A new sushi restaurant is coming to Dallas' Greenville Avenue with two of the hottest trends in sushi right now. Called Naminohana Handroll Bar and Sushi, it's opening at 5521 Greenville Ave., #111, in the space previously occupied by a Yumilicious, the self-serve frozen yogurt chain.

Yumilicious closed when its lease expired in mid-2022; it had been at that location since November 2010.

"Namino" is a village in Japan and "Hana" means flower or blossom in Japanese. The restaurant name was chosen to convey the level of authenticity found in the food, says founder Sung Kim.

He's planning to open the restaurant in March.

This is the first place of his own, but he's worked as a sushi chef at a number of restaurants, most recently Hatsuyuki Handroll Bar, the highly rated sushi spot in Fort Worth, whose accolades include winning CultureMap's Tastemaker Award for Best New Restaurant in 2021.

"I've been working towards getting my own place, and when the Greenville Avenue spot opened up, it seemed like the perfect location," he says. "That's a busy center, and that part of Greenville Avenue just north of Lovers Lane has so much traffic."

His restaurant will center on the two most popular trends in sushi:

• Handrolls. AKA temaki, these are sushi rolls with sheets of seaweed wrapped in a cone or cylindrical shape, enclosing a filling of rice, fish, and vegetables, and handed to you.
• Omakase. In which the diner does not order, instead, leaving all menu decisions to the chef, who prepares custom-made items, set in front of you one by one.

Both of these trends have surged in Dallas in recent years at places like Nori Handroll Bar in Deep Ellum, Shoyo on Lower Greenville, Tatsu in Deep Ellum, and Kinzo in Frisco.

What the two have in common is an extremely personalized, almost intimate service style, involving with direct interaction with the chef, which diners crave.

Since so much of the experience at Naminohana will be of the moment and dependent on ingredients, there's no set menu, although the menu will include beer, wine, and sake.

Kim also promises top ingredients. "Through my experience, I've made connections with the best seafood sources in Japan," he says.