Here’s what dancerobot is: 1. the high-energy sequel to Royal Sushi & Izakaya from Jesse Ito, Philadelphia’s most honored Japanese chef; 2. the ownership debut of Justin Bacharach, Royal’s second in command; and 3. a royal pain to start a sentence with because Ito and Bacharach insist on spelling it lowercase.
Here’s what dancerobot is not: 1. a sushi joint; 2. anything like other Japanese restaurants in Philadelphia; and 3. an easy-to-crack reservation.
Ito refuses to serve sushi at dancerobot — opening Tuesday at 1710 Sansom St. in Rittenhouse — because he can’t be there while commanding his eight-seat, $300-a-head omakase counter in Queen Village, widely viewed as Philadelphia’s most impossible reservation.
Besides, Ito said, a sushi menu at dancerobot “would cannibalize Royal. It’s too close. [Royal Sushi does] a big delivery service that reaches Rittenhouse and even the ’burbs. I know people in Gladwyne who pay the surcharge to get our [sushi] out there.”
Ito and Bacharach, partnered with Royal co-owner Stephen Simons, opened dancerobot’s 80-seat Resy book on Friday. In less than an hour, all 30 days of reservations were spoken for. The 20-seat bar and a long drink rail are left open for walk-ins. (This month has been a whirlwind for Ito, an eight-time James Beard Award nominee: Last week, Royal Sushi & Izakaya was named No. 32 on North America’s 50 Best Restaurants list for 2025.)
The Rittenhouse restaurant has been in the works for more than two years, and planning for it took both chefs to Japan for the first time.
What’s on the menu — and what’s not
You won’t find ramen or yakitori on dancerobot’s menu, either. Instead, it’s studded with examples of Western-influenced yoshoku cuisine such as katsu curry, hamburg steak, wagyu roast beef with miso mashed potatoes, and pizza toast. Two Royal Izakaya dishes — fried eggplant in sweet miso glaze (nasu dengaku) and grilled Norwegian mackerel (saba shioyaki) — made it over.
One nod to Ito’s omakase is thin-sliced kanpachi (amberjack) in tosazu (dashi vinegar) spiked with fish sauce and garlic, topped with pickled Thai chilies, panko breadcrumbs, Japanese scallion (Tokyo negi), and dots of chive oil. The dish had been conceived for a collaboration with Kalaya, and Ito has made a few in-house iterations since.
The bar program includes sake, shochu, frozen drinks, and Japanese cocktails.
The weekend brunch menu, with the grilled-fish meal known as teishoku alongside omurice and onigiri, and a late-night menu with such convenience store (konbini) dishes as egg salad sandwiches and soufflé pudding will both start soon.
Dancerobot’s double-wide storefront features white-painted bricks, a handsome mahogany double door, and a simple pink neon. (Royal’s blue door and red lantern in Queen Village is similarly Spartan.) The vestibule inside, also lit in pink, is covered with anime posters and other 1980s kitsch beneath a mirrored ceiling. Past the heavy velvet curtain is an antique bar — moody and Victorian, in the Royal spirit. In the back is booth seating.
Dancerobot’s backstory
Bacharach — whose resume includes Bing Bing Dim Sum, Cheu Noodle Bar, and Cheu Fishtown — had been Royal Izakaya’s executive chef for more than two years when the planning of dancerobot started in 2023. Ito said the timing felt right to expand beyond Royal and put Bacharach front and center.
“I never wanted to do something just because I could,” Ito said. “For me, it always has to be about trust — about having a chef-operator running the place. Justin and I work well together. He’s talented, and people like working with him. That made me think: OK, now’s the time to push for another restaurant.”
They secured the former Foodery, a sandwich-and-beer bar that closed in 2022 after a 10-year run. To Bacharach, 1710 Sansom has special meaning. From 1977 until 1991, it was home of the Commissary, the upscale-cafeteria offshoot of chef Steve Poses’ trailblazing Frog restaurant, a touchstone of Philadelphia’s 1970s restaurant renaissance. “The Frog Commissary Cookbook was the first cookbook I read when I was a kid,” said Bacharach, 35, who was born in 1989, four years after it was first published.
Although Bacharach had been cooking Japanese cuisine for several years, he had never been to Japan.
Neither, for that matter, had Ito, whose father was born in southern Japan. “A lot of people are surprised by that,” Ito, 36, said. “But when my parents owned Fuji, we literally took no vacations. My dad never went back, except when his mother passed. In between closing Fuji [in late 2015] and [opening Royal], there was a year — but I was broke, so I couldn’t go.”
To create dancerobot, Ito said, “it was really important for me to go to Japan and see the origin of everything I’m cooking.”
For 11 days from late January into February of this year, the chefs ate their way through Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, favoring kissaten, Japanese coffee houses with Western-influenced menus and jazz soundtracks.
“A lot of them aren’t even listed on any review sites,” Ito said. “Those were the best ones. You just go where there’s a line of people waiting to get in.”
Ito and Bacharach occasionally split up to cover more ground. “I would just go from one kissaten to the next and get an egg salad sandwich at one and katsu curry at another and a kare pan or a souffle pudding at the next one,” Bacharach said. “After eating at those places, I found that everything was so foreign but also familiar, and that was the perfect direction for the food here.”
One goal was finding the best version of kare pan — beef in Japanese curry, baked into a doughnut that’s breaded with panko and fried — a dish that Ito has enjoyed many times at Mitsuwa Market Place, the Japanese mega-market outside of New York City.
“We went to convenience stores, bakeries on the side of the street, [shops in] basements of subway stations, and department stores and tried all of them,” Bacharach said. He brought his ideas back, tweaked his recipe in Royal’s kitchen, and came up with a doughnut that he says tastes like a “fresh Krispy Kreme out of the fryer,” albeit one with Japanese curry in the batter and dashi-braised beef cheeks inside. It’s on the dinner menu and will be offered at brunch and late night.
“You’ll be craving one of these a week,” Ito said.
In Tokyo, their hotel was in Ikebukuro, a neighborhood geared toward locals and business people, not food cognoscenti. Ito, who had been chronicling the journey on Instagram, said his DMs were filled with people saying, “What? Why are you there?”
“But there were amazing little izakayas,” Bacharach said. “We stumbled upon one that looked like a roadside diner filled with people, and we had a few dishes like their hamburg steak, which is essentially like Japan’s version of a hamburger, but it’s also sort of like a giant meatball in a rich demi-glace and has nori on top.” That’s also where they found the inspiration for their cheesy mentaiko omelet, which Bacharach describes as “basically just like a diner omelet with cheese in the middle and spicy cod roe on top.”
There’s also pizza toast: thick-cut shokupan (milk bread) toasted and topped with pizza sauce, roasted vegetables, black olives, prosciutto, mentaiko cream, and mozzarella. It’s a take on a classic cafe favorite from 1970s Tokyo.
The late-night weekend menu, when dancerobot’s bar will stay open until 2 a.m., is based on their stop in Kyoto. “We got off the train and Jesse was like, ‘Let’s just go to every convenience store that’s walkable from the train station and get everything — egg salad sandwiches, hot dog buns, custards, puddings, ice cream, all kinds of desserts,’” Bacharach said.
In Japan, the American-born convenience chains Family Mart, Lawson’s, and 7-Eleven sell “top-tier, super-high-quality food,” Ito said.
Ito and Bacharach bought the same items at each, returned to the hotel, laid it all out, and compared. The winners were egg salad sandwiches from the 7-Eleven and the spicy fried chicken known as Famichiki from Family Mart.
All of the inspiration points come together on dancerobot’s menu, unlike any other in Philadelphia.
“I think a lot of people have an expectation that Japanese food is either really expensive or it’s like your cheap corner sushi joint,” Bacharach said. “We’re a niche … we’re going to have a very wide range of options.”
Dancerobot, 1710 Sansom St., Philadelphia; 215-419-5202; dancerobotphl.com. Opening hours: 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday.
Dining and Cooking