If you’ve had a chance to look at our menu, you might be wondering what’s the difference between Sashimi and Nigiri. It’s a good question to ask, especially if you’re mostly used to handrolls. So let’s use this time to point out the differences and then you can make the most of your lunch or dinner at Temaki San Diego Sushi.

What is Sashimi?

Sashimi is a Japanese dish of thinly-sliced raw food, usually fish and seafood, but also sometimes other meats.

Sashimi is often confused with sushi, although the two are different things. Sushi is made with seasoned, vinegared rice, either shaped into mounds and topped with items such as raw or cooked seafood, or rolled in sheets of seaweed called nori around fillings of raw or cooked seafood, vegetables and other items. So the key is that sushi is always made with rice, whereas sashimi is always just the raw item by itself.

What Is Nigiri

Nigiri sushi is that familiar style of sushi made up of an oval-shaped mound of rice with a slice of (usually) raw fish on top. The word nigiri comes from the Japanese nigirizushi, which translates as “hand-pressed sushi.”

Thus nigiri is a type of sushi where the rice is molded by hand and the fish or other topping pressed by hand atop the rice. And it’s the stickiness of the rice, combined with the moisture from the topping, that helps to adhere the strip of raw fish to the mound of rice underneath.

Occasionally the chef will place a small amount of wasabi between the rice and the fish, and some type of garnish, such as minced scallions or ginger, atop the fish, is also common.

What options does Temaki offer?

At temaki, we boast a large selection of different fish for both our sashimi and nigiri. These options include: salmon, yellowtail, striped sea bass albacore, eel, shrimp, yellowfin tuna, bluefin tuna toro, uni, and specialty (ask your server).

There are so many great choices to pick from, that you’re going to need to come back and try them all!

About Us

Literally translating to “hand roll,” Temaki Bar celebrates the tradition that all perfect hand rolls should be eaten within seconds of the chef passing them across the counter — while the rice is still warm and the fish, fresh and chilled.

In keeping with tradition, Temaki Bar’s hand rolls are prepared counter-side and made-to-order, highlighting the freshest seafood featuring blue crab, yellowtail, salmon, and more.

Temaki will celebrate traditional sushi-making with Chef Jojo Ruiz, local veteran chef and San Diego native at the helm. Ruiz began his career as a sushi chef and is heading back to those roots, with the added bonus of his seafood sourcing and sustainability practices that earned him recognition with the James Beard Foundation as a Smart Catch Leader.