Where to Get Luxe Sushi Takeout Right Now (At a Fraction of the Price)

High-end sushi is on sale all over Los Angeles as top chefs prep bento boxes and home kits to keep their restaurants open and diners happy. Here’s what to order and how (some of the more exclusive places require ordering a week or more in advance). And don’t forget the sake—since quarantine began, food deliveries can include alcohol as long as the recipient shows proof of legal age.

DIY hand roll kits are the fun innovation here (beginning at $10 for a kid size), and the sushi itself is on super-sale: a large sushi platter (30 pieces), that usually costs $230 is now $180, while the 20-piece platter costs $75 (a $100 value). For a minimum $75 order, this expert West Valley sushi restaurant will deliver within 10 miles. But you must call on the same day, up to 11:45 a.m. for lunch and 3 p.m. for dinner.

Order It

This Michelin-starred Westside spot is known for its expert omakase service, and chef Shunji Nakao is keeping that seasonal sourcing going as best he can, even in these COVID-19 times of supply chain disruptions, by including exotic selections like firefly squid, and seasonal trout and yellowtail in his bento boxes. The takeout menu—including curbside pickup—ranges from a $26 Japanese appetizers course to a king crab box for $75 and a deluxe sushi bento for $70. There are no substitutions, but with the exacting care to sushi prep here, you're not going to want that anyway.

Chef Niki Nakayama's kaiseki (the multi-course Japanese version of haute cuisine) meals are one of the city's toughest reservations to get. It makes sense that the to-go service of N/naka would be equally rarified. Only a small number of delivery meals are offered, to be picked up in 15 minute increments from Tuesday to Saturday. Oh, and you'll have to be poised by your computer on Saturday at 10 a.m. to grab one of the slots for the following week since they fill up within the hour. For your trouble, you'll feast on miso-marinated seasonal fish with sunchoke purée, sushi, kabocha potato salad and more in the $38 bento box, or Monterey Bay abalone, roast duck and 12 other items in the $85 California kaiseki box.

Order It

While this high-end brand of sushi restaurants that stretches from Santa Monica to Pasadena is known for its hand rolls, the difficulty of transporting that messy and delightful experience to a home diner has proved too challenging. So they have developed smartly packaged “Trust Me” sushi boxes which start at $28 and allow a couple substitutions (take that, finicky eaters!). You can also order sashimi and cut rolls a la carte, as well as endamame. This is the perfect chioce for a high-quality sushi lover who isn't interested in bragging about their meal, but just wants to chow down on dependably quality seafood.

With four locations (Wilshire Boulevard, downtown, Santa Monica and Westwood), this hand roll specialty restaurant from the same restaurant group as SugarFish has the muscle and deep pockets to create uniform perfection in everything they do. There's the house-made soy and ponzu sauces, the carefully engineered rice that's prepped with an eye to the relative humidity from one restaurant to another, and of course, deep relationships with some of the best fishmongers on the planet. Prices for the cut-roll boxes start at $15 for a 16-piece selection that includes toro, scallop, cucumber and crab.

Instead of chowing down on the $80 omakase when you are dining in at this tiny Valley spot, now diners opt for the $45 "Half Note" sampler, a box of the greatest hits of Japanese cooking: edamame, shishito peppers, and one piece each of albacore, salmon, yellowtail, halibut, bluefin tuna, gravlax, red snapper, scallop and a spicy tuna cut roll. Old school reigns in the simply prep here, as it does in the reservations—you're meant to call the restaurant to place your order.

Brandy-soaked albacore topped with garlic ginger ponzu ($7) as well as 24-piece set of cut rolls including snapper, scallop, tor, crab, lobster and albacore kari kari. That's what's on offer at this delightfully cheerful and hipster hand roll restaurant, and we're placing our order right now—this restaurant's fare must survive.

The team behind hit sushi restaurant Katsuya was inspired to take that joint’s most popular item, crispy rice with spicy tuna, and build an entire concept around it. Krispy Rice cleverly uses the "ghost kitchen" business model, in which delivery kitchens are build in unused mall space to accommodate the increased demand for delivery food. Popular menu items include the king salmon with yuzu ($7) or plant-based truffle avocado ($5). Krispy Rice also features hand rolls like spicy hamachi ($9) and wasabi in soy paper, alongside maki rolls, nigiri and sashimi. All fish are sustainably sourced and monk fruit sugar is used to replace sugar in sushi rice and sauces. (And, because presentation counts, props to the branding team for the cutest cardboard boxes.)