This is a transcript of an episode of Sparked—a series from Gastro Obscura exploring how one special bite can change an entire life.
Toshiyuki “Chinito” Nishio: I’m kind of nervous right now ’cause I’m—I’m with this guy right here. Taught me everything he knows. Wait, no, he taught me everything I know. He hasn’t taught me everything he knows.
My name is Chinito. We’re here at Daddy Ninja in Kissimmee, and today we’re gonna teach you guys how to make our world famous Ninja Platter.
Chinito: I was born in Japan, but I was raised in New York. My pops is fully Japanese, but he was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. He met my mom over there. She’s fully Dominican. Family is everything to me, man. As you can see, the name of the restaurant is Daddy Ninja, and ninja is my daddy. You feel me? That’s my father. It’s a family business, and everything I do—everything we do—is for the family.
My pops, man…our pop is the OG, bro. He didn’t go to culinary school. He just took advantage of opportunities that life gave him. For example, just our culture. He took that and implemented it into the food that he makes. Found myself eating a lot when I was young ’cause of my pops. But I was always involved in a sense.
It wasn’t until social media came around and he started going like viral on Instagram and all that that we started doing tours. My dad used to go to different cities and states and bring our menu to certain restaurants, to this club. And because of social media we had audiences in all those places.
We’ve been to so many different places, but the place that showed the most love is the Kissimmee area. This place has shown us so much love that we were like, “Yo, we gotta go over there and do something over there for the people over there.” And this is where we’re at now.
We specialize in Dominican sushi. A lot of people are opposed to sushi when they hear the word “raw.” Raw fish. They’re like, “Hmmmm,” and we’re like, “Nah, hold up. We got ya’ll.” We have sushi with nothing raw. Sushi with shrimp, with steak, with chicken, salami, queso frito. We got sushi that deep fried, we got sushi para los Latinos.
So, we’re gonna make our first sushi roll of the day. It’s the Constanza roll. First thing we do—and this is the seaweed right here. In Japanese we call it nori. Uh huh, let me teach ya’ll some Japanese. So, this right here—the rice—we call it gohan. That mean rice. That’s how you know Goku really love his rice ’cause he called it sunda.
So, we’re gonna go ahead—we’re gonna flip the rice over. First ingredient to the Constanza is avocados. Make sure that each bite has the same amount of ingredients, same amount of flavor. We got cucumbers. Go ahead and start rolling. We got the sweet plantain. It’s not sushi aplatanao, it’s not Dominican sushi without the sweet plantain. You see that right there? How do I explain what a sweet plantain is? It’s similar to bananas. Like, imagine like a very ripe banana.
This is the sushi roll that is inspired by my pop’s hometown, Constanza. Here we got the guacamole, homemade guac. And this right here is the finishing touch. This is our chimichurri. You see that right there? Yeah. They’re nice and sexy. I like it. Give it some more flavor…that’s our eel sauce. And that right there is our Constanza roll. That’s our first sushi roll of the day.
So, this right here I’ll say is one of our most Dominican sushi rolls. It’s called the Cibao, which is also another place in the Dominican Republic. I say it’s super Dominican because Dominicans—we love salami, fried cheese, and plantains. It’s this sushi right here. This is, look, this is the queso frito. It’s the salami right there. We go ahead and we roll and we roll, roll, roll it up. We got our sweet plantain over top. And then the signature flavor for the Cibao is the sauces that we’re gonna use. So, we’re gonna use our traditional eel sauce, but we’re also gonna have our homemade passion fruit sauce.
So our next sushi roll that we’re making today is El Chapo roll, so sushi deep-fried in Doritos. And for that I’m gonna go get Chef Mike. Big Sexy! Yo! You got the Doritos ready? And we’re back!
Chef Mike: Mm, mm, mm. So, El Chapo. I came up with this roll during 2020. It was Cinco de Mayo. I thought Mexican roll for, you know, Cinco de Mayo. I was like, “What goes better than chicken, steak, and Doritos?” So, right now I’m putting mozzarella cheese. I got chicken. And, of course, this right here is the plátano maduro, which is sweet plantain.
Once we’re done with the sushi, we fry it, so we dip it in tempura and then we put it in the Doritos we smashed up. And then we take the sushi and we fry it.
Chinito: So, we have our Chapo here, deep fried in Doritos. They got chicken, they got mozzarella cheese, they got sweet plantain. Everything that you didn’t think would work in a sushi? Working, baby. You know what it is. Go ahead and guac it up, baby. Yeah!
This right here is called ropa vieja, which translates to “old clothes.” Which—I don’t know why they call it that. It make no sense. But vieja is shredded beef, and then we sauce it up. Like if it’s a baby. Ooh.
Chef Mike: Alright, bro, I’m gonna go to the back and grab the stuff for the next platter, alright?
Chinito: Alright, let’s finish this up, man.
Chef Mike: Alright, bet.
Chinito: Ok guys, so we’re gonna make our last sushi roll for the platter. It’s called the Daddy Ninja roll. And I can’t make this sushi without the creator of all this, Mr. Daddy Ninja himself. Daddy Ninja, the one and only.
So Daddy Ninja roll…we got queso frito. That’s fried cheese. We got some chicken, some pollo frito. And, of course, it’s not sushi aplatanao without aplatanao. You don’t know what aplatanao is? You’re gonna learn after this video. We over here cutting the Daddy Ninja roll. And this is our sweet Asian beef right here, guys. Oh yeah. It’s that good stuff right there. Now we’re gonna go ahead and torch it up, baby! Get it nice and hot.
Put some chimichurri right there. There we go. And to do the honors: Ninja. And there you have it. You have Daddy Ninja making a Daddy Ninja roll.
So, now we’re gonna put the finishing touches on this platter. One of the most important things? Plating the sushi. Plating just any food in general. Make sure to be delicate with all plating. ’Cause we dealin’ with—we dealin’ with somebody’s food. This is something that we’re gonna put into our system. We want to make sure we treat it with the respect and care that we would like with our own food. You feel me?
This is why I love the Ninja Platter so much. We get to present not only the Dominican sushi rolls that we’re popular for, but we get to present a bunch of our super good appetizers that you’re not gonna find nowhere else.
The last thing: we can’t forget to sauce it up, baby. Right there. And here it is guys: our Ninja Platter. Super glad that I was able to bring you guys into our world and introduce to you how the Japanese cuisine and the Dominican culture can mix together and create something like this. Hopefully we get to see you guys here in my restaurant in Kissimmee, Daddy Ninja. We’re here waiting for you.
