You’ve eaten pop-up ice cream and you shop at pop-up schmatta shops. But are you ready for pop-up sushi rolls?
I was curious, if not altogether ready, when I read 1,001 viral posts about Suka Sushi, located at 63 Lexington Avenue near East 25th Street.
The tiny storefront with no seats is meant to be fun, and who among us couldn’t do with some fun after sleep-wrecking global crises and the worst winter since the woolly-mammoth age?
Suka sells only one product: sushi rolls inside a thick cardboard tube that you push up to eat, like ice cream. There are eight types, each $16.95, as well as Japanese sparkling water for $2.99.
The bubbly comes in handy to cleanse the fishy goop that will inevitably spill onto your clothes. Or dry-cleaning is in order if, like me, you dribble and drop the various components all over the place as you try to assemble your meal.
It’s sooooooo easy — not. You first snap a thin plastic tube off from a thicker opaque tube. The skinny one contains soy sauce. You pry, or bite, the lid off it. Good luck doing that without spilling half the contents.
Next, you snap the plastic top off the thick tube and douse the soy sauce onto the rolls inside it. Pour too much, and the soy drenches the pieces at the top in an over-salty blur. Pour not enough, and the lower pieces get none at all.
Here come the X-rated optics: Insert the skinny tube into the thick tube through a hole in the bottom. Push the thin tube up through the thick one and voila! Ten pre-cut segments of a sushi roll rise into the air.
No chopsticks or forks! You attack the roll using only your fingers and mouth.
Suka Sushi’s offerings won’t be mistaken for Nobu, but they’re also not like the generic sushi from a Duane Reade freezer case.
A spicy tuna option and a Philadelphia roll with salmon nicely balanced crunchy and creamy elements. My favorite combined shrimp with mango, cream cheese, cucumber and mosago — a sparkling interplay of flavors and textures.
The elements emerged credibly distinct and fresh-tasting from their time inside the tube, of which co-owner Ben Rozenshteyn said, “We pump out 400-500 rolls a day.”
Rozenshteyn, a former class-action litigator, founded the place with “three friends with screws loose,” he chuckled.
Although Suka’s web site claims the rolls are designed “to be eaten easily on the go,” this isn’t like eating a hot dog or a pizza slice while dashing from the subway to the office. It’s up to your manual dexterity, and luck, to enjoy the damn things without drawing stares over the mess.
I lost parts of shrimp, tuna, avocado and cucumber to the pavement — and I was standing still! If you want to eat while you navigate the asphalt jungle of pedestrians, buses and wrong-way cyclists, bring a sense of humor and a mop.
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