Starting off, they did a great job with social distancing and kept the space pretty wide for being a bit of a small restaurant. As a given, everyone wore masks and the staff was very consistent in taking away our empty plates. I brought along Laura because I know how much she can enjoy a sushi roll and I trust her judgement when I write these reviews (also because I love her).
The pricing is fair. It is a bit more expensive than other sushi restaurants but it doesn't cause a huge damage to your wallet.
ANYWAY. The food. I was intrigued when I saw the chicken and spinach dumplings appetizer instead of ordering the usual vegetable that I get with my chinese food. We both split them and to be honest, I regretted it after the first bite, and then following the second and third one I ate; it came with six and yes, I have the problem of continuing to eat a meal that I didn't enjoy. The chicken was a bit too dry for our liking so the only solution was to drown it in soy sauce. It lacked in flavor and provided no satiety to our taste buds. If you like chicken and you like dumplings, I highly recommend getting them separately.
Rate: 4/10 (just because you can still never go wrong with dumplings)
I ordered myself a seaweed salad and the spicy salmon hand roll. To be clear, a hand roll is when the roll is wrapped in a cone-like shape and stuffed inside a seaweed wrapping. A classic roll is, well, the classic sushi roll that comes in little bite-sized pieces. I was a huge fan and devoured the whole thing. There was a perfect amount of rice and a bit more salmon in there than I thought there would be but trust me, I am absolutely okay with it. I love ordering a spicy fish because I know I never need to ask for any sort of hot sauce and this roll had the perfect kick to it. The seaweed was a bit tough but nothing that caused too much trouble to chew.
My rating: 8/10
*Pro tip* I put some seaweed salad in my roll and it was like the m&m on top of the ice cream. (I hate cherries so I couldn't come to make the other analogy.
Seaweed salads are a little hard to mess up considering that it's only seaweed (kelp) with some soy sauce dressing on top. The serving that I was provided had the perfect amount of dressing and sesame seeds. They give a pretty good sized portion that can easily be finished in one sitting and it is placed on top of a regular salad; I had never seen seaweed salad like that but it made no difference to the taste.
My rating: 7/10
Laura ordered the clear soup that comes with meals when ordering hibachi; it is usually made of meat broth and vegetables (mostly mushrooms). Given that we did not order hibachi, she asked for it as an appetizer. She enjoyed it but it didn't seem like it brought any light to her eyes and started crying; "it wasn't my fave ever" is how she claimed it to be.
Her rating: 7/10
She had also ordered two classic sushi rolls: the king crab and spicy shrimp. The king crab consisted of lettuce, avocado, cucumber and tobiko; she enjoyed it but wished she had gotten the spicy version instead. With the spicy shrimp, she had no complaints but she didn't love it; it was your basic, average-tasting shrimp (take that as you will).
Her rating king crab: 7/10 --- spicy shrimp: 6/10
For dessert at sushi restaurants, our WEAKNESS is green tea ice cream. The menu said it was two scoops but let me tell you, it seemed like it was about 3-4. I mean, we still ate all of it (we each got our own) and THAT'S what brings light to our eyes. It had the most perfect texture and the taste was out of this world. If you have never tried green tea ice cream and enjoy the taste of green tea, GET IT. We are currently looking for places like Baskin Robbins or Carvel that sell green tea ice cream without going to a restaurant. They topped it with a small bit of whipped cream with very little sprinkles but we didn't care too much about that. Obviously, we wished they had done 5-6 scoops.
Rating: 9.5/10 ("there's always room for improvement" -Laura)
To sum up, we would definitely go back there and try their hibachi next. Our waitress was very nice and our food came out very quickly (I'm not kidding- our waitress had the secret identity of the Flash). For my next trip, I also want to try their spicy summer lobster because I saw someone have it and my eyes just about popped out of my head.
Overall rating: 8.5/10 read more