Nami Nori – the hand roll takes centre stage

On Carmine Street, between Bleecker and Bedford, Nami Nori serves hand rolls open-faced rather than rolled shut, nori cradling warm rice and fish, set upright on the counter so every colour shows before the first bite. Nami Nori West Village is a casual, Japanese restaurant specializing in open-style temaki hand rolls, located on Carmine Street, between Bleecker and Bedford. Sakaeda and Lee opened Nami Nori in the West Village in 2019 with managing partner Lisa Limb. Nami Nori now operates five dine-in restaurants in four states. It carries a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand. Behind the counter, Taka Sakaeda and Jihan Lee worked alongside Lisa Limb at Masa, where Nami Nori's partners, Taka Sakaeda, Jihan Lee, and Lisa Limb, met while working under chef Masa Takayama, the only three-star Michelin sushi chef in the country. There, they chose to step away from the costly omakase wave then sweeping the city, noticing the amount of high-end omakase restaurants popping up all over the city and craving a more relaxed experience at an affordable price that wouldn't skimp on the quality of the seafood. The name, naminori, means to surf.

01The room and the setting

Inside, the narrow storefront is built around blonde-wood benches set with gray-blue pillows, and two U-shaped counters where temaki, or hand rolls, are front and center, along with Japanese-inspired snacks and sides. Nami Nori's own description leans on the idea of a beach house: light, airy, and a calm respite from the energetic streets of the West Village outside. Most seats face the pass directly, so watching the rolls go together by hand is as much a part of the evening as eating them.

02The chefs

Sakaeda is a long-serving veteran of Japanese kitchens; Chef Taka is a 21-year veteran of Japanese cuisine, with 10 years training under Chef Masa Takayama of Masa, the first 3-michelin star chef in the U.S. at the time. Lee worked the same counter, and the idea for their own restaurant took shape, fittingly, between services: one day during family meal, the rare pause in the hectic pace of a restaurant shift, the employees started dreaming up concepts, wanting to open a different kind of restaurant, one that would become part of the fabric of their neighborhood. They opened the West Village counter together, and in 2024 the group gained a well-known partner: Pharrell Williams joined Launchpad as a partner and advisor in 2024, and Nami Nori opened at Atlantic Park in Virginia Beach, Virginia, last October.

Insider tip

Open nightly from 5.30pm; closed Sunday; weekend brunch; booking recommended given the small room.

03The cooking

The format traces back to the final stretch of an omakase menu: at Masa, they served an open-style temaki near the end of the omakase, a style that already existed in Japan, and were also inspired by Brazil's temakerias, where whole restaurants are built around the hand roll. Rather than rolling the nori shut into a cone, the open U-shape became their canvas: like nigiri, every ingredient stays visible. The approach keeps the fish and technique close to Masa's own standards while trading the long tasting-menu format for something quicker and built to share across a table.

04What to order

The Signature Set runs through the kitchen's range in five pieces: tuna poke, XO scallop, coconut shrimp, salmon serrano, and cucumber black sesame. A special vegan section covers the same ground in plant-based versions. For à la carte additions, tuna poke, coconut shrimp, fried oyster and spicy lobster are also served by the piece. On weekends the kitchen folds hand rolls into brunch, with a lobster benedict temaki with butter-poached lobster, Jidori egg and Koji hollandaise, and an okonomiyaki pancake with salmon, bacon, scallion and wasabi crème fraîche.

05Wine and drinks

Sake leads the list: Yuki no Tenshi, or Snow Angel, is a delicate, slightly sweet Nigori sake with notes of coconut, melon and vanilla, with a silky texture and gentle finish that make it an inviting introduction to unfiltered sake, refreshing and perfectly paired with the XO scallop temaki. Beyond that, beer, sake and wine are available both on tap and by the bottle, with a curated sake list and crisp mineral-driven whites as the natural companions.

06When to go and the neighbourhood

Nami Nori West Village opens nightly from 5.30pm, running to 11pm Monday to Wednesday and to midnight Thursday through Saturday, according to the hours posted on its website in October 2026. Since 2019 the Carmine Street counter has grown into a wider group; the partners say those restaurants serve more than 7,500 diners a week and that the business grew 40 percent last year. The original room also earned a spot on Esquire's Best New Restaurants in America.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.