Nobuya Brings Elegant Late-Night Sushi Boxes to the East Bay Suburbs
The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.
Everything about Nobuya is a bit of a surprise.
Start with the restaurant’s location on a quiet, semi-residential stretch of Pleasant Hill. We hadn’t previously found any late-night dining in this particular swath of the Contra Costa County suburbs, so when we heard about this newish sushi spot and izakaya, we were surprised to learn that it stays open until 11:30 p.m. on weekends. When we pulled up at a little before 10 on a recent Friday night, we were struck by the casual elegance of the dining room — all paper lanterns and light wood partitions, with quaint little nooks to sit in should you want some privacy.
The crowd, at least at this hour, skewed toward older couples and groups of middle-aged businessmen, but the atmosphere — aided by an upbeat city pop soundtrack — felt lively and fun.
We made a beeline for the sushi counter, where our server immediately dropped off two bowls of piping hot miso soup. The main reason we’d made the trek out to Pleasant Hill is because Nobuya specializes in the kind of ornate wooden sushi boxes that are trendy now on social media — glistening, jewel-like slabs of sashimi, each one artfully arranged in its own little compartment. Here in the Bay Area, we’ve mostly only seen these boxes at higher-end Japanese restaurants in San Francisco or down on the Peninsula. To be able to snag one this far away from the big city at this hour of the night? We knew we had to try it.
Meanwhile, our gregarious sushi chef, Carlos, turned out to be a one-man orchestrator of good vibes. He chatted amiably in Spanish with the middle-aged couple seated next to us, then slid enough free bites across the counter — a raw oyster topped with flying fish roe and citrusy soy, a baked scallop in a pool of lemon cream sauce — that we started to worry we’d been recognized. In the end, he really did just come across as an uncommonly friendly dude, eager to chat about his favorite East Bay sushi joints (Utzutzu in Alameda and Sushi Sho in El Cerrito — both deep cuts that made it clear that he knew ball).
Nobuya isn’t an overly precious sushi restaurant. It doesn’t offer traditional omakase service, and you can do well for yourself whether your raw fish indulgence of choice is simple nigiri or saucy, over-the-top Americanized rolls (the “Chuck Norris” seems to be a popular choice). We started with a Snow Cracker appetizer from the “Today’s Special” section of the menu, where the most interesting izakaya-style small plates are listed. This was the perfect little appetizer, proving that the kitchen doesn’t take itself too seriously: one big jalapeño stuffed with snow crab and cream cheese, coated in panko, deep-fried and cut into bite-size segments, like a tiki bar’s take on a jalapeño popper.
The main event was not one but two different, but equally excellent, sushi boxes. First came the Omakase Box, whose nine compartments each contained three generous slices of sashimi: hirame (fluke), sea bream, chutoro, maguro, hamachi, salmon, amaebi (sweet shrimp), uni-topped scallops and, in the center, a mound of roe-topped sushi rice.
Every cut was delicious — the clean bite of the hirame, the heavy ocean umami of the sea bream, the delicate sweetness of the shrimp. We were given an unlimited supply of toasted seaweed to make little wraps with, and, since the box included the shrimp, the chef served their deep-fried heads on the side so we could enjoy their pungent crunch.
In the end, my favorite item in the box was the one I normally find the most boring: the lean maguro, which came in thick slabs topped with a dab of yuzu kosho pepper paste, and had an impossibly smooth texture and clean, savory flavor.
At $69, the box is a bit of a splurge, but I’ve definitely paid more for smaller portions of lower-quality sushi. The same was true of the kaisen box ($59), which embodied a different form of luxury. For this set, a layer of sushi rice was topped with a whole row of uni. Next to that, a row of ikura, a row of sweet scallops and, finally, a whole row of sliced toro, with little flowers scattered on top to make it pretty. You could stir everything together and eat it like a rice bowl, but we opted to pile a bit of this ‘n’ that onto the sheets of nori, rolling the whole thing up and eating it in one bite.
Either of the sushi boxes would be easily shareable, just like the oden (fish cake soup) we ordered as a finishing dish. I loved sipping on the rich, peppery broth between bites of sushi to cleanse my palate.
Add it all up, and Nobuya really ought to be the late-night hotspot for this corner of the East Bay suburbs. But the restaurant was nearly half empty for the duration of our visit, and more and more so as the hour crept past 10 p.m.. For now, it seems, the vast majority of Nobuya’s clientele are locals from Pleasant Hill and its immediate surroundings (who all tend to be in bed by 9 o’clock, Carlos confided with a chuckle). The place has yet to be discovered by the legion of twenty- and thirtysomething food influencers always on the lookout for a new spot to hype up.
As good as the food at Nobuya is, that almost certainly won’t be the case for much longer. In the meantime, I’m going to relish the opportunity to walk in at 10 o’clock, without a reservation or any prior planning, and luxuriate in one of the most satisfying late-night sashimi dinners in the Bay.
Nobuya is open Monday through Thursday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–10:15 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–11:30 p.m. at 1428 Contra Costa Blvd. in Pleasant Hill.