Late last year, a sushi bar with a new concept opened in the Flatiron District in New York City.
Suka Sushi would serve eel and cream cheese, salmon and avocado and crab and cucumber rolled with sticky rice and thin sheets of nori. Only it’d be served the Suka Way, sliced and dropped into a cylindrical tube for customers to eat on the go like a Flintstones Push-Up pop, using a slender tube of sauce as the popsicle stick.
The functional innovation caught fire in an instant. Social media food influencer types flocked to Suka Sushi and within months, eateries across the country — the globe even, with a location in London selling their own Sushi Pops — made the savory push-pops a viral sensation.
Last month, the trend arrived in Southeast Michigan, landing at Godaiko, a Japanese restaurant in Ann Arbor.
At Godaiko, the pops go beyond the norm. Yes, there’s spicy tuna roll and a California roll, but there’s also Fire Shrimp coated in bright red masago and filled with a spicy mayo sauce, and a Caesar Salad roll filled with lettuce and crispy breadcrumbs, rolled in parmesan and served with a side of Caesar dressing that will be used as the stick.
More recently, the sushi pops have made their way to Nami Sushi in Dearborn.
There are just four varieties of sushi pops at Nami: The Cali Pop, Spicy T. Pop, Truffle Salmon Pop and Mt. Fuji Pop.
The Cali Pop and Spicy T. are among the more traditional offerings. The first, a traditional California roll, is filled with imitation crab meat, fresh cucumber and avocado and coated in sesame seeds. The other rolls spicy tuna in rice flecked with herbaceous chopped chives.
The Truffle Salmon Pop builds on umami flavor, filling the roll with pungent garlic-infused salmon and crunchy cucumbers. Flecks of crispy fried onions stick to the rice exterior for more texture, and a truffle garlic aioli dressing is creamy with a kick that prickles your tongue with a mild heat.
Sesame shrimp fills the Mt. Fuji, but it’s the tempura-fried furikaki that seasons the rice that makes this roll.
Nami Sushi is nimble when it comes jumping on viral food trends. A stall at the Dearborn food hall and food truck park The Canteen, the eatery has built a menu around whimsical offerings, like catnip for content creators.
Nami’s sushi pops join a list of quirky menu items, such as Japanese fried cream sandwiches, also known as age sandos. Slices of milk bread, or shokupan, are deep-fried until golden and crispy like buttered toast, and spread with a mound of sweet or savory filling. Here, fried shokupan is filled with Chantilly cream and topped with fresh strawberries, or a sweet, fluffy mango pudding topped with puffed rice for a take on a mango sticky rice dessert.
There are sushi tacos that fill crunchy tempura-fried nori shells with thin slices of shredded cucumbers, guacamole and raw or cooked seafood, and sushi burritos that stuff the proteins and ingredients of your choice into a swaddle of sushi rice wrapped in nori.
The presentation for the sushi pops is fun, albeit imprecise. The dressing turned push-up device is not fixed to the cylinder and can be clumsy as you take each bite, and though it all seems so practical, you’ll inevitably find fried onions or tiny masago pearls everywhere but in your mouth or the tube.
Ultimately, the sushi is tasty, but if you’re expecting anything extraordinary beyond a good sushi roll — measure those expectations.
Contact Detroit Free Press Dining and Restaurant Critic Lyndsay C. Green at: LCGreen@freepress.com. Follow @LadyLuff on Instagram and Twitter. Subscribe to the Eat Drink Freep newsletter for extras and insider scoops on Detroit-area dining.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Sushi push pops have made their way to metro Detroit
Reporting by Lyndsay C. Green, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
