Nori Bar Hawaii - Ward

Oh my my. What a gem! We came in for lunch and ordered roll-makase. Best decision ever! All the rolls were fresh and the chef carefully paired garnish and brushed seasoning over some of the rolls to enhance the flavors. The rolls/sushi are served along with delicious adagashi tofu as appetizer, awase miso soup as mid-course, and green tea icecream as dessert. The edamames are complimentary.We added uni rolls in addition. The chef added pretty good chunk of uni to the rolls and uni was sweet and full of flavors!There were about ~15 counter seats inside. It's small and intimate.Amazing experience! 1000% will be back!

Very cool place located in this new shopping center. You order online and hand rolls come out one by one. Overall pretty solid. Seaweed and rice were just rice, and fish was pretty fresh as well. My favorite was the crab with truffle, which had a nice creamy truffle flavor. Eel handroll had a rectangular strip of eel. It was pretty moist, but was lacking any searing. Portion size was decent, perhaps slightly on the lighter side. Service was nice and friendly. Roll pacing was decent speed. They also gave some free edamame for an appetizer. I recommend this place if you want a chill handroll place in the area.

Decided to come here for lunch. Reservations were made easily on open table. We were the first customers there and were directed to the back of the restaurant. We were given water, instructed to order through the QR code system and if we had any questions feel free to ask. We actually did have some questions but the waitress was no where to be found. We finally just made our selection and ordered, then the waitress comes out of the back kitchen.We decided to order the omakase, which was $60. Which we thought was a good price for omakase. It included 4 fish sushi, 1 picked cucumber, 1 mushroom hand-roll and green tea ice cream with mochi. I thought the sushi was just ok, nothing special IMO. The green tea ice cream didn't have the green tea taste and the mochi was more of a jelly type cube with kinako powder.I have mixed feelings about this place and not sure if I'd come back.

I made a reservation at this intriguing place after walking past it several times. I was on my way to see Becoming Led Zeppelin at Ward Theater. Nori Bar opens at 11am and I was seated at Table 7 (the 7th seat at the bar). There is a card with a QR code, and you order food using the app ... It knows you're at Table 7.Being my first time, I ordered a Sapporo Reserve beer ($6) from the "chef". A plate of gari and edamame was placed in front of me. I figured out the app and started ordering food. I ordered the Special Nigiri Flight ($38), but the chef presented me with the "regular" Nigiri Flight ($26). Five pieces of sushi were seared with a blowtorch, a sauce was brushed on, then presented on a stone platter with the chef explaining what each piece was (salmon, Hamachi, and three types of ahi). Each piece was delicious, though I wish they weren't seared (I should have read the description more closely ... It did state aburi.)I ordered three rolls: Blue Crab - Truffle Kanimiso ($9), Hamachi with shiso leaf (7.25), and A5 Miyazaki Wagyu ($15). The Blue crab came unrolled in a wooden tray. It was seared and the texture was creamy, very homogeneous in composition. It tasted fine but wasn't what I expected. The Hamachi was rolled, and it was fine. The A5 Wagyu also came unrolled, I suppose to allow you to view the meat. This one was terrific.I wanted more food, so I placed an order for the 5-piece sashimi set and I selected Hamachi ($16). I waited and waited and waited. I finally asked the chef, and he said sashimi comes from the kitchen, he just does the sushi. After an interminable wait, I got my dish and powered through it quickly. The slices were generous but too cold. At that point, I decided to not order any more food even though I was still hungry.While I was waiting for my sashimi, I checked my bill on the app and found I was charged for both the special sushi flight and the regular sushi flight. I asked a server, who told me she fixed it in the back, but the app never reflected the correction. Had I not been paying attention and just paid via the app, I would have been overcharged $38 (the price of the special sushi). I got the bill on paper and paid via a credit card. $82.98, plus at $17 tip resulted in a $100 lunch.Is it worth the cost? I'm not sure. I haven't been to a sushi bar in ages, so I don't know what the going rate for sushi and sashimi is any more. What I was served looked and tasted fine. I think my issues with the delivery of food and problems with my check colored my experience. I'll give Nori Bar a conditional recommendation, good, but pricy.

We got the rollmakase for lunch and also got their Hokkaido Ikura hand rolls and their Hamachi Carpaccio. All so delish and quick! You self order through the QR code and will get served right away. Excellent service and nice ambiance for a casual lunch or dinner.

This spot, located behind Whole Foods, offers a cozy ambiance and delicious food. Parking is convenient, as you can use either the Ward Theater parking or the Whole Foods lot. We opted for the omakase experience, and everything we tried was fantastic. Surprisingly, my favorite dish was the mushroom roll--perhaps unusual, but as a mushroom lover, I found it exceptional.The setup is a counter that seats about 20 people, and ordering is done conveniently through a QR code on your table, which also allows you to start a tab. They have a great selection of cocktails and other alcoholic beverages to pair with your meal.However, the service left room for improvement. While the girls were friendly, the person making the rolls wasn't very engaging or forthcoming about what he was serving--we had to ask for explanations. Additionally, water wasn't offered when we sat down, and we had to request it. A smile or a bit more warmth from the sushi chef would have enhanced the overall experience.Overall, the food and ambiance were excellent, but a little more attentive and friendly service would make this place truly outstanding.

Food was delicious definitely get the blue crab hand roll. The hamachi was delicious also. If you like sake then the sake flight is a must!!!!! (And the cups were super cute) . The reason I didn't give it 5 stars is only because you order on your phone so because it's sushi bar and you tend to order multiple times I felt like we were on our phones more than I would have liked .

We'd been wanting to try Nori Bar since noticing it tucked inside the quieter side streets of the new Kakaako, just down from Rinka, near Cino and Dean and Deluca. It's quite small with just over a dozen seats so I assume that reservations are surely a must, though thankfully easy to secure on Open Table. It's a modern spot, still shiny and new. A u-shaped counter runs the length of the room and wraps around 3 staff making the sushi and two others who double as reception staff + bartenders. (Excellent cocktails btw)On this evening, several of the patrons before me were apparently running late and I got a call from the staff to let me know that our seats might not be ready in time. I thought that was really proactive on their part and we just used the extra time to do some grocery shopping at Whole Foods, where we'd parked. I don't recall ever receiving a courtesy call like that before and when we arrived, the staff was still so apologetic. They even comped our cocktails. Very classy and a very good gesture.One of us ordered the "rollmakase" (priced well at $60 for 8 items) and the less adventurous of us ordered ala carte. Ala carte food gets ordered via the Tock app which is bit odd but very efficient. Food is well timed and the staff is careful not to overload you at any one time. Fish quality was good and fresh. Quite a few of the dishes come with a sauce, dots of embellishments like yuzu kosho, shiso, truffle mayo, or jalapeños. This is not sushi or sashimi for purists, though I assume that the same fish left unadorned would still be pretty good. Sad to admit that I'm the aforementioned non-fish lover so this place worked better for me than most other sushi places. I ate a lot of the more predictable offerings -- ahi tataki, crab with truffle mayo, ahi avocado. And to just out myself even further, I will admit that the "house avocado sauce" was the thing i liked the most in my food. So lame, I know! Who goes to a sushi place to eat avocado puree? I can see why the reviews might be polarizing. You're either a purist or you're not. Folks hate the inconvenient parking or just accept it as part of big city life. But the thoughtful service, cool vibes, and ability to order omakase OR ala carte made this spot a winner for us. You decide for yourself.

We've been wanting to check out this place for a while now, because of all the great reviews. We made reservations pretty last minute, but they were still available. The place is pretty small, so I would definitely make a reservation beforehand.We ordered our handrolls through the qr code and it took quite a bit for the chef to get to us. They also forgot to give us our edamame, ginger and wasabi, so we thought it was not free. They gave them to us only after we asked, since everyone else got theirs. The food though was really good. We ordered a bunch of their handrolls and it was super fresh and tasty! Service was a little slow, but the food was definitely worth it. My favorite had to be the king salmon handroll. I was surprised by how tasty and good it was! When we were about to finish, we wasn't sure if the miso soup was free or not, because everyone else got their miso soup and they said it was complementary. We thought it might have been included, but apparently they're not, so that might just be an understanding on our side?Overall, food was really good, but service could be better.

From Frolic, "Fresh seafood wrapped in a thin layer of warm rice and insanely crisp nori ...". Okay. What did I miss?If you like Paradise Poke and the way they layer flavors over fish until you taste the flavors and not the fish, then you will like Nori Bar. Otherwise, you'll leave each time, like me, wondering, "did I order the right stuff?"I had a nori handroll before. The rice was not warm. The nori was fine, but not "insanely crisp". I peered into the handroll and could see the fish to rice to nori was kind of out of proportion - I really would like to see what I'm eating. And no kizami wasabi?I tried their nigiri. Again, the rice wasn't optimal - it was getting cold and sticky. The fish on top looked like it had been precut but not handled as well as it should have. Without a consistent glaze of nikiri or kizami wasabi it looked dull and tasted somewhat like supermarket sushi.The sashimi is probably the best way to go. But then, you won't have any rice or nori.Everyone orders via QR code. Orders can be combined into one final check. This is a fine place if you're not knowledgable about sushi or particular about tastes being balanced. Something different for before or after a movie. Not a destination in and of itself.