You’d be forgiven for assuming that local sushi chef Jeff Berneski has it all figured out.
Source readers, after all, voting in the 2021 Best Of Central Oregon contest, elected Berneski’s NorthFresh Sushi Best Rookie Food Cart. And Berneski had only just relocated to Central Oregon the year before. And this year, NorthFresh is also earning the title of Best Food Cart in our annual Restaurant Guide. Or perhaps that should be “carts” plural. Pesently, the Salem native owns and operates food carts in both Redmond and Bend. Yet Berneski says the pursuit of perfection, however elusive, is the point.
“The method in Japan — people do nigiri all their life, but they’ll say it’s never perfect,” Berneski said. “You’re always perfecting it. It’s an evolution of learning.”
Much of his never-frozen fish arrives by air each day, delivered by Hawaiian Fresh Seafood. Berneski sources his yellowtail from Japan, king salmon from New Zealand and tuna from Hawaii.
“For some reason, the waters of Hawaii carry the best tuna,” Berneski said, listing shelf life and color as winning attributes.
Berneski prepares sushi at a truck stationed at Midtown Yacht Club and, as of March, at Redmond’s Dry Canyon Club. On the limited menu: gyoza, poké bowls, sushi rolls and sashimi/nigiri offerings. He says he was the first to introduce bigeye tuna to many Central Oregonians.
“The difference with bigeye tuna is that it has so much more vibrant color — it’s almost like a pinot noir color. Its fat content is higher and it’s less muscley.”
That he orders his fish from the same wholesalers as the fanciest restaurants allows Berneski to offer the same supreme quality from his food cart windows but for much less.
“If you go to Nobu in Malibu, California, you sit down, there’s gonna be flowers, a warm towel and all this stuff, but then you’re paying like $20 for two pieces,” Berneski said. “Anyone can get that same salmon, it’s just what you do with it.”
Berneski immersed himself in sushi trade, by accident, at the Momiji Japanese Restaurant Salem location in 2008. He started there as a server — just a job to pay the bills, he said. After a transition behind the sushi bar, a crew of five chefs involved Berneski with the sushi preparation.
“These guys were studs,” Berneski said. “What really upped my skills is we’d get 20 or 30 cases of salmon. You’d have me cutting the heads off and filleting them, and then I would pass them to the next person, and he would cut them into pieces. With four salmon per case, you learn really quickly how to hold your knife.”
With the guidance of his Momiji mentors — particularly the owner Bruce, whom Berneski requests we only mention by first name — Berneski honed his knife skills, dialed his work ethic and furthered his passion for sushi.
Also a bodybuilder, Berneski swears by fish as an efficient protein delivery device.
“Fish is clean. It’s got omega. It has little to no fat, but such high protein content,” he said. “When you eat fish, you feel good; it’s not heavy on the body. I’d rather eat bigeye or ahi tuna than chicken every day.”
NorthFresh Sushi
https://www.northfresh.co
IG: northfreshsushi
Midtown Yacht Club, 1661 NE 4th Street, Bend
Dry Canyon Club, 1865 NW Hemlock Ave., Redmond
This article appears in Restaurant Guide 2026.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
