Best Sushi Restaurants in Charlottesville
Charlottesville, Virginia — updated August 22, 2026
Five Charlottesville spots for sushi, from a downtown Japanese tapas room with a late-night bar to a Pantops sushi-and-teppanyaki counter and a half-price sushi happy hour near IX Art Park.
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Charlottesville's sushi is split between two zones: the downtown blocks around Main Street and 2nd Street, where the kitchens are dinner-only and reservations matter, and the outlying shopping-center corridors on Emmet Street and Pantops, where you can walk in at lunch. Several of the best-reviewed rooms close on Mondays or shut for a mid-afternoon break, so the hours are worth checking before you drive. Here is how the city's sushi options compare, ranked by how squarely each one answers the question and how settled its rating looks.
1. Ten
The most sushi-committed room downtown, at 120 E Main St, described by its own listings as a modern Japanese tapas restaurant working in sushi, sashimi and small plates. It rates 4.4 from 314 reviews, a count high enough to treat as settled rather than promising. Service runs Tuesday through Thursday from 5:00 pm with a last seating at 8:15, and Friday and Saturday from 5:00 pm with a last seating at 9:15, so the window is narrower than most. The bar stays open late on Friday and Saturday. A three-course menu at $75 per person has been advertised on weekends, with sushi and sashimi available a la carte alongside it.
2. Now & Zen
The largest body of feedback of any sushi restaurant on this list: 4.3 from 543 reviews, which makes the rating about as proven as Charlottesville sushi ratings get. The 2nd Street NW kitchen bills itself as gourmet Japanese sushi and has been adding items beyond the raw-fish menu, including curry udon. It is closed Mondays and dinner-only otherwise, opening at 5:00 pm Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday and running until 10:00 pm on Friday and Saturday. Those two later nights are the only ones with much slack in them; on a Tuesday the kitchen stops at 9:00 pm.
3. Kabuto Sushi and Teppanyaki
The Pantops option, on Abbey Road, and the one to pick when half the table wants sushi and the other half wants something off a hibachi grill. The menu covers sushi and sashimi a la carte along with entrees from the hibachi grill and combination plates, so it handles mixed groups better than the dinner-only downtown rooms. It rates 4.3 from 387 reviews. Hours are the most forgiving here: 11am to 9pm Sunday through Thursday and 11am to 10pm Friday and Saturday, with no closed day, which makes it the reliable Monday choice.
4. Poke Sushi Bowl Barracks
The highest rating in this group, 4.6 from 349 reviews, though the format is bowls rather than a sushi counter: poke bowls off a set menu or built to order, plus a short list of Japanese appetizers including takoyaki, gyoza and shrimp tempura. It sits in the Barracks Road shopping center at 1104 Emmet St N and is open 11:00 am to 9:00 pm every day of the week, which no full-service sushi restaurant here matches. Go for a fast lunch or a weeknight takeout order, not for a nigiri omakase.
5. Bad Luck Ramen Bar
Included for one specific reason: the happy hour, Monday through Friday from 2 to 5 pm, runs half off all sushi, with sushi boards, $3 Sapporo on draft and $5 sake bombs advertised. The kitchen's core is ramen, dumplings and rice bowls, with sushi as a side of the menu rather than its center, so calibrate accordingly. At 4.3 from 182 reviews, the evidence base is thinner than the rest of this list. It shares an address at 522 2nd St SE with the North American Sake Brewery, south of downtown near IX Art Park, and opens at 11:30 am daily.
What we left off
Kuma Sushi Noodles & Bar appeared in the previous version of this guide and has closed, so it has been removed.