As the newest addition to dining options along The Woodlands Waterway, Kokoro Handroll Bar focuses on providing fresh sushi in a relaxed, casual environment.

“There's two different environments, really,” The Woodlands location General Manager Ashton Dupreez said. “You can come in here on a Friday night and sit around the bar and you can watch everything and have a lot of energy, but you can also have a table 10 feet away and it’s a lot more relaxed.”

Meet the team

Founded by chefs Daniel Lee and Patrick Pham in partnership with businessman C.J. Short, Kokoro Handroll Bar opened on March 10 in The Woodlands to meet a demand for traditional fresh sushi in The Woodlands, Dupreez said.

Lee, Pham and Short also oversee Duckstache Hospitality, which owns a number of sushi concepts across Houston including Kokoro Sushi, and Yakituri, Doko and Aiko in downtown Houston.


“We like to kind of combine elements from a few of our restaurants and put them together to find the perfect mix for The Woodlands crowd,” Dupreez said. “The area was kind of screaming out for some good, high-quality sushi.”

Jesus Orellana is head chef at The Woodlands location, bringing several years of experience in sushi preparation.
In order to create the 'perfect' handroll, Head Chef Jesus Orellana said the key ingredient is high-quality nori, or seaweed, in order to provide an extra crispy crunch in each bite. (Jessica Shorten/Community Impact)
In order to create the "perfect" handroll, Head Chef Jesus Orellana said the key ingredient is high-quality nori, or seaweed, in order to provide an extra crispy crunch in each bite. (Jessica Shorten/Community Impact)


What’s on the menu

The key to Kokoro’s menu is imported fish from Japan, alongside other key ingredients such as nori, or seaweed, and rice, Orellana said. On an average day, Orellana said the restaurant can go through up to eight quarts of rice, and on opening weekend it made 2,185 handrolls.


“There’s a lot of restaurants that use nori, but what we use, It’s specially made for handrolls,” Orellana said. “You want that crispiness in a handroll whenever you enjoy it.”

Dupreez said the other key factor is using high-quality fish such as BGB grade salmon.

“In order to achieve the grade of BGB, it's a very, very rigorous process,” Dupreez said. “So it is farm raised, but like in the ocean. They do it in these bays so they have a huge amount of water in their natural environment and they develop very fatty muscular tissue which is why it’s so melt in your mouth.”
Kokoro Handroll Bar also imports seasonal sake, a traditional Japanese alcoholic beverage, and has a number of craft cocktails such as the Double Down Margarita, which fuses traditional lime flavors with yuzu, a native Japanese citrus fruit. (Jessica Shorten/Community Impact)
Kokoro Handroll Bar also imports seasonal sake, a traditional Japanese alcoholic beverage, and has a number of craft cocktails such as the Double Down Margarita, which fuses traditional lime flavors with yuzu, a native Japanese citrus fruit. (Jessica Shorten/Community Impact)


What else?


Dupreez said The Woodlands location has already brought in regular customers, which is a key goal of management and staff at Kokoro. Dupreez also said restaurant owners are looking to open an additional location in the Spring Branch area by the end of 2025.

“In Japanese, kokoro means ‘heart’,” Dupreez said. “We like to really present that in our food, we want it to be made with a sense of love and appreciation because there was so much of that which went into the creation of the dish itself, and really the entire project of the restaurant.”