I went here last night with some good friends after craving sushi and missing Vancouver, so it was pretty good timing. I was hungry as heck upon arrival (imo the optimal state for arrival to any dining establishment where you aren’t paying by the dish), so things were off to a good start. The place was brightly lit, quite spacious, and not too crowded. We were seated in the middle of the restaurant and promptly handed our menus. The all you can eat selection is pretty decent, with a good mix of cold dishes (daikon salad, wakame salad, green salad), appetizers (tempura, tonkasu, gyoza, etc.), a lot of noodle dishes, and a whole page devoted to sushi related items (including 6 or so items in the sashimi section, 12 in the sushi, 15 or so maki rolls, and another 7 or 8 special rolls.) The sashimi tasted fairly fresh, though the tuna was still a bit frozen. And they certainly didn’t mis-advertise in their menu. The tuna was billed as “white tuna”, and some white tuna it was. It was so white I thought it would glow in the dark. Wow that was some spotless bleached looking fish. I’d also never seen sashimi masago, which was essentially masago scooped onto some cucumber slices. Almost, almost, masago overkill, but useful to address the issue that I’m about to describe next: I was not down with their rice to fish ratio. Now I must confess at this point that I’m a firm believer that the 80/20 rule applies in a whole lot of places, sushi being one of them. In this case, the 80/20 rule means that there should be 80% fish, 20% rice. At this place, it was more like 95/5. But in the wrong direction. The ratio here was more like 95% rice and 5% fish. Some pieces of fish were about as thin as seaweed. Which would have been disaster at a regular restaurant. But at an all you can eat? We fixed it by ordering extra sashimi to add to the rice. That masago with cucumber that I mentioned before? Perfect for that. At the end of the evening, that equated to just a minor blip in the annoyance meter, not enough to be totally prissy about it.

Dessert was nice in that it was included for one. Choices were green tea ice cream, ginger ice cream, or red bean, as well as deep fried banana. Read my words. Red bean was the best. So in all though, it was a fun place to discover with friends, but I might keep looking for a better sushi restaurant to become my regular hangout.