RESTAURANT NEWS | NORTH CAROLINA
Red Cat Sushi in Wrightsville Beach Looks to Carolina Waters
RED CAT SUSHI | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Eric Barton
7:29 a.m. ET, Aug. 17, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
A block from Johnnie Mercers Fishing Pier, fishing boats head through the inlet and into the Atlantic. Some return with seafood bound for Motts Channel Seafood, the local market that has supplied Shark Bar & Kitchen for years. Now some of that catch is heading upstairs.
Red Cat Sushi has opened on the second floor of Shark Bar in Wrightsville Beach, the barrier-island town just east of Wilmington. Founders Alan and Jennifer Giaquinto created the restaurant with chef-partner Louie Sipler, turning an upstairs raw bar into a sushi counter where the seafood on the plate may have come from the water visible beyond the windows.
The restaurant is an expansion of a plan that began nearly a decade ago. When the Giaquintos opened Shark Bar in 2017, they renovated only the first floor of a former crab house. They added seating upstairs in 2019 and outdoor dining two years later, slowly moving toward the second concept they have now opened.
Downstairs, Shark Bar serves the food of a North Carolina beach restaurant: oysters, crab cakes, fish tacos, seafood towers, and whatever arrived fresh that day. Upstairs, Sipler applies some of those same ingredients to nigiri, sashimi, crudo, and about a dozen rolls.
A local soft-shell crab, for instance, might become a sandwich at Shark Bar or the center of a spider roll at Red Cat. Blue crab replaces the imitation version in the California roll. The tempura shrimp unagi roll piles smoked eel over shrimp tempura and spicy tuna, while nightly specials have included scallop crudo and spicy lobster, salmon, and tuna on wonton chips.
Sipler grew up in a cooking family; his father worked as a professional chef. He joined Shark Bar during its early years, eventually becoming a partner. Red Cat gives him a narrower menu and a closer look at the fish coming through the door each day.
Diners upstairs can also order from Shark Bar, an arrangement useful for groups divided between sashimi and fried chicken sandwiches. From 3 to 5 p.m. daily, sushi is half price, which may settle a few more arguments.
The name comes from Jennifer Giaquinto’s red cat, Chunks, described by his owner as charismatic and occasionally misbehaved. His portrait hangs above the bar, dressed as an admiral in a recreation of Jimmy Buffett’s Son of a Son of a Sailor album cover.
It is an appropriately grand tribute for a cat whose restaurant now looks out over his supply chain.
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By MARIA RODRIGUEZ
