Makoto Okuwa opened his tiny Georgetown restaurant in 1983, which means it predates most of the federal agencies that occupy the buildings around it. That’s the fact that stopped me cold when a friend first mentioned the place — a Japanese kaiseki restaurant operating quietly on MacArthur Boulevard for over forty years, with no social media presence worth mentioning and no reservations available online. You call. You talk to a person. Then you show up.
I went on a Tuesday evening in February with my college roommate, who has lived in Georgetown since the nineties and had somehow never made it there. The dining room holds maybe thirty people. The décor is spare in a way that feels intentional rather than lazy — light wood, low lighting, a calm that hits you the moment you sit down. The kitchen is open, and Makoto himself, or one of his family members, is usually visible in it.
What they serve is a traditional kaiseki progression — a multi-course Japanese meal rooted in seasonal ingredients and careful technique. It’s not trendy omakase the way you see it marketed now, with Instagram-ready nigiri and dramatic plating. This is older and quieter than that. Your first course might be a small dish of pickled vegetables with tofu, followed by a clear broth, followed by something grilled, then simmered, then raw. The pacing is unhurried. Nobody rushes you. Nobody refills your water before you’ve had a chance to notice it’s low.
I want to be specific about the food because the food deserves it. The monkfish liver, when they have it, arrives in a small ceramic dish with ponzu and scallion — it’s silky and deeply savory in a way that makes you set your chopsticks down for a second. The grilled black cod is lacquered with something slightly sweet and caramelized, and it flakes exactly the way it should. The dashi-based soups are restrained to the point of being almost severe, which is the point. You’re tasting precision, not abundance.
Dinner runs somewhere between $85 and $120 per person depending on what’s available that night and how far you let it go. There’s no à la carte option; you’re in for the full experience or you’re in the wrong place. Sake is available and worth ordering — the staff will steer you toward something that works with the meal if you ask.
I’ve had the conversation a few times since my visit about why Makoto isn’t more famous in DC’s food conversation, and I think the answer is mostly that it has never tried to be. There’s no PR, no chef collaborations, no pop-up spinoffs. Makoto Okuwa apparently just wants to cook the way he cooks, for people who seek it out. In forty years he has apparently not found a reason to change that approach.
My roommate, who had lived ten minutes away for decades, sat quietly for most of the meal. On the way out she said she was annoyed at herself for waiting so long. That’s about as accurate a review as I can give you. Make a reservation before the year gets away from you — on MacArthur Boulevard NW, right in Palisades, near the Maryland line.
