From Bethesda Magazine: Shibuya Eatery serves Japanese cuisine in a Chipotle style

Pork belly marinated for 24 hours and homemade broth stand out in eatery’s ramen

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April 23, 2026 3:00 p.m. | Updated: April 16, 2026 12:32 p.m.

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Walking into Shibuya Eatery, you might think you’ve wandered into a Japanese Chipotle. The open dining room has the cool, minimalist look of a chain, and as you proceed to the back (there’s no host and no server), you’ll find the familiar quick-dispense setup behind glass that defines the bowl-driven restaurant: meats, toppings, sauces. The feeling that you’ve experienced this all before at other fast-casual spots is reinforced when you tap your order into one of two touchpads. 

But then out comes the food, and with it the realization that those first impressions are wrong (as first impressions so often are). Shibuya might look the part, but unlike most of the Chipotle knockoffs that have proliferated over the past decade, it’s got personality. And authority. The flavors are true and deep, and there’s real conscientiousness and craft in the execution. 

There’s a reason Shibuya comes across as the product not of a corporation but of a detail-fanatical chef, and that’s because it is one. Its creator, Darren Lee Norris, founded and helmed Kushi, the first modern izakaya in Washington, D.C., in the late aughts—a pulsing, industrial spot that broke the norm of sacramental serenity dominating the city’s Japanese restaurants for four decades and ushered in a new age. Norris closed Kushi in 2014, opening three more places in D.C., including a first iteration of Shibuya Eatery, a mid-level restaurant in Adams Morgan that recalled the energy and vitality of Kushi in its heyday. But post-lockdown D.C. has become, more than ever, a scene of extremes—splurge dining at the top and grab-and-go eats at food halls, food trucks and fast-casual joints at the low end, with the culinary middle class often struggling to find an audience. Unwilling to scale up to survive, Norris closed the original Shibuya and, in September, reopened it as a fast-casual spot on Willard Circle. The city’s loss is Chevy Chase’s gain. 

There are countless spots in Montgomery County to get ramen but few with the resounding depth of this one. Norris’ pork broth is built on a foundation of ham hocks, ham bones and pigs’ feet, which he simmers for 24 hours, pureeing some of the meat back into the final broth for texture and umami intensity. It’s an achievement all its own, and you’d be happy with a bowl of just broth. You can do that, if you wish (Norris has made it its own menu item), but then you’d miss out on the soft slices of chashu pork belly (marinated for 24 hours, cooked sous vide for 12), the fresh noodles, with their wonderful springy chew, and the perfectly coddled egg.

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The find here is the mazemen, rarely seen in this area. Imagine a bowl of ramen with all its accoutrements; now convert that broth to a sauce, allowing the other components in the bowl (those same noodles and coddled egg, but also gorgeous batons of koji-cured carrots, thin strips of crunchy-tangy radish, grilled kernels of corn) to come forward and show their worth. 

Noodles and broth make up most of the dishes on the menu, but not all. You can’t come and not get the curry katsu donburi, with its tender sliced cutlets of pork and chicken, blanketed by a rich, vividly spiced yellow curry yet still retaining their panko-fried crunch. You’d also be remiss not to get the onigiri, which Norris has turned into his own version of a snack food—pull the tab on the plastic wrap, releasing a square of seaweed, and use it to enfold a soft ball of tuna-filled rice. It’s fun and it also serves a purpose: The wrapper keeps the seaweed crisp by separating it from the rice; the crunch, when you take that first bite, is audible a table away. 

 Shibuya Eatery, 4461 Willard Ave., Chevy Chase, 240-858-4720, shibuyafood.com

This appears in the March/April 2026 issue of Bethesda Magazine.

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine