New Zealand Cafe

New Zealand Cafe is the strip mall sushi restaurant on Sardis Road North in Sardis Woods. It has been Charlotte’s answer to the best sushi question for a generation, and it still makes the city’s thirty best restaurants list. The menu is enormous, the fish is fresh, the portions are generous, and there is no fake crab anywhere on it. It sits in a strip center well south of the city, which keeps it off the tourist path and full of regulars instead. Prices have stayed reasonable while the rest of the city has not.

What to know

• The room is small, loud and busy almost every night.
• A line forms most evenings and moves faster than it looks.
• A sushi boat covers a group without ordering twenty rolls.
• Sashimi, nigiri, specialty rolls and bento boxes fill the menu.
• It is a hole in the wall by choice, and regulars prefer it that way.