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There’s a new way to eat to-go sushi: via Sushi Boat, a cardboard box that expands into a 4-foot-long boat filled with pockets of sashimi, poke, sushi rice, a 5-ounce bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce and other ingredients.
Based out of Sunny’s Food Hub, a CloudKitchen in Sunnyvale, Palo Alto resident Jon Burns is solving a problem that made him “cold turkey stop ordering pickup and delivery sushi.” It sometimes took 90 minutes for the sushi delivery to arrive, placing group orders was a headache and the food was often tossed around and squished in loose-fitting takeaway containers, he said.
“I was sitting there ripping these little soy sauce packets and never having enough … my list of grievances goes on and on and on,” Burns said. “Of all the things relative to the restaurant experience, the sushi in-home experience is disproportionately the worst.”
So he created Sushi Boat, which allows diners to make their own chirashi bowls from an assortment of nearly 20 ingredients. Serving up to eight people, the boat can be ordered and delivered within half an hour, Burns said.
“When you put a 4-foot long Titanic sushi boat down in the middle of your table, it’s really an event,” he said. “You can see how everyone else makes their bowls and talk about it, and you can help yourself for seconds. You can try things that maybe you wouldn’t get to try otherwise … and it’s just fun to have it be a family-style feast.”
Sushi Boat offers both medium (serves four) and large (serves six to eight) sashimi and poke boats, as well as a two-person combo boat ($100-$250). Sashimi boats feature bluefin tuna, salmon and hamachi, delivered fresh every morning. Poke options include sweet chili salmon, spicy mango tuna and cucumber spa water hamachi, recipes created by head chefs Daniel and Fernando, who asked that their last names not be included for privacy reasons.
There’s no right or wrong way to eat Sushi Boat, Burns said, but how he builds his bowl is by layering down rice, adding fish, placing toppings, then mixing wasabi and soy sauce on the side and pouring the mixture over his bowl.
“It’s the dealer’s choice,” Burns said. “But I think the fun of it is to sample all the different sides. It’s like a buffet in your house.”
Sides include seaweed salad, edamame, tobiko, crispy onions, unagi-style mushrooms and diced mango, cucumber, jalapeno and scallions. Sauce options include spicy mayo and coconut avocado mousse. With sides prepped throughout the day, assembling Sushi Boat orders is relatively fast – all it takes is placing the ingredients in its respective containers within the boat.
While Burns expected Sushi Boat orders to be popular for dinner parties and corporate catering, he was surprised to see its popularity among both children and new mothers, many of whom avoid eating raw fish while pregnant.
“I’ve seen a lot of kids fighting over who gets to open the boat, and who’s gonna go first, and it’s just very fun for them,” Burns said. “We’ve had a lot of guys come in buying this for their partners as a treat, sort of a push present, if you will, and buy this novel sushi feast for the mom who’s just given birth.”
The idea for Sushi Boat arrived “very organically,” he said. Burns, a sushi lover who hails from Boston, moved to San Francisco more than a decade ago for a job selling software.
“Basically what started happening is every time I would order takeout or delivery, I would get extremely frustrated,” he said.
Instead of ordering takeaway, he began buying blocks of sashimi-grade fish from Basa Seafood Express in San Francisco to make at-home sushi feasts, prepping sides and rice to go with it. His creations became popular among his friends, and he started to think that if he could design a takeaway box to fit his feasts, he could create a business that solved his issue with takeaway sushi. He began tinkering with cardboard and pizza boxes and, nine months later, had created Sushi Boat.
To test if customers would be receptive to his concept, he soft launched Sushi Boat last year in collaboration with Basa Seafood Express, selling 50 boats in one weekend. Last month, he set up shop at Sunny’s Food Hub, saying he felt the ghost kitchen was “the easiest, fastest and least risky way to open up the first Sushi Boat location.”
But Burns isn’t stopping at a ghost kitchen, nor is he stopping at sushi. He hopes to eventually open a concept retail storefront where guests can sample poke, sashimi and sake at high-top counters, watch sushi chefs prep fish and learn more about Sushi Boat. Burns also plans to offer different types of food within his patented box, eventually introducing vegan boat, hummus boat and dumpling boat options.
Sushi Boat, 1026 W. Evelyn Ave., Sunnyvale; 408-256-0611, Instagram: @sushiboat. Open Wednesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
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