We’re very excited to announce we are now able to source fish and other seafoods directly from Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. We have established a relationship with a vendor at the market who sends product right from the market to Hana.
We’re able to do this because we are a Japanese-owned and operated company that is able to build relationships with other Japanese companies to bring our customers the best Japanese foods in the world. We’ve been serving A5 wagyu directly from Japan and now we're bringing in seafood directly from Japan.
Tsukiji Market is where small retailers and sushi restaurants in Japan source their ingredients because they can inspect it first hand. You have probably have heard of Tsukiji. It was once the largest seafood market in the world and it was often featured in films and television. In 2018, Tsukiji’s wholesale operations moved to a new market, Toyosu. Participation at Toyosu requires licensed brokers and wholesalers. Tsukiji now focuses on smaller buyers—sushi restaurants, local fish mongers, foodies, and other individuals looking for the best quality seafood.
Our relationship with Tsukiji sets us apart from restaurants that still must go through multiple layers of distributors, brokers, and trading firms. Those firms operate at massive scale, trading billions of dollars in seafood each year, often buying entire boatloads sight unseen. Their priority is volume and margin: products that can be quickly resold to distributors, processed, marked up, and passed along to restaurants.
When restaurants are forced to work this way, their selection becomes limited, they’re several steps removed from the actual market, and they have little control over quality. Giant corporations trading in marine products have no connection to how it’s served—or to your dining experience.
When Hana purchases seafood directly through Tsukiji, we gain access to a far broader selection and a higher level of quality.
Quality is important, but it’s not the whole story. Preparation matters just as much. Two professional chefs from different regions of Japan, each with decades of experience, work together with a shared commitment to delivering the highest‑quality Japanese dining experience at Hana. Hana owner Yuriko is from Hokkaido and has been making sushi professionally for more than 20 years. You can find her everyday behind the sushi bar. Kenta, from Osaka, has been in this industry even longer, having begun his formal sushi chef training at 14.
This doesn’t mean you can’t get good sushi at other restaurants or that seafood distributors are inherently bad. There most definitely are other restaurants where you can get good sushi and there are reputable seafood distributors that work hard to supply restaurants and grocery stores with quality ingredients.
However, if you’re in Montana and you want to experience what it’s like to eat seafood sourced from the most prestigious fish market in the world prepared by Japanese chefs with decades of experience, there’s only one place to do it: Hana.
