Itsuki Sushi opens in East Meadow
An assortment of sushi rolls and nigiri at Itsuki Sushi, a new restaurant in East Meadow Credit: Spencer Vogel
Half the brother-sister team behind Itsuki Sushi in East Meadow is known as Anya Chen. As for her brother, “we call him Chen,” Anya said, because there's no English words for his name. So he's just Chen.
Chen, a sushi chef, worked his craft at restaurants in Queens and around Long Island over the past several years. Usually, he took his sister too.
“I followed him a lot,” laughed Anya, who has often found front-of-house work at her brother’s restaurants. “Eventually we said, it’s time we owned our own business.”
Itsuki opened in November in the space formerly known as La Piazzetta Cafe II, which closed during the pandemic.
“They left the first dollar bill they ever got on the wall,” Anya said. The space includes a bar area and six-table main dining room, a smaller back dining room and an adjacent enclosed patio that ought to get good use once the weather warms, assuming that the public warms to Itsuki’s sushi.
Which it should. Very-good-for-the-price offerings include plates of nigiri with salmon ($3.50 for two pieces), tuna ($3.50) and yellowtail ($4). Otherwise, random picks from Itsuki’s extensive menu yielded two solid roll choices: a rainbow (salmon, tuna, yellowtail, crab stick and avocado, $13) and a volcano (spicy tuna and flying fish roe, $12). And one delicious find called Itsuki.
The Itsuki roll (also known as eight bright yellow pieces of sushi heaven drizzled with mango and eel sauce) is composed of fried banana bits interspersed with bits of shrimp tempura and a few specks of spicy lobster. It’s sweet, salty, spicy, $17, irresistible, and called Itsuki.
Just Itsuki.
Itsuki Sushi, 2485 Jerusalem Rd., East Meadow, 516-208-8000, itsukisushi.com. Opening hours are Monday through Thursday 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and 4-10 p.m., Friday 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and 4-11 p.m., Saturday 12:30 -11 p.m. and Sunday 2-10 p.m.
Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.
