By the time I slid into a black leather chair at Omasava’s 4,000-year-old oak counter, the room had gone quiet. Night-black walls rose around the narrow sushi bar, lined with vintage wines, each bottle catching and releasing light.
Across the counter, Harun Samed Yaman, a master at his craft, reached for a crystal bowl filled with ice, then turned it once with his fingertips until the weight settled. Then he cut.
First came bluefin akami, the tuna falling away in lean, wine-dark lengths, laid along the curve of the ice. Next, madai—sea bream—pale and nearly translucent, a faint blush beneath the skin. Hamachi followed, firmer, edged in soft gold. Fellow master André Aguiar mirrored the sequence beside him.
The first slice of bluefin akami was cool and clean on the tongue, more mineral than rich—nothing like the cartoon of “luxury tuna.”
I thought about the distance behind it all—boats, markets, flights, papers stamped again and again. But at the counter, everything narrowed to a single, private question: Does it taste true?
It did.
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Photography by Anna Nguyen
omasava omakase experience naple dining chefs counter
Last year, the restaurateurs behind Sails and Butcher Private opened Omasava—a 16-seat omakase restaurant with a bar carved from 4,000-year-old oak.
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Photography by Anna Nguyen
omasava omakase experience naple dining chefs table
In a town like Naples, where the sea glows politely at dusk and many return to the same careful pleasures night after night, Corinne Ryan and Veljko Pavicevic have built a small province of taste. It started with Sails, the French fine-dining restaurant they built in 2018 after leveraging everything they owned. Then came Butcher Private, in 2023, a members-only club built around the pair’s specialized Australian beef program, the top fraction of grass-fed production worldwide, narrowed further still.
With long-planned Omasava, opened last year next to Sails, they apply the lens to prized sea rarities, such as Australian tiger prawns, seldom found stateside, plated in a 28-course procession. The 16-seat omakase bar—a Japanese tradition where diners surrender to the chef’s choices—intensifies what they’ve been building all along. It’s the 1% of the 1% plated in front of you.
But world-class kitchens require world-class talent, and it’s difficult to get serious chefs to relocate without the possibility of Michelin recognition, the pinnacle culinary honor, awarded by the guide’s anonymous inspectors. Corinne and Veljko prize the prospect of a star, not just for the talent it could attract, but for the relentless pursuit of craft, for what they’ve built, for the city itself. Naples, however, doesn’t exist on Michelin’s map. And Butcher, their most ambitious, is private and unreviewable by design.
Photography by Anna Nguyen
omasava omakase experience naple dining chefs
Masters of sushi Harun Samed Yaman and André Aguiar (standing) lead Omasava’s program.
Understanding the paradox, the members proposed carving out a tiny public restaurant within the club. Four tables, open Tuesday through Sunday evenings by reservation. A vignette of Butcher’s full weight, doled as an eight-course tasting menu, stretching over three unhurried hours, or a shorter format, focused on the program’s centerpiece steaks. They called it The Cellar.
Every space is arranged with the deliberation of people who believe that what we eat and how we are fed can alter a life’s trajectory. Omasava, the most recent addition, distills the perspective.
As the crystal bowls from our opening sashimi course disappeared, carried off in silence, another set of heirlooms arrived. Teacups—vintage bone china, each one different. “Nothing here was bought as servingwear,” Veljko says. For years, he has chased objects that speak to him and the bold aesthetics of his grandmother. At Omasava, chefs hide puffed rice in Fabergé eggs, and guests drink from glasses more than half a century old. I look down the counter to see a teacup rimmed in cobalt, another, trimmed with gold. Mine is ringed with faint green leaves and pale pink blossoms. All are filled with the same tiger prawn chawanmushi, but each has a different effect, the way a simple dress changes with whoever wears it.
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Photography by Anna Nguyen
omasava omakase experience naple dining sashimi bowl
Harun and André use seven distinct movements—gather, press, tuck, turn, correct, settle, place—when preparing a morsel. The measured approach shapes the rice without becoming dense and ensures the fish remains chilled and retains its bright flavor.
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Photography by Anna Nguyen
omasava omakase experience naple dining fire prep
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Photography by Anna Nguyen
omasava omakase experience naples dining prep
The shellfish in the silken custard came from a fishery 10,000 miles away—one of the specialty imports Corinne secures, despite Southwest Florida’s logistical disadvantages. From a shipping standpoint, the region is an afterthought, with no major cargo hubs, limited flights, and routes that change with the seasons and the whims of airlines. Most restaurants adapt accordingly, working with what they have. Corinne and Veljko behave as if they are at the center of the web.
From Corinne’s native Australia, they bring beef, ordered months ahead, so animals can be raised and graded with their restaurants in mind. Queensland’s coastal waters offer wild shellfish and prawns, a stubborn choice in a world that has made peace with farmed shrimp.
Corinne registered to handle all of the seafood imports directly to avoid compromise in a tightly regulated lane. Each shipment is a drama of export documents, health certificates and freight bookings. “It’s painstaking every single time,” she says. If a form is wrong or a stamp misplaced, the costly product can sit and die at the airport. For the fish, Japan supplies specimens of near-mythic reputation—tuna with marbling like calligraphy, deepwater species that gleam under the blade.
Photography by Anna Nguyen
omasava omakase experience naples dining wine bottles
The 28-course experience serves global ingredients with omakase precision. Recently, the founding couple also opened The Cellar, a four-table public spot within Butcher Private.
Closer to home is Tim Dillingham of Dilly’s Fish Co., who heads 150 to 180 miles offshore and brings back whatever the Gulf offers. Most restaurateurs refuse that uncertainty in favor of mass-distributed consistency. “With that system, fish arrive five to seven days old,” Veljko says. “We can feel the difference—with Dilly’s, the fish is still firm, clear-eyed.”
Back at the counter, Harun, who hails from celebrated international restaurants like Zuma and Matsunoki, and André, who trained beside renowned Japanese master Yugo Kato, set containers of rice beside their boards, the grains glossy with vinegar. Bamboo boxes arrive next with neat portions of pearlescent fish, including aji, a Japanese horse mackerel, chutoro from the belly of a bluefin and umi masu, or ocean trout, its color a soft, riverine orange. We examine the cuts, following the omakase tradition, in which each diner bears witness to the raw ingredient’s color and texture before the chef transforms it.
Corinne and Veljko’s refusal to compromise is innate. By age 6, Veljko was making his own crepes from his family’s coastal Montenegro kitchen, refusing any that didn’t pass his private standard: evenly golden, freckled with tiny bubbles and suspended between crisp and tender. “I thought this was normal,” he would later say. “That everyone refused to eat food that wasn’t just right. Then I realized, of course, not everyone is like this.”
Photography by Anna Nguyen
omasava omakase experience naples dining sashimi
Corinne and Veljko tend to linger at the bar long after the nights’ service has ended, discussing the wins and strategizing areas for improvement. The perfect bite is the standard, a measure unrelenting to compromise.
Corinne grew up on horseback and barefoot in Sydney, pulling fruit warm from branches, learning the difference between ripe and almost-ripe. She traveled often with her father, the president of the International Hockey Federation, eating across nearly 100 countries before spending two decades as a luxury food broker. She and Veljko internalized the same standard: A dish should taste like ripe fruit. Coherent. Balanced. Self-evidently right.
For all the energy the couple pour into sourcing, they insist their real extravagance is people. They sponsor O-1 visas for chefs deemed ‘extraordinary’—a slow, expensive process, requiring lawyers, petitions, folders thick with recommendations. “If we had outside investors, they’d probably fire us,” Veljko says.
Harun dips his fingers in water, shaking off the excess and reaches for rice as he mounts the aji. Gather, press, tuck, turn, correct, settle, place. Seven movements, no more. Too much handling would warm the fish, dulling texture and flavor. The rice itself cannot be overly compressed; it needs air at its center to fall apart on the tongue. André works alongside him, preparing the nigiri for the other eight guests at the counter.
Photography by Anna Nguyen
omasava omakase experience naples dining glass bowl
Nothing here was bought as serveware—vintage bone china teacups hold chawanmushi, puffed rice hides in Fabergé eggs. Ingredients are sourced with the same precision. Expect rarities like wild Australian prawns and near-mythic marbled tuna.
He lays a thin slice of foie gras directly on top of the umi masu. For a moment, it seems too much—two soft things stacked together, one already on the verge of melting. He reaches under the counter and comes back with a small blowtorch. Passing the flame in quick strokes, he tightens the surface just enough to release the foie’s scent: warmed fat, a hint of smoke, something just shy of sweet.
There are louder ways to cook than this. More flourish, more talk. But there is confidence in restraint—in trusting the ingredient, the cut, the plate.
By the time Naples folds in on itself for the night, service at Omasava has ended. Plates stacked. Dishwashers ebbed to silence. Most nights, Corinne and Veljko sit after close, reviewing what went right and what could be sharpened tomorrow. The work is relentless. But so is the standard they’ve set, embodied in a single piece of nigiri. Seven precise touches, each one a filter that keeps compromise out of the room. Food as it should be.