Sushi Nakazawa is a raw delight Never Miss a Story Get The Post delivered directly to your inbox By clicking above you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Chef Daisuke Nakazawa's new restaurant will not serve sushi. WEST VILLAGE —  A chef featured in the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" is opening a new Japanese restaurant on Grove Street — but it won't serve any sushi.A proposed menu crafted by chef Daisuke Nakazawa — who helms the kitchen at the acclaimed Sushi Nakazawa on Commerce Street and was featured in the "Jiro" sushi documentary — will branch out from Nakazawa's sushi specialties to feature an array of fresh seafood dishes.The menu at the as-yet-unnamed spot at 55 Grove St. combines Japanese and American ingredients and preparations.Prospective dishes for the $125-per-person tasting menu include: fluke carpaccio with white sturgeon caviar, Meyer lemon, seaweed and a Japanese mustard called karashi; a type of Japanese bluefish called Akamutsu with Bordeaux spinach and poached citrus jam;

and sea urchin on a "nest" of spaghettini and arugula. Other seafood dishes of the proposed menu include Dungeness crab with roasted pistachio, broccoli and and a citrus-seasoned soy sauce called ponzu; live Maine scallop with creamed butter and blackened chives; and baby octopus with fingerling potatoes, citrus and soured cherry.Nakazawa will also try his hand at non-seafood items, such as an okra and honeycrisp apple salad; duck liver with strawberry and honey; dry aged beef toast with wasabi, Himalayan rock salt and blackened leeks; and butternut squash ravioli with candied walnuts and Meyer lemon.Alex Borgognone, the restaurateur behind Sushi Nakazawa as well as the new spot, said one of his motivations in opening the new location is to accept walk-ins, in contrast to Sushi Nakazawa's strict reservation-only policy."We wanted to do something a little different, something where people can actually walk in without a reservation," Borgognone told members of Community Board 2's liquor license committee, requesting their support for his application to the State Liquor Authority.

"It’s a little bit more of a casual setting, but once again at a high level."The new restaurant will also take reservations, but it will set aside a few tables to accommodate walk-ins. People waiting to be seated will be sent to a bar in the lower level of the restaurant, which can seat up to eight people and will offer the full menu for patrons who decide to stay and eat there.how to keep sushi rice from stickingBorgognone said that while the price point of the new restaurant will be "similar to Nakazawa," he's hoping to make his Grove Street venture family-friendly. best sushi to order when dietingHe is taking over the whole building at 55 Grove St., though the top two floors will be set aside for office space, with the restaurant on the ground floor and the bar below.sushi online spiel

Borgognone said nothing will change at Sushi Nakazawa's original 23 Commerce St. location, where diners are offered a 20-course "omakase" — a Japanese term for a chef's choice tasting menu. The menu there changes daily based on the catch fishermen deliver to the restaurant, but has frequently featured such delicacies as a live Florida Tiger shrimp killed directly in front of the guest; order sushi online irvineeel from salty sea waters off the Japanese island of Kyushu; sushi los angeles sunset blvd"torched" Geoducks (a breed of giant clam from Washington State); jiro dreams of sushi where to watchand large, bright orange Ikura caviar — roe harvested from the ovaries of salmon.jiro dreams of sushi is he still alive

The new eatery will be open from 11 a.m. to midnight seven days a week. The community board agreed to endorse Borgognone's liquor license application, so long as there is no outdoor seating and the entire restaurant, including the bar, closes promptly at midnight.There is no timeframe yet for when the new restaurant will open.It was thrilling news for raw fish and rice fanatics when Sushi Nakazawa expanded in February. Though by most standards it's still a tiny restaurant—a 10-seat counter and a back dining room with 10 tables—on the other side of a gauzy curtain there’s a brand-new lounge where you can walk in without a reservation and pop some nigiri a la carte. This wouldn’t be a big deal at every sushi bar in town, but Nakazawa, which opened in 2013 to instant acclaim, is an infuriatingly difficult reservation to land. It's a bit like when the cast of Hamilton did impromptu outdoor performances for those people who didn't win the day's ticket lottery. A flight of sea urchin at Sushi Nakazawa's new lounge includes pieces from Maine, Santa Barbara, and Hokkaido.The lounge menu is limited to some rolls and a few nigiri flights, but really no one heaves their Ferragamo wallets over to Nakazawa for limitless options.

They go for the genius of 38-year-old sushi chef Daisuke Nakazawa, who studied under Jiro Ono in Tokyo for a decade and made an appearance in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Nakazawa builds 21-piece sushi omakases here with joy and precision, using hay smoke, seasonings, and a rainbow of temperatures to overlay all kinds of delicious special effects.The backlit bar at Nakazawa's lounge, a new addition to the sushi bar. And for anyone who’s tried and failed to get a seat for dinner, the lounge can be an introduction to Nakazawa’s style. Though you can’t get the omakase, you can order a few of the delicious three-piece flights a la carte, the very same plates people are eating next door. There’s a trilogy of Atlantic bluefin tuna in which the fishy star grows progressively fattier. Sea urchin glisten in exquisite triplicate, each piece pulled from a different ocean, jiggling gleefully on a mound of rice. The lounge also serves maki in small, neatly rolled bites filled with scallop and yuzu kosho—a casual reconfiguration of Nakazawa’s more glamorous scallop nigiri—or sweet eel, or fatty tuna slapped with chili.  

New to the menu: maki made with scallop and yuzu kosho, a reconfiguration of the sushi bar's fantastic scallop nigiri. When you need to take care of yourself, and spontaneously celebrate something small, the lounge could be a good place to go. Order a glass of Champagne and a plate of wild salmon, and one piece will be especially mellow, gently smoked over hay. You’ll hear the broody strumming of classical guitar on the speakers, and the thwacks of heels on tile as your server appears and vanishes like a cat. All of the servers are in suits, moving quickly and elegantly behind counters and curtains—when you need someone, it can be impossible to get some attention. So after a few bites, feel free to move along to a faster, less expensive dinner somewhere else.The additional new space in the West Village was a destination for leather goods before the restaurant’s owner, Alessandro Borgognone, took it over in January, adding a deep gray marble bar and soft suede banquettes. The room is pretty in a cool, geometric kind of way and you could certainly get comfortable and build out a big dinner by ordering some rolls and one of each of the flights, but you’d be cobbling together a very poor imitation of the omakase, which plays out with so many more carefully ordered moving parts.

Besides, the low lounge tables are a little too small, cramping the style of the food and drinks, and simply not ideal for a two-hour meal.Gently smoked coho salmon at Sushi Nakazawa's new lounge, where you order a few flights of fish a la carte.Borgognone says that he designed the space so that diners at the restaurant could have a comfortable, spendy place to wait for their tables (previously they were asked to wait by the wall, or worse, outside). The beauty of sushi-making is not a part of the experience here. In the lounge, there will be no feisty, live shrimp hopping off the cutting board. And the golden strip of finely structured tamago, the sweet, Japanese-style omelet that Nakazawa mastered in Jiro Dreams of Sushi (in a tearful scene that brought him to Borgognone’s attention) is not available. For a brush with that kind of eggy fame, you'll have to make a reservation after all. The lounge opened to make diners more comfortable while they wait for their table, but it's also a good place to have a whiskey cocktail after dinner, or to sip Champagne with a flight of fish.

Sushi Nakazawa is at 23 Commerce Street (West Village); +.Rating: Two stars (Very good) What to Order: There is maki, which is, just as you’d expect, significantly better than the maki you pick up for lunch at Whole Foods. Go with the scallop and yuzu if you’re in the mood for it, but otherwise stick to the more exciting flights that show off Nakazawa’s precision: three pieces of salmon ($22), tuna ($25), sea urchin ($28), or silver fish ($20) nigiri.Who’s Next to You: Thirtysomething couples dressed up for a birthday; a large French-speaking family from SoHo with their weirdly well-behaved small children, waiting for their table; a couple from L.A. in ripped denim and vegan leather, possibly too young for the bottle service they are ordering.Soundtrack: Classical guitar, high heels clicking on tiled floor, and the soft laughter of rich people.Outside Sushi Nakazawa in the West Village. A flight of bluefin tuna from the Atlantic Ocean gets progressively fattier. For a taste of the restaurant's most famous pieces of sushi, you'll have to make a reservation at the sushi bar.