Sushi For The People

Nami Nori is cheap, delicious, and made for millennials.

- Adam Platt

Let’s go here, Dad,” said my 16-year-old daughter, who, like the rest of your humble critic’s restaurant- weary family, never wants to go anywhere new or strange or interesting to eat around the big city unless it involves different varieties of dim sum, perhaps, or a bowl of pork-laced ramen (from which she always daintily removes the actual wheels of pork) or a slice or two at the latest photo-ready pizza joint. Every once in a while, however, a new place comes along that emanates a certain kind of alluring glow. Maybe the room has a bright, stylishly casual look to it. Maybe the menu has a certain clean, uncluttered economy (“Dad, stop ordering so much!” is a constant refrain on our restaurant nights out), or maybe the kitchen manages to rework a popular, crowd-pleasing formula (the California roll is another one of her favorites) in an inventive new way.

Did I mention that if there’s a line somewhere for food or clothes or the latest cosmetic hand soap, my daughter is happy to join it, which is probably another reason we found ourselves, early on a dark fall evening, stamping our feet outside the new Greenwich Village hand-roll sensation, Nami Nori. The glow from the bright, neatly appointed, white-and-blond-toned dining room lit up the sidewalk, and through the glittering glass window you could see the staff prepping for service behind two wooden sushi-bar-style counters, one on either side of the room. As we loitered in the ever-growing line, my daughter checked the compact, alluring little menu on her phone (“They have California rolls, Dad”). The doors opened at 5:30 precisely, and by 5:37, according to my own vintage iPhone 8, the seats and tables were completely full and another line was forming outside.