Why We Fly Our Fish In From Japan

When people ask why our fish costs a little more, or why a few pieces at the nigiri counter are market price only, I tell them the truth: a lot of what you eat at Nagisa didn’t come from San Diego waters at all. It came from Japan, often within a day or two, packed in ice and flown across the Pacific so it lands on your plate right when it’s at its best. I know that sounds like a small operational detail. For our family, it’s actually the whole point of what we do.

Why Distance Doesn’t Scare Us

Growing up around this restaurant, I learned early that “fresh” and “local” aren’t always the same thing. San Diego has wonderful seafood, and we use plenty of it on our menu. But there are certain ingredients that simply don’t exist here the way they do in Japan. Our Hokkaido uni is a good example. That sea urchin is imported directly from Hokkaido, and its rich, creamy sweetness isn’t something you can recreate with a substitute, so we don’t try. We just bring in the real thing.

The same thinking goes into our bluefin toro. Getting genuine otoro and chutoro, with that soft, almost buttery texture, means working with importers who understand cold-chain logistics as well as they understand fish. It isn’t glamorous. It’s early morning phone calls, customs paperwork, and years of trust built with the same suppliers in Japan. The same is true for our A5 Japanese wagyu, which arrives with the kind of marbling you simply don’t find in domestic beef, and for the sake we pour, most of it imported directly from small breweries in Japan rather than bottled locally.

Omotenashi Starts Long Before You Sit Down

In Japanese, there’s a word we think about constantly: omotenashi. It’s usually translated as hospitality, but it runs deeper than that. It means anticipating what a guest needs before they even ask. For us, omotenashi starts long before you take a seat at the sushi counter. It starts with deciding which fish is worth the trouble of flying in, which sake deserves a spot on our list, and which dishes actually taste like what we grew up eating in Japan.

We could source everything locally and call it authentic. Plenty of good restaurants do exactly that, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But if we’re going to offer what we consider a genuinely authentic Japanese lunch in San Diego, we feel like we owe our guests the real ingredients, not just the idea of them.

What It Looks Like on Your Plate

Order our Chirashi Bowl and you’ll see a generous assortment of sashimi arranged over rice we season by hand every morning. Try the Sushi Set Premium and you’ll find seared toro, black cod, and uni next to more familiar pieces. Even our nigiri counter tells the story: akami, chutoro, otoro, hamachi, hirame, tai. Each one is there because someone on our team decided it was worth importing properly rather than settling for whatever was easiest to get. Even a dish like our Nagisa Box Sushi, with bluefin tuna, avocado, and shiso, only works because the tuna underneath is something we’re proud to stand behind.

This is also why we’ve loved bringing back weekend lunch. We now serve lunch Friday through Sunday, 11:30 AM to 2:00 PM, walk-ins always welcome. It’s been genuinely nice watching neighbors from Point Loma and Ocean Beach wander in on a Saturday afternoon, order a sushi set, and take their time with it in a way a weekday lunch break doesn’t always allow. If you’d rather plan ahead, you can reserve a table through OpenTable.

If you’ve ever wondered why a piece of nigiri here tastes a little different than what you might find elsewhere, this is a big part of the answer. We fly our fish in from Japan because we believe you can taste it, and because it’s the closest we know how to get to sharing what our family grew up eating.

Come taste the difference for yourself. We’re at 3960 W Point Loma Blvd, or you can reserve your table through OpenTable. We’d love to have you at the counter.