World-famous Sushi Nakazawa opens Hi. Dozo, its first sushi delivery service

Before one of the country’s most famous sushi omakase restaurants opens in Los Angeles, diners can get a taste of what’s to come with a new, affordable delivery service.

Sushi Nakazawa chef Daisuke Nakazawa, a former apprentice of famed sushi chef Jiro Ono, always planned to open something more casual than his eponymous, Michelin-starred 20-course omakase restaurant. Before its opening in late May, Hi. Dozo — which translates to “Hello, here you go” — was about two years in the making and offers a taste of what Los Angeles can expect when it gets its own Sushi Nakazawa in Beverly Grove later this year.

Sushi Nakazawa opened its first location in New York City in 2013 and expanded to Washington, D.C. five years later. Both locations currently hold one Michelin star, and the global guide calls the omakase “a truly unforgettable sushi adventure” with “consistently excellent results.” When the LA location’s opening stalled, Sushi Nakazawa’s eponymous chef and owner and founder Alessandro Borgognone decided to open Hi. Dozo first. The delivery service serves some of the restaurant’s ingredients, but in a more casual format and at a much lower price.

At the counter at Sushi Nakazawa, the chef wants guests to eat each course immediately. As for the delivery, it was a completely new experience for Nakazawa. While many of the ingredients remain the same, the Hi. Dozo product, he said, is “totally different sushi.”

The menu is a mix of signature dishes from Sushi Nakazawa’s omakase, such as the scallop, and more generally popular sushi delivery dishes like tuna in various forms. Four box sets offer a mix of nigiri, maki and sashimi, from the $34 Delights box to the Deep Dive box, which doubles the amount of nigiri and costs $54. A fifth set, the DIY, includes sashimi, rice and ikura with nori sheets for build-your-own temaki for $29. A compact menu of nigiri, sashimi, maki and sides like edamame a la carte rounds out the offerings, starting at $6 for nigiri.

Nakazawa and Borgognone prefer to source their seafood as locally as possible, but import several ingredients — like tuna and ikura — from Japan, New Zealand and elsewhere. Many components of the Hi. Dozo box, from the tamanishiki rice to the ikura, are the same ingredients served in the full-service restaurants’ omakase. In New York, the omakase experience costs between $160 and $190.

“Not everyone can eat at Sushi Nakazawa, especially at that price level. That’s why we wanted to offer a very precise product at a reasonable price, with the same skill and quality,” said Borgognone. “We thought Hi. Dozo would be a perfect fit for us.”

Hi. Dozo currently serves North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Burbank, Sherman Oaks, and the Hollywood Hills. If it’s well received, the team hopes to expand the delivery radius to other Los Angeles neighborhoods—and possibly even open a brick-and-mortar store. Hi. Dozo can currently be ordered through DoorDash Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 9 p.m.

Nakazawa and Borgognone studied the market with great care. Their testing was almost methodical: To perfect rice that would survive the delivery process, to avoid it becoming mushy or squishy, ​​or crumbling under the pressure of fingers or chopsticks, precision was required. At Sushi Nakazawa, the chef says he cooks it “hard” so diners can feel every grain, but for takeout, he cooks the rice with a little more moisture so it doesn’t dry out or become too soft or wet on the way. “With rice vinegar, sometimes we add 20% more, 5% more,” Nakazawa said. “We tested everything.”

The fish pieces are a little larger in the Hi. Dozo boxes as they contain fewer pieces than the Omakase boxes, and the team hoped to add value. Even the packaging and branding took months to complete.

“At the end of the day, it’s all a science,” Borgognone said. “It has to be the best product we can bring to market, from the packaging to the piece of tuna we buy from Japan to the ikura we serve. … Even if it’s not Sushi Nakazawa, you know it’s Sushi Nakazawa.”

Due to permitting and construction delays, the opening of the entire restaurant had to be postponed, but Nakazawa and Borgognone plan to open Sushi Nakazawa in Beverly Grove by the end of the year.

Borgognone was responsible for the design of the entire restaurant and believes the Los Angeles location is his most beautiful yet. There will be a bar with 18 seats, as well as about 10 dining tables for another 40 guests. There is also an open kitchen – the first ever full Sushi Nakazawa kitchen – that will produce new, popular dishes.

“Our biggest concern is to make sure that the product we’re putting out is really eye-catching and an experience, because what’s the point of having yet another Japanese restaurant?” Borgognone said. “You have a lot of great restaurants, but the competition is enormous – and LA is LA, and that’s why we chose LA.”

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.