Since the 2014 introduction of KazuNori, Los Angeles chef Kazunori Nozawa’s iconic hand roll bar, restaurants dedicated to hand rolls began popping up all across the city. In a rare interview about KazuNori’s grand opening, Nozawa told Los Angeles Times, “I wanted to make sushi available to as many people as I could with the cost remaining affordable.”
The simple hand roll is decidedly egalitarian and its etiquette straightforward: a trained sushi chef lines a sheet of crispy nori in warm, seasoned rice, tops it with chilled fish, seafood, or vegetables, and rolls it up into a portable cylinder. The chef places the hand roll in front of you, and you eat it. Immediately. (It's very important to enjoy the nori while it’s still crisp and the fillings at the correct temperature.)
Now that Los Angeles has become an unofficial hand roll capital outside of Japan, we decided to try five popular concepts across the city and rank them accordingly. Here’s what we found.