Kyle Itani has looked all over Japan for handrolls and hasn’t found them. “I would say the handroll is—especially in an open-face style—definitely an American innovation,” he said. The chef did find that during an omakase meal abroad a sushi chef might make a conical handroll. But it wasn’t an exact equivalent to the rolls he and his team make at Yonsei Handrolls, where all the ingredients are laid bare in front of the diner.
In the vegetarian yasai set ($20), a seaweed wrap fits neatly inside the curve of a wooden block. The eye is met with bright yellow slices of takuan sharing the same bed of rice with cucumber, shiitake, ginger and tamago. Itani likened the process of assembling a handroll to cooking at a garde manger station rather than at a traditional sushi bar.
“We’re essentially plating a carpaccio dish onto the bed of rice,” the chef said. “That gives us a lot of freedom to be really creative with the flavors and the presentations.” A mixed-vegetable tempura, shungiku kakiage ($13), was a companionable, crunchy and incredibly delicate starter.
With the May opening of Yonsei’s second location in Albany, Itani is now in charge of five restaurants. His East Bay culinary group began in 2012 when he and Jenny Schwarz, his former business partner, opened Hopscotch in Oakland. Itani and Schwarz met while working at Yoshi’s in San Francisco, which closed in 2014. When they decided to open a restaurant together, Itani recalled walking up and down the streets of Oakland, from Temescal to Lake Merritt, in search of available properties to rent.
Peppered with Japanese influences, Itani’s Hopscotch menu established his Bay Area reputation. His fried chicken became one of the star dishes, appearing on social media feeds and in its very own close-up on Check, Please! Bay Area. One Friday night, Itani decided to make ramen broth from the pork and chicken bones that the kitchen had butchered that week. The dish was such a big hit that late-night lines started to form. He opened Itani Ramen to shield his Hopscotch diners from all the rabid ramen fans.
Hopscotch didn’t make it out of the pandemic unscathed. Schwarz left the business and Itani closed their restaurant in 2023. But by then the chef had gone on to open Yonsei Handrolls in Oakland.
We may need to pause for a moment to tally up Itani’s scorecard: Hopscotch closes in 2023. Itani Ramen and Yonsei Handrolls keep on cooking. Then the longtime Kirala chef, Akira Komine, decides to retire. He reaches out to Itani to see if he wants to take over the space in Berkeley’s Epicurious Garden. Itani agrees and hires sushi chef Jeremias Jimenez—formerly at Mujiri, Ozumo and Yoshi’s. When Itani Sushi opened in September of 2024, the tally climbed up to three.
And, subsequently, up to four after Darband, another Epicurious Garden tenant, closed. The landlord there asked Itani if he wanted to move into a second space. Itani’s first response was, “Not really, I’ve got my hands full.” Then he reconsidered. When it comes to managing a business there are, he said, a few advantages in having two concepts nearby each other. Itani decided to revive Hopscotch’s fried, and other, chicken recipes as a grab-and-go model. Hopscotch Chicken fired up its fryers to customers at the end of August.
Like Alice Waters before him, Itani mentors his employees. Lowbar principals Matt Meyer and Daniel Paez worked for Itani as a sous chef and bartender/bar manager, respectively.
“I ended up really liking working with both of them,” Itani said. When they approached him and Schwarz to back them for their own concept, he didn’t hesitate. “They ran with it and it was great, and then Matt moved to Petaluma,” Itani said. When their lease ended, Meyer and Paez decided to move on. Itani said that Lowbar is still open, but run by new owners.
Yonsei Handrolls, 905 San Pablo Ave., Albany. Open daily for lunch from 11:30am to 3pm and for dinner from 5–9:30pm. yonseihandrolls.com
