THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER18, 2019 15
PHOTOGRAPH BY ZACHARY ZAVISLAK FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
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TABLESFORTWO
Nami Nori
33 Carmine St.
On the one hand, the West Village is
the kind of neighborhood where, on
a Wednesday night at six-thirty, you
might be quoted a ninety-minute wait
for a seat at a brand-new chicly ap-
pointed hand-roll bar called Nami
Nori. On the other hand, the West
Village is the kind of neighborhood
where you can kill time at a well-worn
thirty-year-old store called Unoppres-
sive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books.
It was during a visit to Unoppres-
sive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books,
one recent Wednesday, that I found
myself having my palm read by a psy-
chic who camps out in a nook there.
After guessing my husband’s initials,
she said that I would travel some-
where warm next year: “I see palm
trees.” When she told me that I could
ask her a question for free, I failed to
come up with one. When she told me
that I, too, could be clairvoyant, if I’d
only align my chakras with some of the
crystals she had for sale, I left. Back on
the sidewalk, I thought of a question:
When was dinner?
In sixty more minutes, said the
all-knowing hostess at Nami Nori. Next
stop: Luv Tea, a charming Taiwanese
shop around the corner. A mug of rose
goji would take ten minutes to brew,
the man at the counter warned. Perfect.
If you’re not in the mood for this
sort of adventure, you could arrive at
Nami Nori at five-thirty, when it opens,
or just before eleven, when it closes.
(There are also a limited number of
reservations available each night.)
It’s a restaurant that’s worth a certain
amount of inconvenience. The chefs
worked at Masa, the incredibly ex-
pensive sushi restaurant in the Time
Warner Center. Nami Nori isn’t cheap,
but it’s a much more accessible avenue
to seafood of the highest quality.
Once you’re seated, the experi-
ence becomes exceptionally efficient.
Servers send orders to the kitchen
via tablets, which means that plates
might start arriving before you’ve even
finished perusing the menu. Expedit-
ers communicate like air-traffic con-
trollers, directing items to particular
seats: “Sea bass one, spicy tuna three.”
A good general rule here is that the
less exciting a dish sounds the more
delicious it’s likely to be, and vice versa.
“Calamari, yuzu soy” turned out to be
one of the best things I’ve eaten in
months: pearly slices of sushi-grade
squid battered in an ethereally puffy,
chewy mixture of rice and tapioca
flour. Nori chips were almost like sa-
vory toffee, hard crunch melting into
salty stickiness, and the yogurt-chive
dip that came with them rivalled the
finest ranch.
The intriguing “plum sesame salt”
on the edamame, meanwhile, was
overshadowed by how overcooked
the pods were, and the furikake fries,
coin-shaped and crimped, were sur-
prisingly limp, though I liked the
ketchup, doctored with tonkatsu sauce
and Tabasco.
The hand rolls, or temaki, consist of
taut yet delicate sheets of nori cupped
around rice and fish like the letter “U.”
Fans of hot mayonnaise might enjoy
the “spicy crab dynamite” temaki, which
I was told is the best-seller and which
is one of two rolls listed as “crunchy,”
meaning it’s wrapped in nori that’s en-
crusted with little barnacles of crispy
rice. (The other is called “avocado
‘toast.’ ”) Fans of crab might be hap-
pier with the California temaki, which
features a cool clump of sweet meat
atop creamy avocado.
I preferred the mellow simplicity
of fatty toro and fresh scallion to the
frillier combination of sea bass, daikon,
perilla (Korean mint), and chojang (Ko-
rean hot sauce), and to lobster tempura
garnished with yuzu aioli and frisée.
But, just as palms vary, so do tastes.
One night, a woman at the bar passed
a half-eaten lobster-tempura temaki to
her boyfriend. “This is the best bite I’ve
ever had in my life,” she said. “Because
I love you, I’m gonna share it with you,
but if you eat it all you’re dead.” (Temaki
$5-$10.)
—Hannah Goldfield
