ROL Hand Roll Bar

It’s possible for sushi hand rolls to look beautiful or at least interesting, but as they’re generally served at ROL – the Kei Concepts analog to LA’s famous KazuNori hand roll bar – the presentation is deliberately even more minimalist. Just like KazuNori’s founding chef Kazunori Nozawa, ROL eschews the hand roll’s widely popular conical shape in favor of more traditionally Japanese nori tubes, which would unravel if not (barely) held together by the rice and fish inside. Now with three locations across Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, and Irvine, ROL’s menu focuses largely but not exclusively on these hand rolls: There’s also a nice selection of raw fish tartares, inari pockets, and donburi bowls as savory options, with several desserts to wrap up the meal.

ROL’s set menus, priced from $26 to $37, deliver five, six, or seven hand rolls filled with atypically tasty and crunchy spicy tuna, ethereal eel, decidedly real crab, toro tuna, albacore, salmon, and sweet scallops. You’re told to eat each roll within 10-15 seconds of delivery, as that preserves the balance between crispy nori paper, warm rice, and typically cool fish. In the meals we’ve had at ROL, nothing was quite as sublime as the best sushi we’ve tried from Nozawa, but the rolls occasionally come close. Inari pockets – especially stuffed with blue crab – offer a really nice savory/sweet balance, and the tartares benefit from added salty and sour seasoning.

Some items are decidedly better than others. A “Premium” open-faced handroll, Toro & Truffle, looked and tasted worthy of its higher price thanks to caviar-like truffle pearls. Even non-premium items such as spicy tuna rolls use actually spicy, high-quality tuna, and shrimp tempura rolls are made with freshly cooked shrimp. By contrast, small bowls of yuzu kosho dipping sauce, recommended on the menu, cost $2 each and really aren’t necessary for any of the items. We were actively disappointed by boring Furikake Fries, a lightly flavored Matcha Sundae, and most recently, an underdeveloped Cookies and Cream Panna Cotta dessert – essentially just a tiny jar of pudding with a crushed Oreo, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream on top. Thankfully, the Hojicha Purin – a similarly small cup of tea-flavored flan, chocolate pearls, and caramel – can end your meal on a high note.