...and Wishing All a Happy New Year!

As 2019 draws to a close, we are grateful and humbled by your continued support of our restaurants. We'd also like to share with you some highlights from this past year, plus some exciting plans we have in store for 2020!

The Sushi Nozawa Team

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Air Jordan Podcast with Sushi Nozawa Co-Founder

Jerry Greenberg, one of Sushi Nozawa's founders, was interviewed earlier this year for an episode of Air Jordan: A Food Podcast by Jordan Okun. It’s an entertaining and interesting look into the evolution of SUGARFISH, KazuNori, and Nozawa Bar. Jerry shares little-known facts not only about the restaurants and the food they serve but also about how he and Chef Nozawa became friends and the unlikely path that led him to the food business. Jerry and Jordan also discuss the special ingredients used in dishes at Sushi Nozawa Group’s sister restaurants UOVO and HiHo Cheeseburger.

Click here to listen.

Changes to DTJE for the New Year

Our popular anniversary Trust Me “Don’t Think. Just Eat.” has a new selection of sashimi, nigiri, and hand rolls for 2020 — a delectable culinary adventure in taste and texture that features both lean and fatty fish.

National Hand Roll Day

The celebration for the first-ever National Hand Roll Day was held this past summer at KazuNori in Santa Monica. The event took place on July 6, the same day as Chef Kazunori Nozawa's 74th birthday. We are already making plans to celebrating the 2nd National Hand Roll Day in 2020! Details to follow in the coming months.

Going to the end of the earth for our guests

We may not exactly travel to the ends of the Earth, but each year, our team does travel the world to find the best sources for the best fish to serve to our guests. We are dedicated to Chef Nozawa's philosophy that, for our guests, we should never settle for what is, but instead work on what can be.

In 2019, one of our team trips took us on a 9-day journey to the northern island of Japan (Hokkaido) and the north to the central part of Japan’s main island (Honshu). We visited Sapporo, Wakkanai, Niigata, Kanazawa, Toyama, Sendai and ultimately Tokyo.  We met fishermen and visited fish markets, government officials, and the leading exporters of fish in each city. We sampled the fish every morning. Some of the highlights were the scallops in Hokkaido - the source of the scallops we serve, aji, mebaru, hirame, sanma and koebi.

The goal of our trip was to identify the fish that could meet our standards and to potentially develop new supplier relationships. While some of the fish we tasted met our standards but most of the suppliers we met with who had high-quality fish do not currently ship any fish to the United States, so once we identified possible suppliers and exporters, we began to discuss the possibility of bringing those items to us in LA. We are now receiving samples and hope that some of these items will make their way onto our menu for our guests to enjoy.

In 2020, our team with travel to back to Japan to visit the southern part of Honshu next year, and we’ll also make trips to Boston and the coast of Baja California in Mexico. We believe that these trips to the far - and not so far - ends of the Earth are vital to ensuring that we consistently serve the very best quality fish at our restaurants.

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Early in December, we launched an updated version of our website that's not only more mobile-friendly but also features some informative new videos about our food and our approach to your dining experience. Additionally, we added a new blog-post section where we will periodically post news and information about our family of restaurants as well as stories that might be of interest to our guests. We'd love to hear what you think of the new site! —