Ian McNulty: Metairie sushi hot spot Yakuza House expands with room to feast, snack, drink

From its first location, almost any move by Yakuza House would have been an expansion. The Japanese restaurant, best known for its hand rolls, opened in Metairie with a six-seat sushi bar and the kind of interior square footage usually associated with sport utility vehicles.

This week, Yakuza House opened the doors at a new location that is indeed exponentially larger but is also designed to keep the original focus.

This new Yakuza House is at 2740 Severn Ave., in the building that was formerly home to Voodoo BBQ. Like that first, shoe box-sized restaurant, this one is built around a hand roll bar that gives direct interaction over the counter.

“It’s all about the experience,” chef and founder Huy Pham said. “We like to interact with each customer, explain what we’re serving, what they’re getting, why it’s different.”

Hand to hand appeal

That interaction is the essence of hand rolls, a sushi bar standard that is having its moment nationally and in New Orleans.

They are composed of seafood, rice and scant little else, all swiftly bundled in nori, the seafood wrapper that holds it all together and adds its toasty, briny essence. Chefs roll them by hand, without sushi mats and then (ideally) hand them over the counter for you to eat right away out of hand. No chopsticks, no plate, just immediate satisfaction and then on to the next.

Pham quickly built a following for hand rolls and also his approach to “dressed nigiri," or sushi finished with a galaxy of customized sauces and garnishes.

He's bringing in a wide array of fish not commonly seen on local sushi bar menus, with a changing roster sourced from Tokyo's sprawling Toyosu fish market. There might be shima aji, a meaty, firm striped jack, or madai, a creamy-rich sea bream, finished with a dot of yuzu koshu, a blend of citrus tang and chile heat. Smoky trout roe pops over an umami-rich spoonful of uni, or sea urchin; live scallops get just a bit of fresh wasabi to contrast their natural tender sweetness. 

There’s more Pham wants to do, but the first location was so small he felt compelled to limit Yakuza House to a set repertoire.

“It was always someone’s first time there, so I wanted them to have what we were known for,” Pham said. “But now that we’re bigger, we can serve first-timers and also show our regulars something new and different when they come back.”

Pham says as the seasons progress, his specials will grow and change.

Bar snacks and omakase

The new Yakuza House has three distinct areas — the main dining room, an izakaya room and an omakase room, reserved for private events and chef-led dinners, complete with its own small sushi counter.

The main room has a three-sided dining bar, essentially a wrap-round sushi bar with an open view of the chefs’ work. It has 16 seats, and the rest of this dining room has just four booths lining one wall. It’s still a focused operation.

The izakaya room is the first area you see walking in, and this is the restaurant’s bar and lounge (another big step from the BYOB-only previous location). Befitting an izakaya (a Japanese-style tavern), the bar serves a menu of snacks, like karaage fried chicken, beef tataki and gyoza dumplings made with Wagyu beef. Order the fried rice cakes and you get puffy-crisp planks of sushi rice topped with chopped salmon or tuna, dribbled with garlic chili sauce. 

Pham’s goal is to build up a significant sake and whiskey selection here, and he has a space set aside for chilled displays of sake, like a wine cellar for sake.

Pham comes from a Vietnamese restaurant family. They once had a pho shop called Nam Do on the west bank and later opened the fusion restaurant Hip Stix in the Warehouse District (both have long since closed). But Pham decided to build his own career in sushi. He’s worked around the city and had a tenure in New York. Back home, he spent years at Daiwa, the Metairie sushi bar known for its own ever-changing array of fish and chef-led style.

Yakuza House opened in 2021. As its popularity quickly outstripped its reservations capacity many people encouraged Pham to expand. They’d often plead the case for a location in their own neighborhoods, especially around Uptown New Orleans.

Instead, the chef decided doubling down on Metairie. One reason is the support he got from the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission when he was trying to first open, and keep his plans moving through the pandemic.

“A lot of my customers are from Uptown, but Metairie has been good for us,” he said.

Yakuza House

2740 Severn Ave., Metairie, (504) 345-2031

Reservations via Resy.com

Tue.-Sat. 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 4:30-9:30 p.m. (Fri., Sat. til 10 p.m.)

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