A Japanese burrito. That’s how Sushi Nori is marketing its main product, the Japanese hand roll.
Instead of wrapping rice, meat, beans and cheese in a flour tortilla like a Mexican burrito, a nori (seaweed) cone is filled with rice, fish and julienned vegetables to make the Japanese hand roll.
“We were one of the first to offer this snack last year when we opened at the food court of SM Aura,” said Milka Romero, Sushi Nori’s managing director.
In the past, one had to go to a Japanese restaurant to be able to eat sushi or temaki. With the opening of the Sushi Nori kiosks at Aura and recently at SM Mega Food Hall, customers can now drop by, place their orders and leave with their snack within minutes.
Romero says they purposely chose to be located near the cinemas so that customers can bring their orders with them inside the movie houses.
Freshly made
Since everything is only assembled upon order, they are assured that their temaki or sushi is freshly made and hasn’t been sitting in the chiller for hours.
“That’s what sets us apart from other restaurants or food stalls that also sell sushi-to-go,” Romero said. “Our staff is trained to put together the different ingredients needed to make the temaki. We have over 20 variants to choose from and customers can opt to have their orders prepared as temaki or as a sushi roll.”
The choices at Sushi Nori range from a simple combination of tamago (Japanese omelet), cream cheese and black sesame to the more indulgent unagi (eel), black ebiko, tamago, kani, cream cheese and tempura flakes.
Romero shared that she experimented with possible combinations using ingredients like potato chips and truffle oil but realized “they didn’t work.”
Salmon
If you like salmon, several variants are available, including blow-torched salmon and spicy salmon. Each order is priced from P89 to P329. The kiosk at SM Mega Food Hall also offers rice bowls topped with tuna, salmon or assorted seafood (Japanese chirashi).
Two more kiosks are scheduled to open before the end of the year at UP Town Center in Quezon City and at the Rockwell Power Plant.
