WILMINGTON — By fall 2024, a popular sushi restaurant located in the southern part of the county will have a sister eatery to serve diners in the northern region of New Hanover.
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Nori Asian Fusion and Sushi Bar will open a second location near Marsh Oaks in Porters Neck at 7964 Market St. The commercial space is to include a dentist’s office and a Chipotle Mexican restaurant, according to Jing Chen.
Chen and her husband Yun Zhao — who also co-own Nikki’s Steak House & Sushi Bar at 1055 Military Cutoff Road — are building Nori number two from the ground up. Taking up two spaces for the 3,600-square-foot eatery, the goal is to break ground by March.
“We hope to be open by next September,” Chen said. “If you would have told me two years ago I would open another Nori, I would have been like, ‘no’ — no joke.”
Chen and Zhao launched the restaurant in 2018, a year-and-a-half before the pandemic hit. But when Covid-19 shutdowns started in spring 2020, the restaurant industry suffered immediately, with eateries having to shift to a takeout-only model.
It was scary at first, Chen admitted — not knowing what to expect. She even signed up at Cape Fear Community College to switch careers as a nail technician in case things didn’t work out. But Nori kept busy.
“I’m very, very fortunate to have a lot of customers that continued to make sure we stayed in business,” she said.
Once lockdown orders lifted and restaurants could reopen, operations remained strained. Nori was short-staffed, like almost all restaurants at that time. Chen acted as bartender, server, training manager, and owner; she and her husband were working long hours, for weeks on end, while trying to raise two young children.
Food prices soared and inventory options shrunk, not to mention some customers were less patient than others as restaurants were running full-force again but with less manpower and truncated menus. It added to a perfect storm of tension.
“There were definitely weeks when at least one person on staff cried,” Chen recalled. “I’m not really a cryer but I broke down when my regulars spoke kind words or were understanding and encouraging. It meant so much and also reminded me there are more kind people in the world than not.”
Chen said a love for serving customers she now reveres as friends led her to Marsh Oaks. Pre-pandemic, expanding Nori was part of the plan, something she began reconsidering in the last year as business stabilized again. A customer who is a real estate agent introduced her to the development.
The biggest draw for Chen was the 11-mile difference: “It’s far enough away from our current restaurant to bring in new customers.”
Nori’s menu in Marsh Oaks will be the same as Barclay Pointe, offering traditional and adventurous sushi items — such as uni (sea urchin), live scallops and toro (blue fin fatty tuna) — plus specialty rolls. Chen’s chefs work with fresh seafood only, to such a degree that when uni comes in, they have a list of customers they call to inform, as it runs out quickly.
As well, there are varied dishes from across regions of Asia served from Nori’s kitchen. Diners will find Hakkanese sweet and sour chicken or Malaysian red curry, spicy Thai basil chicken, Japanese hibachi and teriyaki or poke bowls, fried rice and noodles. It’s basically a combination of all of Chen’s favorite meals, she said.
Designing the second restaurant is still in its infancy, but Chen said she’s learned how to run more efficient systems and flow from the flagship eatery. For instance, the sushi bar will be bigger in Porters Neck.
“The menu that we have, there’s a lot of art to it — our sushi chefs are very particular,” she said. “We built the Barclay restaurant to fit three sushi chefs, but we have grown to five. So we are going to have more room at the new restaurant.”
The kitchen — likely to take up half the space — will have more storage as well. Chen expects seating to at least match Barclay’s footprint, roughly 80 indoors, and 30 people will be hired to operate the second location.
“We are now just figuring out how the layout should be,” she said, “but we are confident we’re going to do well there.”
The restaurant will be open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
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