Sushirrito, creators of the world’s first sushi burrito restaurant concept, is finally coming to the East Coast and opening in Manhattan’s Flatiron District on July 20th, 2016. It will be located at 12 West 23rd Street, directly across from Eataly by Madison Square Park. This will be the first Sushirrito location outside of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Famous for its unique flavors and cult-like following, Sushirrito has inspired other sushi burrito concepts to launch recently, but New Yorkers can rejoice as they will soon be able to enjoy the original, culinary-driven sushi burrito concept.
“We’ve always been interested in bringing Sushirrito to New York because of the city’s similar demographics and palates to San Francisco,” says Founder Peter Yen. “Ever since we opened, we’ve had tremendous demand from New Yorkers to bring our food there. We are delighted to now also call New York City our home.”
Sushirrito came to life as Yen was feeling constrained by pricey, time-consuming sit-down sushi restaurants and pre-made options that lacked quality and originality. He was determined to find a better way to serve sushi and saw the opportunity to start a fast casual sushi concept with made-to-order, handheld, sushi burritos using fine dining ingredients and unique Asian/Latin flavors. Yen created the Sushirrito brand name and filed for a trademark registration in 2008. Yen later collaborated with Ty Mahler, the former Executive Chef of Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion in San Francisco and opened the first Sushirrito restaurant in January 2011.
The current menu includes eight individually-crafted sushi burritos such as the Geisha’s Kiss (hand-line caught yellowfin tuna, tamago, piquillo peppers, lotus chips, namasu cucumber, green leaf lettuce, ginger guac, yuzu tobiko, and sesame white soya) and the Sumo Crunch (shrimp tempura, surimi crab, shaved cabbage, cucumber, ginger guac, sriracha aioli, and their signature red tempura flakes). Sushirrito also offers sushi burritos with non-fish items such as sake-asada beef, crispy chicken katsu with curry mole sauce, and pork belly ume-adobo style.
Yen and Mahler rarely boast about the quality or freshness of Sushirrito ingredients, but instead would rather just let the food speak for itself. Sushirrito maintains freshness by sourcing and cutting fresh tuna daily, not thawing out frozen blocks of tuna. Their tuna is also never carbon monoxide-treated, so the deep red color of their tuna is natural and untainted. On the other hand, carbon monoxide-treated tuna, often found in many quick serve sushi restaurants in the US, creates an artificial pink color that masks lower quality or freshness. Sushirrito purchases fish daily from one of the best purveyors that many of the high-end sushi restaurants in Manhattan use.
Richard H. Lewis Architect, who has successfully completed many restaurants in NYC including Balthazar, Pastis, Tavern on the Green and the new Urban Space Market, is the designer for the new Sushirrito NYC store.
