you’ll find regulars who clearly have a usual, a compact dining room that hasn’t chased any particular design trend, and a menu that rewards people who read past the first page. That’s reason enough to go.
The second reason is the ramen, which deserves more attention than it typically gets when people talk about Fujiya. The tonkotsu is properly milky — the kind that takes time — with a richness that doesn’t feel engineered. The shoyu is subtler and maybe the better choice if you’re eating alone and don’t want the soup to do all the talking. Either way, the noodles have a little bite to them, which matters more than most people realize until they’ve eaten too much limp ramen elsewhere.
The sushi is the more obvious draw, and it holds up. The fish is fresh, the rice is seasoned correctly, the rolls don’t veer into the overwrought territory that plagues a lot of American sushi menus. There’s a nigiri omakase option that runs around twenty dollars and gives the kitchen a chance to show off a little without bankrupting you. If you’re ordering à la carte, the albacore and the salmon are safe calls; the yellowtail is the move if it’s on that day.
Prices are reasonable in the way that a good neighborhood restaurant should be — not cheap exactly, but you won’t feel like you’ve been charged a premium for atmosphere you didn’t ask for. Dinner for two with a couple of rolls, a bowl of ramen each, and a beer comes in somewhere in the fifty-to-sixty dollar range depending on how restrained you’re feeling. Lunch is the better deal if your schedule allows it.
The Sixth Avenue corridor has become busier over the years, and Fujiya sits on it without much fanfare. There’s no marquee presence, no sandwich board with a pun on it. You could pass it without registering it as anything particular. That is, as it turns out, a fine quality in a restaurant that’s been feeding the same neighborhood for three decades.
Parking on Sixth is the usual Sixth Avenue lottery. Go early on a weekend or walk if you’re close. The restaurant is small enough that a wait is possible on Friday and Saturday evenings — not unreasonable, but worth keeping in mind if you’re bringing people who get irritable when hungry. Call ahead if you’re coming with more than four.
What Fujiya doesn’t do is perform. It’s not trying to be a destination. It has simply been good for a long time, which in the restaurant business is a more difficult trick than it sounds.
