Rice, seaweed and fish: How a chef’s obsession created one of the hottest sushi spots in SLC

Rice, seaweed and fish. These three simple ingredients are the stars at Momomaru, a new sushi restaurant in Salt Lake City that focuses on hand rolls.

Called temaki in Japanese, hand rolls aren’t masked with eel sauce or spicy mayo. There’s nowhere for less-than-fresh fish to hide.

“That’s the difficult part of the hand roll, is it’s almost naked,” said Eric Park, Momomaru’s owner and chef. “Seaweed, rice and fish, there you go. ... But at the same time, that’s what makes it so special.”

Momomaru, at 636 S. 200 West, lets Park’s hand rolls speak for themselves. The nondescript white exterior with hardly any signage is a preview of the spare interior, which is furnished only with a sushi bar.

Every day since Momomaru opened in mid-January, diners have been reaping the benefits of Park’s obsessive commitment to his craft.

“You miss the rice, the hand roll is not going to taste the same,” he said. “You miss the fish, it’s not going to be the same. You miss the seaweed, it’s not going to be the same. ... Has to be perfect.”

From the suburbs to SLC

Park is from Korea, and came to Utah in 2002. For years, he worked in different sushi restaurants, becoming friends with local sushi chefs — a community that he said was small and tightly knit.

In 2009, Park opened his own restaurant, Blue Fish Sushi Bar, in South Jordan. In the suburbs, he said he was selling more teriyaki chicken, teriyaki salmon and deep-fried rolls than his traditional nigiri.

Once, he tried to put sea urchin, called uni, on the menu. “I’m not selling any,” Park said. “People think it’s the tongue of a cat.”

With his creativity going largely unappreciated, Park said it was “tough to navigate and negotiate with myself to keep the business going. But at the same time, I don’t want to sit there and just cook teriyaki chicken all the time.”

A few months before the COVID-19 pandemic, Park collaborated with a high school friend, chef David Chon, to open Nohm. They built the restaurant with the vision of something that’s “more Korean- and Japanese-forward, more traditional-forward,” Park said.

When Nohm the restaurant became Bar Nohm the izakaya, or a pub-style eatery, in 2022, Park sold his share.

But he wasn’t done with Salt Lake City. When asked why he wanted to open Momomaru, Park said his main reason was one word: “passion.”

Rice is ‘alive’

In the two years it took him to open Momomaru, Park was preparing, practicing making rice every day.

Working out of his South Jordan restaurant, Park would take meticulous notes about the day’s weather and humidity and how it affected the rice, what he didn’t like about a particular batch, and what he wanted to try the next day.

He said he had to throw away several bad batches of rice. Park would give good batches to his family and his mom, or his employees, because he couldn’t use it all. Some he would take home.

When Momomaru opened, Park was ready, with the necessary rice skills under his belt. And now, he has Momomaru’s rice down to a science.

Rice is “alive,” Park said, “so it’s different every single time when we get [a] delivery.”

Momomaru’s rice is imported from Japan, and Park and his team create a different recipe for each bag. Depending on the moisture level of the rice and the temperature of the room, they will adjust the water and sushi vinegar, called sushizu, accordingly.

Once they nail down a bag’s formula, measuring out the grains of rice to the gram, they write the day’s rice recipe on a whiteboard in the kitchen.

After a batch of rice is cooked, they cool it down to exactly 135 degrees Fahrenheit, and then a staffer brings the full rice cooker out to the sushi bar, where the chefs use the rice to create hand rolls.

Park said the perfect rice has a little bit of stickiness, and the firmness has to be just right — neither hard nor mushy. If the outer layer of the rice grain is correctly coated with the sushizu, which Park and his team make in-house, the rice will have a sheen to it.

Each batch of rice stays at the sushi bar for only eight to 12 minutes. After that, he said, the rice loses its peak freshness.

Park said there’s one staffer every shift who’s only in charge of cooking rice and bringing it to the sushi bar — every eight minutes or so.

The entire rice-making process at Momomaru is “not easy, and it’s not efficient, but I believe that’s the only way,” Park said. “There’s no shortcuts, no cutting corners. I think that’s the only way to get the fresh rice and rice quality.”

Seaweed and fish

To hold this carefully prepared rice, Park selected only the best seaweed, Ariake Nori, which grows in the Ariake Sea in Japan.

Park sampled several varieties of seaweed, and found some were too thick and some were too soft. He said he chose Ariake Nori because it stays crispy when it meets his rice, a contrast against the soft fish.

He said he also chose his seaweed for its umami flavor, which increases when it meets the warm rice in a hand roll.

When Park told a salesperson that he wanted this particular type of premium nori, he said they asked why, because it’s so expensive. But for Park, there was no other choice.

Now, “we’re the only one using it in the state of Utah,” Park said.

Then there’s the third ingredient: the fish.

“We have to watch our fish, the freshness,” Park said. “We need to really care for that. So every morning, we will never use the same prep fish next day. ... Because people will know.”

Park said at Momomaru they lightly cure their salmon, sea bream (madai), yellowtail (hamachi) and albacore, to “control moisture and enhance both texture and umami.”

“This is a fundamental step to better express the natural quality of the fish,” he said.

Most importantly, “Your fish can’t be fishy,” Park said, meaning it should taste “clean and fresh, not strong or pungent.”

‘Happy, positive energy’

“Momo” means “peach” in Japanese, and “maru” means “family room” in Korean, referring to the family’s gathering place after dinner. The peach is a lucky symbol in Japan, Park said, and Koreans have good memories of their families when talking about “maru.”

He said both symbols refer to the circular sushi bar inside Momomaru, where everyone “sits together in a circle with the happy, positive energy.”

With Momomaru, Park said he knew he wanted to open “something simple,” and that it had to be downtown, where there’s more “diversity of people.”

“I wanted to go to a place where people acknowledge the food and quality,” Park said.

Even though he was downtown, Park still wondered if people would embrace Momomaru’s streamlined menu, made up of only chef-prepared sets of hand rolls, two appetizers, a variety of individual hand rolls, and beverages.

He said he was “a little worried,” because he didn’t include typical sushi restaurant offerings like edamame, pork gyoza and playboy rolls on the menu.

“Just with the hand rolls, just with the rice and fish and seaweed, can we get people’s attention?” he said.

But with the way diners sit facing the sushi chefs, and the way the chefs form each hand roll and place it in front of the customer one at a time, one can’t help but pay attention, with the crispy nori, warm rice and fresh fish combining for the perfect bite.