3.5 stars
We had…read morewanted to try Johnny Roll House for quite awhile, but, because they were closed on Sundays, our timing never aligned. However, we recently had a craving for sushi on a Saturday evening, and I called to place a pick-up order. The woman that answered the phone was very friendly, and, when I arrived to gather my order, she was just as pleasant. In fact, as I left the restaurant with my food, the sushi chefs even wished me well. In terms of the space, it was definitely on the smaller side with only a few tables, but a decent-sized sushi bar. The atmosphere was casual, but it was decorated nicely enough to work as a dine-in spot also.
We had ordered a few rolls to share, and when I got home with the bag, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the restaurant had thrown in two complimentary soups and two salads. The miso soups were creatively served in paper coffee cups with plastic lids, which managed to work perfectly, because, since it was a cooler evening, I wound up drinking my broth like a beverage. In fact, to that end, it was more like a drink, since we only received two small squares of tofu and a piece of seaweed in each of ours. Regardless, the soup tasted good, though the seaweed was a bit off the usual color. The side salads were not great. The lettuce was wilted, and there were way too many onions. The dressing was also a bit more tangy than other ginger dressings I had had.
In terms of the rolls, we ordered one standard and two specialty offerings to share. The common Eel Avocado Roll was packed with fish and large slices of avocado, and it was honestly one of the better versions of this variety that we had had. The Super Fire Roll included yellowtail and scallion inside, which was then topped with torched tuna, eel sauce, spicy mayo, and fresh jalapeño. The color of the yellowtail was on the pink side, which at first gave me pause, but research proved was actually fine. Aside from that, I thought it was a tasty roll. Our last one was the Princess Christiana Roll, which had a center of crabmeat, avocado, and cucumber, as well as toppings of baked salmon, eel sauce, and an actual salad with lettuce, crabmeat, and tobiko. Now, the restaurant had a massive list of unique rolls, which made it hard to select what to order, but this one seemed like one of the most unique of the bunch. I had never seen fully-cooked salmon used in sushi, nor had I ever seen a roll topped with a mound of salad. While the fish all seemed fresh, some of the avocado was browning, and the lettuce was once again wilted. In this case, I would have said that the greens might have gotten too warm on top of the baked fish, but the side salad was just as limp. In addition, we had ordered the Crispy Rice with Spicy Tuna and jalapeno appetizer, which we just ate along with the maki rolls. The rice patty could have been crunchier and the fish could have been pinker in color, but it tasted fine overall.
We agreed that Johnny Roll House had some positive and some negative points. While we had had better sushi elsewhere, their food was still good, which meant that we could keep it as an option if we were looking for a sushi spot. (Speaking of, I should note that they did not offer many cooked Japanese items, aside from Beef Teriyaki.)
