Food & Drink

What’s a nice Jewish boy doing in an East Village sushi restaurant?

Late on a recent Friday night, David Bouhadana is cutting loose, making his way through a line of full sake glasses in front of him, sipping a beer and dancing and rapping along with French Montana’s “Ain’t Worried About Nothin’.”

Indeed, Bouhadana, 28, doesn’t seem worried about anything, even though he’s technically still at work, expertly preparing sushi for customers at his critically acclaimed East Village restaurant Sushi Dojo, which recently celebrated its first anniversary.

When asked if he ever fears cutting himself while slicing fish after countless beers and sakes sent his way by adoring customers — unlike many of the city’s sushi restaurants which shut their doors by 10 p.m., Dojo is open until 1 a.m. — he smiles and swings his blade theatrically. “My knife would never cut me,” he says, a playful smile creeping across his baby face.

Bouhadan’s sushi creations at Soshi Dojo.Michael Sofronski

Before opening his own place, Bouhadana spent several years in his early 20s studying his craft in Japan, working grueling 14-hour days under a strict master in a sushi bar in a tiny village outside of Osaka and teaching himself Japanese.

He went on to work at some of the best raw-fish restaurants in New York City, including 15 East and Hatsuhana, but he’s hardly your typical sushi chef.

He’s a chatty, fast-talking Jewish guy who was born in France to a Moroccan father and French mother and grew up in Florida.

His foray into Japanese cuisine began in Boca Raton — the “sushi capital of America,” he jokes — when, as a high school burnout who’d been kicked out of his parents’ house, he took a job as a waiter at a local restaurant called Yokohama Sushi.

One night, the Chinese owner thrust him into the kitchen to prepare sushi. It didn’t go well.

“I had long, curly hair almost past my elbows, a full beard and three lip rings, and I was not sushi material,” he recalls. “I ripped the seaweed and the rice was mushy. I failed miserably.” The owner told him never to come back, but Bouhadana, then just 18, was determined.

He went home and spent hours studying the restaurant’s menu and learning the names of the fish in Japanese. Two weeks later, he returned to the restaurant and impressed the owner enough to hire him back.

He spent two years there, transforming from surfer dude into head sushi chef. The fact that he was chatty and outgoing, something he credits his nightclub-managing father for — and spoke English as a first language — proved an asset behind the sushi counter.

“My first master [in Boca Raton] was like, ‘Oh, David, good with customer, English so good,’ ” he says with a laugh. “I had all the underage drinkers at my sushi bar, open until 4 in the morning, blasting [music], partying, half-off King Kong rolls and sake bombs.”

Bouhadana, center, and his team of Japanese sushi chefs.Michael Sofronski

At Sushi Dojo, Bouhadana has tried to replicate the party-hard fun of the Boca joint, swapping the King Kong rolls for a traditional omakase experience that rivals some of the city’s top sushi spots.

It helps that he’s passionate about the hospitality aspect of his craft. When asked what he loves about sushi, he doesn’t wax on about the way a perfect piece of toro melts in your mouth, as you might expect. He talks about what it feels like to please customers.

“[It’s the] instant gratification,” he says. “Just watching someone say ‘Thank you’ and ‘This is so good.’”

So far, his formula seems to be working.

Sushi Dojo is “like nowhere else in the city right now,” enthuses Kelly Dobkin, the senior editor at Zagat, which just named Bouhadana one of its “30 Under 30” for New York.

“Where else can you get a 10-piece omakase for under $50 set to a soundtrack of old-school disco? It’s serious sushi without the pretense.”

With Dojo’s success, Bouhadana is expanding his empire. In late August or September, he plans to open a Japanese gastropub called Dojo Izakaya on Avenue B and Second Street, and he’s also working on a Tribeca Sushi Dojo.

Not bad for a guy who, when he first got to New York and applied around town to be a sushi chef, had people laugh in his face and tell him they couldn’t hire him because he wasn’t Japanese.

“Now, I think the novelty has passed,” says Bouhadana. “I just make sushi. I will make sushi for the rest of my life.”