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Spice is the thing at Miyabi Sushi, an informal 30-seat Japanese joint smack in the middle of Third Street’s NYU, jazz club, and tourist hubbub. The menu devised by Tokyo-born chef “Tom San,” who joined Miyabi in 2000 (the restaurant opened in 1976 under a different name), is not for the faint-of-heart, with an emphasis on unusual specialties such as ankimo, steamed monkfish liver served with scallion-flecked ponzu sauce, and tender aji “horse mackerel” sushi. Partake in some of the spiciest sushi in New York in the form of extra-piquant black pepper tuna, which appears in several sashimi and roll combinations alongside the chef’s equally zesty special sauce of horseradish, onions, mayo, and, of course, more black pepper. The word “miyabi” means grace, but there is nothing graceful about the aftermath of swallowing these fiery rolls. Wash it all down with the restaurant’s top-grade, super-fatty, deliciously melt-in-your-mouth toro. — Jenny Feldman

Fantastic roll, $13.95; aji tataki appetizer, $12.95; o toro sushi, $7