Galley Girl – She's in Your Kitchen

The latest food truck to hit OC isn’t a truck at all. It’s a Mercedes Sprinter that serves sushi.  With its rear bubble windows and boxy body, it’s the unlikely love child of an eighties Chevy van conversion and The Mystery Machine loaded with high quality tuna instead of captain’s chairs and The Gang.

Spicy tuna hand roll; Rolling Balls.

 I caught up with it most recently backed up to a chain link fence separating it from a 57 freeway onramp in the clammy shadow of The Bruery, a small, passionate brewery of artisans who craft batches of unfiltered, unpasteurized beer out of an dilapidated industrial space in Placentia.

Sashimi Salad.

This union, it turns out, is a match made in heaven. The Bruery doesn’t have food unless you count hops and barley. And Rolling Sushi doesn’t have booze. What they do have are spicy tuna chips: won ton skins fried to a wispy crackle and topped with a dollop of glittering ruby red chopped spicy tuna, sesame seeds, green onion and a drizzle of creamy sauce. This costs three dollars. I’ve paid more for a side of edamame.

Spicy Tuna Chips.

 The sushi vendor makes both traditional staples such as nigiri fresh water eel and other  more esoteric finds such as the bite-sized Rolling Balls: a dollop of tuna and  rice rolled in crispy tempura crumbs and centered on delicate ’kerchiefs of sesame-flecked  soy paper. The yummy citrus vinaigrette-doused sashimi salad was fresh,  but the sashimi seemed like cutting board scraps. Miso was also an afterthought. Better the spicy tuna hand roll and all of its picture perfect, generous cut roll cousins. Who’s behind all this superlative sushi? Young Choi, the GM, will take your order and Chris Kim is the sushi chef who makes it to order. What’s next: izakaya from a Smart Car? Sake bombs from a Segway? Anything is possible.

Rolling Sushi on the Go http://rollingsushivan.com 909.275.0039

In OC we have sushi nazis, revolving sushi, all-you-can-eat sushi and rock ’N' roll sushi, but there’s only one James Hamamori.  Though he helped pioneer the Kaiten movement in New York in the seventies, he’s left the conveyor belts to Sushilicious.  

That soy pot is just for looks.

Still, he’s got your meals’ transportation covered in classy ‘Your Car, Our Driver’ style. Sit in front of him and he’ll bring near-flawless sushi within inches of your gaping maw, or at least close enough for you to inhale the umami essences that will resurrect your taste buds making it difficult to pass off supermarket Cali rolls on them anytime soon.  

James, Live!

He’s the Capo of avante garde omakase in OC. You don’t go to him because you know what you want. You go because you trust that what he gives you will be exactly what you need.  

That's how he rolls.

Sit at the laquered bar made from the wood of a 150-year-old naturally fallen Bubinga tree among idle soy pots and limpid flutes of Jozen Mizunogotoshi. Go omakase for your meal. Like snowflakes, no two are alike. Rest assured that it will be among the freshest, most exhilarating sushi you’ve ever tasted. So fresh, in fact, that you’d forsake a pair of custom Oliver Peoples specs from the shop next door for an unforgettable dinner here.  

Apparently, no junk drawer here.

What will you eat? Depends on what’s fresh. I’m not sure which bivalve version was better: sweet scallops bright with lemon and yuzu salt topped with savory caviar, or succulent scallops adorned with truffle-infused miso.  I’m not a see urchin fan, but miso-uni crème in an espresso cup is a madcap night cap of  malty, briny, umami nectar. 

Philadelphia rolls and other items heavy on cream cheese are left to Tokyo Table. Hamamori uses pâté de fois gras instead. Freshwater eel with a tiny dollop of the delicacy is finished with orange zest for a flavor that is savory, sweet and pungent at the same time. Wasabi is more often seen as chartreuse zest being grated directly from the rhizome onto some choice piscine morsel than it is as a mint-green lump with a ginger sidekick.

Where not to sit.

Seaweed or soy paper? Milder soy has my vote. But instead of masking fish in a thick sheet of nori,  Hamamori uses a seaweed emulsion that bathes halibut instead of cloaking it, resulting in a lighter, fresher manifestation. Mild sea bream comes alive with pepper paste, red shiso salt and lemon. With these meticulously-chosen condiments, Kikkoman is a thing of the past. 

Mostly, Hamamori uses a minimalist approach that would make biomorphic starchitect Isamu Noguchi proud. Still, he does have  a gimmick and it’s the torch. It would be fine with me had he started serving creme brulée. It’s the fish with a filmy butane veil I can’t abide. Even with this pyrotechnic quirk, Hamamori makes the most superlative sushi in OC. But that’s just my opinion. What’s your favorite sushi bar in OC? Galley Girl wants to know! 

Hamamori 3333 Bear Street, Ste. 320 Costa Mesa. 714.850.0880.

Is it awkward when the giant clam on your plate gets around more than you do? Maybe a little. But that’s how they roll at Sushilicious. Kaiten sushi has it’s critics, and for good reason. Nobody wants fish that’s been rotating like a mistakenly-tagged piece of Sampsonite on the Jet Blue carousel at LAX.

 Still, if you can  put aside bad memories of all-things revolving (wayward dry-cleaning, squeaky spice caddies, really lazy susans) you’ll be ready for a sushi experience that comes right to you with all the regal, low velocity pomp of a Rose Parade Float minus the white-gloved hotties.

Dare I say...scallop-sational?

Consider the Medusa, a nori wrapped base of  fried soft shell crab and creamy kani kama garnished with mesclun and dotted with roe. The rice is covered in ethereal tempura flakes that add crunch while soy-based tsume sauce lends a hint of sweetess to the crispy, savory bite. 

Despite the funky, clunky names, (can you pass me a ‘Roll formerly known as California’, please?) the general concept of most rolls here is nothing new, but the whimsical delivery system, great prices and surprising freshness is.

Professional Itamae on a closed course: do not attempt.

Popular sushi rolls tend to be trashy in their seduction, preying on our basest desires. What omakase purist hasn’t given into the allure of  deep-fried, toaster oven-baked,  butane-torched offerings on occasion because of their sheer decadence?  In that catagory, crispy cubes of molten fried rice with cool chili-laced chopped tuna on top remind of inside-out Sicilian arancini.

Still, there are plenty of healthier options.  Sesame-flecked Napolean Dynamite with bare, translucent red snapper and cucumber laced in Sriracha is one.  Twilight  consists of shoyu-mirin basted and grilled unagi and cucumber topped with creamy avocado slices.

Supercali-Fraggle Rock Shrimp!

In most sushi bars,  unorthodox Cali-style rolls are merely a habit forming gateway substance that primes the brain for later addictions to nigiri sushi, even sashimi. Although single-origin sushi is fine here, rolls are what get people hooked with Jeremy Piven-like zeal. 

Sushicalifragilisticexpialidocious has this effect.  The mild sesame-soy paper wrapped base is filled with crab salad, cucumber and salad greens contrasted with sizzling tempura rock shrimp drizzled in creamy chili sauce on top.    

Roll Train.

The month-old brainchild of Daniel Woo is the latest in the kaiten sushi craze in OC, and ultimately the only one who puts out sushi that competes with its non-revolving counterparts. Everything on the belt is still made right before your eyes, with three chefs stationed at different locations inside. 

Sushi is placed gingerly under miniature cake domes to protect it from the occasional sneeze or the meddling hands of the sake-bombed. Plate rims are color coded so staff can tabulate the damage. The conveyor belt is a high tech sushi-calator equipped with a radio frequency identification system. 

Twilight Zone.

In Dahl-esque good egg/bad egg fashion, the belt senses a chip in each plate and a light goes on when one hour is up, signaling for the staff to pull it.

Who knew that the crowded,  all-you-can-eat AC/DC-blasting rock and roll-sushi joints of the eighties with their Kirin-downing itamaes would give way to sushi-go-rounds playing Owl City flanked with pastel-clad club kids? And the word is out.

M likes it!

Woo hired social networking ninjas to tweet just about all things Sushilicious even before the doors were open. This beats sending the busboy out on Jeffrey dressed like a tsunami hand roll to attract customers. Just don’t be dissapointed that the hamachi you just snagged has more Twitter followers than you do.

15435 Jeffrey Road, Ste. 119 Irvine 92618. 949. 552. 2260