This week, San Diego native Daniel Salas’ new pop-up Omakase Inu soft launched as a reservation-based recurring dinner series at Key & Cleaver in City Heights. Salas started apprenticing in a professional kitchen at age 16 and spent his entire career perfecting the art of sushi under the tutelage of experts like chef Jun.
“Rice every day… slowly learning how to break down fish and stuff like that,” the 30-year-old says when looking back at the years he’s spent learning from others. “It’s been a long time.”
Salas went from places like Yummy Sushi in Coronado to Chef Jun in Bay Ho, The Joint in Ocean Beach, SoCal Sushi in Normal Heights, and a rare non-sushi stint at Key & Cleaver in City Heights before moving to Nashville, Tennessee. It was there that he got his first taste working behind an omakase counter. In omakase, the sushi chef selects the courses for the guests based on seasonality, availability, and… well, vibes.
“It wasn’t until I was in Nashville where I saw that people really enjoyed not having to think about what they’re going to order—they just come in, sit down, and just eat,” says Salas. “I got to be creative, and that was one of the biggest things I’ve always wanted.”
While in Nashville, his friends and former bosses at Key & Cleaver, Jennipher Hager and Chris Dainty, came to check out what he was working on. “I was like, ‘What you guys think?’” he says. “And Chris and Jenn looked at me and they go, ‘Why don’t you just do this in San Diego?’”
So when Salas returned to City Heights, he, Hager, and Dainty put their heads together to see how a pop-up would work in the Key & Cleaver upstairs space. It couldn’t be another high-end, high-dollar omakase experience—it wouldn’t be a fit for the neighborhood, and there are plenty of other omakases that fill that niche (including Soichi Sushi, Sushi Tadokoro, Kinme Omakase, Sushi Ichifuji).
Instead, he designed Omakase Inu to be an introduction to what the omakase experience is, without guests feeling the pressure of having to know all the etiquette right away. For instance, sushi newcomers may not realize the proper way to dip a piece of nigiri in soy sauce is lightly, once, and fish side down—never the rice side, to avoid soaking up too much and risk the entire piece falling apart. And, at $85 a head (pre-tax and tip) for a starter, 11 pieces of nigiri, a hand roll, and a shot, Inu is an affordable alternative to most omakases that generally start at triple-digit price tags and go up from there.
Salas also melds his Hispanic heritage to create fusion flavors not typically seen on traditional Japanese sushi menus. For instance, kombujime-cured Korean flounder with jamaica ponzu and shiso. “Jamaica is very common in Mexican culture—you go to the Mexican restaurants and they have the agua fresca jamaica,” he explains. “Combining the two just works. The jamaica has that very floral sweetness, and it combines perfectly with that tart ponzu flavor.”
Other dishes include baked cod with mole negro (a Mexican-inspired riff on Nobu’s famous miso-glazed black cod), spot prawn with an aguachile gel, and the menu will change every three months according to the season. For now, Omakase Inu offers seatings for up to eight people on Thursdays at 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; and Fridays and Saturdays at 6 p.m., 7:30 p.m., and 9 p.m. Currently, interested parties have to message Salas on Instagram for a seat at the table, but he hopes to have a formal reservation system up and running within the week, with a grand opening announcement by mid-March.
Besides introducing diners to the world of omakase, Salas says he also hopes to shine a light on the rich City Heights dining scene as a whole. “I want people to really feel comfortable being at this space and trying new foods, trying new things, and also just coming to the community that’s not really seen very often in the media,” he says. “Me growing up in this area, and then coming back to this area to do my thing really means a lot to me.”
Omakase Inu‘s now soft open upstairs at Key & Cleaver, 4727 University Avenue, City Heights.
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