Recent years have brought on various sushi innovations in OC. Ten years ago it was the advent of revolving sushi, such as Kula, Kaisen, and Gatten. Then came the all-you-can-eat concept that places like Sake 2 Me seems to have mastered. This year, we've seen a sushi burrito joint (Samurai Burrito), and a poke joint (Pokinometry) come into the market.
Now there's a shop dedicated to just sushi hand rolls, those rice-and-fish-stuffed cones of nori that your itamae might serve you as part of an omakase meal.
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Called “temakira – the hand roll shop” (yes, it's all in lower case), the restaurant takes its name from the Japanese word “temaki”, which, you guessed it, means “hand roll.”
It's located at 259 E 17th Street in Costa Mesa, which is hallowed ground as far as OC Weekly is concerned. It was the former location of Avanti Cafe, the vegetarian restaurant that has graced our pages for nearly a decade and won several awards, including Best Restaurant 2008.
temakira opened this weekend. Their website is still under construction, but they do have a Facebook page on which you can see pictures of the rolls and the shop.
259 E 17th St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627, (949) 650-0305; temakira.com
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.