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Bennett: Mexican sushi makes for unconventional, delicious fare

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The most imaginative sushi in Orange County right now can’t be found at high-end houses of omakase. It’s not being served at any of the Japanese fusion restaurants that dot the coast either. In fact, some of these sushi rolls have more steak and chicken and cream cheese in them than fresh fish. And to order anything, you’ll probably have to brush up on your Spanish.

That’s because the authentically inauthentic world of Mexican sushi has landed at two restaurants in Orange County, and with them, all the deep-fried, cheese-soaked, eel-sauce-topped, imitation-crab-stuffed-cut-roll goodness that comes with it.

Mexican sushi originated not too long ago in the northern state of Sinaloa, home of some of the country’s best seafood and the originator of ceviche as gringos know it. With a respect for ocean creatures already built into the cuisine, remixing the local catch into a Japanese bastard child just made sense and, soon, the concept of inside-out mestizo sushi rolls seeped out of fine dining and into both the nightclub and fast casual setting.

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By 2013, the style — with signature rolls such as the mar y tierra (stuffed with beef, shrimp and cream cheese) and unconventional presentations (no ginger or wasabi, always garishly drowned in a sweet and/or creamy sauce of some kind) — had found its way into southeast Los Angeles’ norteño enclaves, which teemed with sprawling restaurants like Culichitown and converted taquerias like Sushinaloa.

Last year, Emporio Sushi opened in El Modena, giving Orange County its first taste of Mexican sushi. Surrounded by flat screen TVs tuned to Spanish-language sports and news, and with a thumping soundtrack of banda and reggaeton, Emporio is probably the only Mexican restaurant where your meal begins not with chips and salsa but crispy wontons and a bowl of chipotle mayo for dipping.

Open the menu and you’ll find no alcohol (unfortunately), but instead a mind-boggling lineup of familiar spicy tuna and California rolls alongside 30-plus house creations that manage to make innovative new sushi rolls out of everything from bacon to bananas.

Most of Emporio’s custom cut rolls start with a simple base filling of avocado, cucumber and cream cheese — sort of like a salmon-less Philadelphia roll. From there, however, nothing is recognizable, even by Americanized sushi standards.

Imagine a spicy crab Philly roll with seared New York steak on top, or a bacon and cream cheese roll that’s topped with an entire katsu-style fried chicken breast before being covered in teriyaki sauce and spicy mayo.

Ever thought about having a mango con chile y limon in sushi form? Try the Mango Roll, which rests spoonfuls of spicy crab mix and thin mango slices on a shrimp Philly that’s subsequently doused with a sweet-tangy-spicy mangoneada-like goop.

And for those who have ever been sad that more sushi wasn’t deep fried whole like a chimichanga, there’s an entire section of rollos empanizados to sate you, including the blanketed-in-melted-cheese Chon Roll and the ubiquitous mar y tierra.

But Emporio’s best rolls by far are the ones that incorporate their aguachile (the restaurant also has a full lineup of ceviches and seafood plates, so it seems only appropriate that their magnum opus combines both worlds). Marinated with onions and chilies in a Worchester-heavy salsa negra, the pile of shrimp and scallop aguachile that triumphantly sits atop the kitchen-sink Caitime Roll is made even more spectacular by the spicy hibiscus sauce that surrounds it — a delicate and graceful ring of hot pink, seemingly dropped there by a watercolorist.

Earlier this year, another Mexican sushi contender opened near Emporio, on Tustin Street in Orange proper, a hint that the Sinaloan sushi trend has only just begun its infiltration on O.C.

Palapa’s Marisqueria & Sushi might be, as its name implies, a mariscos restaurant first, but that doesn’t mean that its simple, streamlined set of sushi rolls aren’t notable for its ingenuity.

Set up to function more like SanTana’s great Mexican seafood restaurants (see Mariscos Hector) than a traditional sushi bar, Palapa’s has the ceviches, aguachiles and extensive botanas to attract the working-class men in cowboy hats as much as groups of young second-generation Latinos, all of whom down big mugs of loaded micheladas while a roving live banda maneuvers their big brass instruments around the small dining room.

Unlike Emporio, most people at Palapa’s are not there for the sushi, and with only nine rolls to choose from, it’s best to dabble with one or two and also order a heap of ceviche tropical or a plate of melty tacos gobernadores for the table.

The house Palapas Roll is a good place to start. It’s a deep-fried protein feast with beef, chicken, shrimp and crab (plus cream cheese and pasila and guerito chilis) with four different kinds of sauces, from sweet ponzo to cooling aioli. The Aguachile Roll also is a safe bet, again loaded with marinated shrimp, it comes sitting in a house aguachile sauce.

Mexican sushi will never replace traditional sushi, nor is it even trying to compete with the high-end rigidity and professionalism found at O.C.’s best sushi restaurants. But after decades of eating the commonplace nigiri and cut rolls made from the same dozen or so ingredients, sushi estilo Sinaloa is a fascinating switch of the palate.

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SARAH BENNETT is a freelance journalist covering food, drink, music, culture and more. She is the former food editor at L.A. Weekly and a founding editor of Beer Paper L.A. Follow her on Twitter @thesarahbennett.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

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