I tried most of the hand rolls at the recently opened Noriko hand roll bar

1. Yellowtail
2. Ora king salmon
3. California
4. Spicy bluefin tuna
5. Crab matoyaki
6. Sweet shrimp
7. Dynamite scallop
8. Toro (I added uni)
9. Wagyu
10. Spicy octopus (not pictured)

Noriko opened this month in the basement of Perilla and I am a fiend of all things sushi so I was excited to check it out on a recommendation from a friend. I went solo and sat at the counter (the whole restaurant is one giant counter). I decided to skip any of the apps and just went all hand rolls and wanted to basically explore the whole menu. My favorites were the toro, scallop, and the spicy octopus. I sometimes am cautious of octopus because people don’t often cook it well but the texture was really nice and lean and not chewy so it was a pleasant surprise. Vibe was cool in there. Only one I would maybe caution against is the sweet shrimp. For $12 I expected more than one piece of shrimp because it wasn’t very big and really was just an ama ebi nigiri with way too much rice which, I like ama ebi nigiri, but not for $12.

People are going to want to know how it compares to Tamu, the other new hand roll bar. They were surprisingly similar, it almost felt like a copy in terms of how the menu and hand rolls style was (long instead of conic and the ingredient choices) but I do think the execution was a little better at Noriko and would probably be quicker to go back to Noriko before Tamu if I had to choose.