New Zen Japanese Restaurant

New Zen Japanese Restaurant has been cooking family style Japanese food in Renton since 1997, and the Renton Reporter's Best of Renton named it the city's best Japanese restaurant in 2026. It started out in the Benson Hill area, where a 2012 profile described owner Yumiko Miyake greeting guests in a kimono, and today it sits on South Third Street downtown.

The menu is broad: sushi and rolls, curry, udon, donburi and ramen. The house originals carry names like the Sakura, the Monkey Brain, the Fire Dragon and the Una Ten, there is a proper vegetable roll list with natto and kanpyo, and the donburi runs from katsu curry to oyako, gyu and chirashi. Happy hour, twice a day, brings takoyaki, fried oysters, onigiri and Japanese beer.

The restaurant also teaches, with sushi roll classes on set dates through the fall, and it offers no rice versions for anyone skipping the carbs. It opens at 3 on weekdays and runs late into the evening, opens at 11 on Saturday, and is closed Sunday, with reservations suggested for parties. It sits in the middle of downtown Renton's Third Street, steps from the rest of the downtown shops.