Neighborhood Eats: MakiMaki serves innovative, high-quality sushi and hand rolls in New York City
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- This week's Neighborhood Eats takes you to a local food stop making accessible and fresh sushi at the highest quality possible.
MakiMaki is a fast-casual sushi bar specializing in cut-up sushi rolls and hand rolls in New York City.
"What we're trying to do is we're trying to provide value to New Yorkers in the form of good, affordable, quick sushi using top-notch ingredients," said Kevin Takarada, founder of MakiMaki.
Takarada says he founded MakiMaki in 2017 after noticing a problem with sushi in the city: it was either slow and expensive or pre-made and sitting cold in the refrigerator somewhere.
Before starting MakiMaki, Takarada worked in finance for ten years. Before that, he worked in engineering.
"Before finance, I was a mechanical engineer working in companies like Honda and Johnson & Johnson, where I learned a lot of manufacturing techniques. So, I utilized all those techniques and applied it to sushi," he said.
Takarada describes the workflow of his restaurant as an assembly line process, broken into several major steps.
The first step is for the employee to read the ticket, which is the order that comes in, and process the rice needed. The next worker in the line then reads the ticket, and their job is to put the ingredients in and roll it. The roll then gets passed down to the person that takes the order and cuts it and puts it into a box, and then afterwards, there is another person that packs up the rest of the ingredients.
Some of the most popular items on MakiMaki's menu is the spicy tuna and the salmon avocado rolls. MakiMaki also offers yellowtail scallion, shrimp tempera and a spicy scallop roll.
There are also hand rolls that come in a cone shape. Part of making the hand rolls is patented, according to Takarada.
"You're going to end up having crispy seaweed as opposed to a soggy one because the film separates the rice from the seaweed," Takarada said.
In order to eat the hand roll, you want to first peel the wrapper to the right, all the way around the perimeter and then continue to lift up. Then you want to pinch and pull from the bottom to release the remaining wrapper, leaving a crispy hand roll to enjoy.
For Takarada, one of the highlights of seeing MakiMaki's growth and success over the years has been the positive feedback from customers.
"When we first opened up our store in 2017, I remember when I was working on that line, very, very busy dealing with all the tickets, some customer just screamed out, 'Whoever made this concept, thank you very much. This is what New York really needed.' I think I shed a tear at that point because I knew that I was onto something special," Takarada said.
You can learn more about the restaurant on the MakiMaki website.
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