Pharrell loved this hand roll spot so much that he became a partner

The first time Pharrell Williams visited Nami Nori’s flagship location on Carmine Street in New York’s West Village, he was in handroll heaven.

“My girlfriend told me it was everything I loved all at once, and she was absolutely right,” the multi-hyphenate recalls of the start of a steamy wasabi love affair. “I was initially impressed by the precision and innovation of the food, but also by the incredible energy of the space, which starts with the positivity and warmth of the founders.”

With love at first bite, the Grammy Award winner grabbed his chopsticks and soon became a partner and investor in the viral five-year-old Temaki restaurant, along with founders Taka Sakaeda, Jihan Lee and Lisa Limb, who were there at the helm of it, what has been called the “handroll revolution.”

Nami Nori’s new location in Miami

Sebastian Lucrecio

“For us, it’s really about creativity,” Lee says when asked what it is about Nami Nori that turned a nuanced tastemaker like Pharrell into a passionate disciple. “We really take the opportunity to create very special moments in terms of design, menu and service. One of the pillars of our organization is omotenashi, a cultural element from Japan that truly elevates hospitality to the level of an art form.”

It’s an apt analogy. This week, just in time for Art Basel, Nami Nori is bringing the aforementioned Omotanashi to South Florida with a new location in Miami’s Design District — a move driven in part by Skateboard P himself.

Limb said opening the company’s first restaurant outside of the New York metropolitan area was the realization of a years-long goal. “After looking around Miami, we decided that the Design District was really the best fit for a new location,” she says. A proof of their trust? The team has also opened a new temaki concept called Matsuyoi upstairs, which features a 10-seat bar.