Nana San

If you enjoy the sushi bar experience, I highly recommend Nana San next time you’re in the Orange County area,.

DH and I are always on the lookout for reasonably priced, fresh, high quality sushi. We recently had dinner at Nana San and had a wonderful experience.

For the most part, a lot of the sushi joints DH and I end up visiting have a pretty humble interior. From the outside, Nana San appeared to be one of those places. But inside, the restaurant is shiny and sleek, which normally would have me worried about the prices, but Nana San manages to be one of the rare places that is super popular, shiny and sleek, and still serves reasonable priced high quality fish.

No reservations are taken. We arrived about 10 minutes after they opened, and the bar was completely full. The waitress told us there wouldn’t be any open seats for a good 40 minutes, when the first dinner group finished and offered to call us for the second seating. So we went off and did some shopping, then got a call about 40 minutes later to return. When we returned, they had our seat ready at the bar, and once again the restaurant was crowded with people waiting for a seat.

Even though the bar area is small, there are three sushi chefs working, which expedites the dinner experience.

Marinated Cucumber Salad

We started off with some complimentary marinated cucumber salad while we perused the daily special board menu.

Kampachi

The fish practically melted in my mouth. It was a great way to start the meal. Nana San makes their nigiri sushi with warm rice, which I always prefer because it adds a nice contrast to the cold raw fish and seems to make the fish flesh softer.

Red Snapper

Spanish Mackeral

Sea Scallop

This was ever so slightly seared, letting you experience both the raw and cooked flavors of scallop.

Conch

While this isn’t really sushi, I enjoyed the preparation. The conch is first cooked and then slices sashimi style. The broth was light, with just enough seasoning so as not to be to bland, and let the conch meat shine.

Abalone

Toro

Orange Clam

Halibut with Japaleno

European Sea Bass

This is the first time we’ve ever had European Sea Bass sushi and we really enjoyed it.

Negitoro Roll

The fatty tuna was melt-in-your-mouth worthy. Normally I don’t like eating rolls, but this was one of my favorites of the night.

Uni

Orange gelee

Our meal ended with this simple complimentary sweet which also acted as a good palate cleanser.

Usually there are a couple of fish that really stand out and some I don’t like as much. This was not the case for this dinner. We really liked everything and it’s hard to choose a few favorites. Our sushi was prepared by Chef Ken, who was quiet but friendly and very quick.  It was one of the fastest sushi bar experiences we’ve had.

We were very happy with our experience here. The atmosphere is cheerful, the staff is friendly and the sushi was good. Our bill came to about $80. According to yelp, Omakase dinners are about $50 per person. We definitely will be back soon.

Nana San
3601 Jamboree Rd
Ste 15B
Newport Beach, CA 92660