Hand Rolls bars continue to open across Los Angeles at a pace that nearly rivals the mushrooming of Turkish food trucks and Armenian kebab stands, forming one of L.A.’s more supersonic food movements.
Call it the KazuNori effect.
Or maybe it comes down to the way L.A. likes to eat: Conveniently. Socially. Majestically. With the same hand-to-hand pass from chef to customer that we love in a taco truck, a concentrated taste of the Pacific briefly coveted in our mittens.
A fresh crop of terrific hand roll bars opened in the last year, bringing even more of us side-by-side at the countertop, watching together as chefs roll fresh seafood, sushi rice, and vegetables into delicate little blunts of temaki magic before our eyes.
There's a communal atmosphere at a sushi bar that brings L.A. people together, in the same way any live performance has the power to unite an audience.
"You can come to eat alone and not feel alone," says chef Lester Lai of Sama Handroll Bar in the Arts District. "There's someone for you to talk to, whether it's a chef or whatever. You can sort of see what goes behind the scenes, what they recommend, what they feel is best to serve to a customer."
With so many new temaki temples manifesting across our streets, L.A. TACO is breaking down our top four new favorite hand roll bars in Los Angeles, places that are re-imagining what gets twisted into their crisp sheets of nori, while setting a new standard for the social tone of what a good hand roll bar can be.
Hand ... er, drumroll please ...
SAMA ~ DOWNTOWN
Sama is a small, casual spot for hand rolls, sashimi, and hot izakaya-style eats in a corner of the Arts District, with a 14-seat bar and dining tables. Chef, owner, and S.G.V. local Lester Lai brings a quiver full of Californian and international inspirations to his creative menu. His grandparents owned a restaurant in China, and Lai himself has worked as a chef in Hong Kong, Japan, Turkey, and the U.S.
"We have something, pretty much for everybody here," Lai tells L.A. TACO. "It's a hangout spot where people can eat hand rolls, cooked food, fusion a little bit, as well as, you know, enjoying themselves, drinking, talking. Things like that."
Your choices for hand rolls and cut roll options are many. You can get hotate scallop, salmon skin, uni, ikura, and a house Sama roll with toro, truffle-uni, and salted egg, with add-on options like caviar and tempura flake. There is also a daily offering of only ten ikura bowls with three types of salmon roe.
Lai's cooked dishes, like unagi curry chahan, mitsuba serrano-rubbed Maine lobster bites, and fried chicken skin with mint-infused toban-djan are a must-have. A robata section offers chicken heart yakitori, grilled avocado with yuzu yogurt, and trumpet mushrooms among the many choices.
The hot dish we can't quit talking about is Lai's serving of tender Wagyu shortribs, which the chef makes in a three-day process before grilling to a ideal inner pink that many L.A. steakhouses could learn lessons from.
"We brine it for a full day," Lai tells L.A. TACO. "We slow cook it for two days, and it still comes out a nice medium rare. It took me, personally, about three years to even perfect the recipe. So it took a while to make sure that it's not just a short rib, it's 'the' short rib."
Lai also has his secrets. He's been working for months on perfecting Hong Kong-style hand rolls, which he expects to debut next month in recipes like walnut shrimp, a Hainan chicken riff with yellowtail, XO hotate scallop, and bluefin char siu.
But if you ask him about it now when visiting Sama, he is likely to abide.
897 Traction Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90013
TEMAKI SOCIETY ~ DOWNTOWN
Temaki Society, opened and staffed by chef Hoon Kang and his brother, Kyeong Mo, has a cool factor and sense of freedom one doesn't always expect in a hand roll bar. It fronts Downtown bar The Grayson in a small, jumping vestibule next to the moody cocktail haunt and the graffiti-scrawled back reaches of Slipper Clutch, making Temaki a restaurant that doesn't allow anyone under 21.
On a well-edited menu, Kang merges his knowledge of peak seafood and the training he and his brother acquired at restaurants like Providence into a showcase of techniques and international influences, including touches from Korea and Mexico.
"I strive to infuse a distinct L.A. touch into our hand rolls and other items," Kang tells TACO. "For true sushi enthusiasts."
Here, you can try hand rolls you've most likely never had before: rolled up with yellowtail, burdock root, serrano chile, and yuzu ponzu. There are rolls of salmon with white kombu and pickled wasabi; cured mackerel with a "bossam" of pickled perilla leaf; uni with jalapeno marmalade; or soy sauce-marinated shrimp with kimchi and furikake, as well as tuna temaki with soy-marinated uni, pickled wasabi, and hanaho flowers.
Kang has also devised an ingenious way of serving them, with a biodegradable wrapper that helps keep the rice from getting the nori soggy, crisp texture being the hallmark of esteemed temaki.
Kang also does frequent specials, such as the banh mi-inspired hand roll with albacore we tried when visiting, as well as going full Cali on all our asses, serving sashimi-laden tostadas, such as the discs of masa he drops topped with tuna, avocado, ume aioli, and truffle snow.
With the Kang brothers at the helm, you're guaranteed to have temaki unlike you've ever seen before.
351 S. Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90013
SAIJO HANDROLL & KUSHIYAKI ~ CULVER CITY
It was obvious that things were going to be different at Saijo. After taking our seats at the bar, our eyes fell on a massive bluefin tuna in the middle of the chef's pit, there for scraping buttery naka-ochi, taken straight from the fish's belly, for the restaurant's "one-bite" temaki.
This commitment to quality is evident in everything the concept does at this perennially packed new 24-seat bar, which comes from the Jinya family. Tomo Takahashi, the company's CEO, grew up in the city of Saijo, in Japan's Ehime Prefecture, and graduated from Saijo High School.
“Handrolls may look minimal, but there’s a lot of precision behind them," Takahashi tells TACO. "At Saijo, we approach each one like a small work of art—crafted in the moment for maximum flavor. We let the ingredients speak for themselves, using precision and timing to highlight their natural flavors and textures at their peak.”
Here, each hand roll is wrapped in first-harvest Hatsuzumi Nori from the bay of the Ariake Sea, every piece toasted to order on a small grill on the bar's side. The sushi rice is carefully time-controlled to maintain an ideal temperature for rolls that include the likes of botan-ebi (a sweet shrimp from Japan), blue crab, grilled Chilean seabass, otoro, lobster, Santa Barbara uni, and other delicacies of the sea, which you can also order as sashimi.
Saijo is also a kushiyaki bar, everything grilled in back on binchotan charcoal, including cuts of A5 Arita Miyazaki Wagyu, chicken gizzard, pork belly chasu, quail egg, potato, and ginko nuts. You just get to sit there watching it all and being fed simple dishes with pinnacle fish until time or nature compel you to leave.
During lunch, the restaurant offers a solid deal, with options for three hand rolls for $16, four for $20, and six for $24, with a serving of miso soup on the side.
12473 Washington Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90066
SOGO ~ Highland Park
Sogo Roll Bar gives us the same thrills of hand-to-hand chef interaction as we appreciate at our favorite taquerias, the food going straight from its creator to the person who will eat it within seconds.
Sogo comes from the team of David Gibbs and Kiminobu Saito, founders of Sushi Note, and Sarah Dietz and Dustin Lancaster, owners of L&E Oyster Bar and Bar Covell. In June, they opened this Highland Park location, doubling down on the Sogo concept, which was first hatched in Los Feliz with the same great respect for fish as seen at Sushi Note.
Prized for the carefully considered touches gracing your fish, you’ll find albacore kari kari salmon marinated with brandy and topped garlic-ginger ponzu and crispy onions; crispy rice topped with baked crab and masago; and scallops and yellowtail dressed in masago-laced Kewpie, as well as rice bowls filled with grilled unagi or black cod.
"Saito San believes each hand roll should be a composed bite, so each one is garnished with flavors that complement the specific fish," says Dietz. "The proportions of the rolls are intentional, on the slightly larger side, to ensure that the taste of the fish is the focus.”
You can order to-go, linger over some sake and a date at a booth, or belly right up to the bar and get it straight from the hands that make it.
5535 York Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90042
