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.
#5) The Hand Roll Bar Experience ~ Century City
The Hand Roll Bar Experience, stylized as HRB, is the one hand roll bar on the list that I wouldn’t recommend. I even hesitate to call it a hand roll bar because it is merely decorative and the hand rolls are made in a separate kitchen. HRB’s albacore hand roll was edible, and marinated ikura was a welcome addition to the salmon hand roll, but you should steer clear of the spicy tuna: the paste-like tuna scrape displays an off-putting combination of flavors that don’t blend well. If you’re killing time waiting for a movie at AMC Century City 15, the bar itself has a nice atmosphere, and you could do worse considering you're at the food court. But you could also do better.