Matsuhisa Omakase: Worth the Price?

Matsuhisa has been on my list for a while. Chef Nobu's name carries a lot of weight in the sushi world, and the Cherry Creek location on Steele Street is the only one in Denver. I'd driven past it plenty of times heading toward other spots in the neighborhood, but I finally went in to try the omakase for myself. The short version: it delivered. The longer version involves some real money leaving my wallet.

What the Experience Is Actually Like

Walking into Matsuhisa, the room feels quiet in a way that Cherry Creek restaurants don't always manage. It's not stuffy — just controlled. The kind of place where the lighting and the pacing of service are doing a lot of work without calling attention to themselves. We sat at the sushi bar for omakase, which is how I'd recommend doing it if you're going to commit to the full experience. Watching the chefs work up close is part of what you're paying for, and it makes a difference.

The omakase moves through courses — some nigiri, some composed plates — and the kitchen controls the pace entirely. That's the deal with omakase: you're not ordering, you're trusting. For a control-oriented person, that takes about five minutes to get used to. After that, it's actually a relief.

What Stood Out

The fish quality is real. I've had sushi at a lot of places around Denver, and the sourcing here is on a different level. The nigiri had clean, distinct flavor from piece to piece — not everything tasted the same, which sounds like a low bar but genuinely isn't. A few of the composed preparations leaned on Nobu's well-known Peruvian-Japanese influences: citrus, light heat, some things I wouldn't have expected to work together that did.

The pacing was slower than I anticipated, which I mean as a compliment. This wasn't a rush-you-out situation. My wife and I were there for a solid two-and-a-half hours and didn't feel like we were being dragged through it or lingered past our welcome.

The Honest Part (The Price)

Matsuhisa is expensive. Not "Cherry Creek is a little pricey" expensive — genuinely expensive. Omakase in Denver has been climbing in general, but Matsuhisa sits near the top of that range. If you're going in expecting to feel good about the math, you probably won't. That's not really the point of eating here, but it's worth knowing before you show up.

What softens that slightly is that the experience holds up under the price. The service is attentive without being over-present. The fish quality justifies the premium in a way I wasn't sure it would. I didn't leave feeling gouged, which — for a meal at that price point — is the actual goal.

The a la carte menu exists if omakase isn't what you're after, and from what I could see at neighboring tables, it looked solid. But if you're coming to Matsuhisa, the omakase is the reason.

Practical Notes

Reservations are worth making in advance, especially for the sushi bar. Parking in Cherry Creek can be mildly annoying depending on when you go — the Steele Street area has some street parking and nearby structures, so it's not a crisis, just plan for it. This is a special occasion dinner more than a casual weeknight spot, and it's well-suited for that — a celebration, an anniversary, something where you want the meal to be the whole event rather than just one part of the evening.

If you're already in Cherry Creek and looking for something lower-key, Barolo Grill on 6th Avenue is a few blocks away and still excellent. But if you're specifically there for the omakase experience, Matsuhisa is the move.

Go in knowing what you're spending and let the kitchen do its thing. That's the whole deal, and at Matsuhisa, it works.