Eugeniu Zubco

“I want to prove that it’s O.K. to be different in omakase.” On the 37th floor of a Fifth Avenue tower, the 31-year-old Moldovan sushi chef and Masa alum is leading Manhattan’s most exclusive new omakase counter By Jennifer Noyes T hirty-seven floors above Fifth Avenue, a Moldovan chef is serving some of the rarest Wagyu in America to 12 people at a time. The setting is Yūgin, an omakase counter tucked inside Coco’s at Colette, a private members’ club in Manhattan’s General Motors Building. The beef is Omi Wagyu from Shiga Prefecture—the oldest Wagyu lineage in Japan, dating back more than 400 years—access to which Eugeniu Zubco spent years cultivating. In New York , he’s encountered it only once before: during his decade at Masa. Zubco isn’t Japanese. In the omakase world, that still matters. He doesn’t pretend otherwise. READ ON