Aska

Rice pressed at the counter

Vinegared rice is pressed warm, then passed by hand across a counter of ten to twelve seats at Aska in Regensburg, where the working language is Japanese omakase. The room is a compact sushi bar at Watmarkt, inside the city's historic core, set in the Goliath House alongside its sibling restaurant Storstad. Both carry Swedish names, and aska means ash, which the almost black interior repeats. The guest sits close enough to read the cut, the rice, the pause before service. Aska is not a broad Japanese menu with sushi as one section. It is Edomae counter dining, set in sequence, with the hand-to-hand rhythm of omakase carrying the night. There are no California rolls and no vegetarian maki. That narrowness matters. It gives the maker fewer places to hide.

An omakase kept to the essential

The menu moves through eight-course and ten-course formats, with a king crab course available as an addition. The signatures named for the place are direct: otoro nigiri, chutoro, Kobe beef nigiri, and tuna tartare. The work sits in the cut and the temperature, in how vinegared rice carries fat, sweetness, iodine, and heat without turning heavy. Some fish stays raw; some is flamed or brought close to cooked. A hot udon interlude gives the sequence a different register before the sushi returns to the hand. Part of the fish is regional, including Upper Palatinate char and Erding prawns, which keeps the Bavarian pantry inside a Japanese method rather than beside it. The counter is worked by a sushi master trained in Osaka who spent a decade in London cooking for Honda's Formula 1 team and holds the rare licence required to serve fugu.

Dark room, close pass

The room is almost black, with deep dark hues and a minimalist interior that makes the counter feel smaller than it is. Soft ambient music from vinyl records sits low, and the acoustics stay quiet enough for the ritual to be heard. Nothing here needs volume. The pass is the counter; the counter is the room. In that arrangement, service becomes part of the method, because the course arrives without the insulating distance of a dining room brigade. The setting suits the food's refusal of excess: no broad catalogue of choices, no casual drift between styles. The guest watches the blade, the rice, the brush of seasoning, the small lean forward that completes the exchange. Sake leads the drinking, poured to follow the progression, with green tea and mineral water at a flat rate and a Nikka whisky to close.

A star on ten seats

In 2025 Aska took one Michelin star, the first sushi bar in Germany to hold one. In a city better known to many visitors through Bavarian tables, that recognition landed on a counter of ten seats at Watmarkt rather than in a large dining room. The house keeps its scale deliberately small, and the fish, the rice, and the timing have nowhere to hide inside it. The argument still ends in the otoro nigiri.