Yoshi Sushi
Yoshi Sushi
6715 Mira Mesa Boulevard
San Diego, CA 92121
(858) 587-4755
Starting from about Mid-March is what I like to refer to as the beginning of birthday season. There are so many people whose birthdays fall between March and April and little bit going into May. It seems every weekend I'm busy at some birthday dinner. Both Boyfriend and my birthday fall within this period also. Of course to celebrate our birthdays we did a lot of eating, so I have a lot of posts to catch up writing on.
For one of Boyfriend's birthday dinners, he wanted all you can eat sushi. The options in San Diego are pretty limited for all you can eat sushi. We ended up deciding to go to Yoshi Sushi. Yoshi Sushi is one of the few all you can eat sushi places I know of in San Diego. In addition, you don't have to sit at the bar like some all you can eat places. Also on Saturday night, it's 20% off. So it ended up being around $20.76 per person.
Normally Yoshi Sushi doesn't take reservations, but we got lucky and they agreed to accommodate our large group. This was my first trip to Yoshi Sushi. They don't require everyone to do the all you can eat option, which is another nice feature. It really makes this place a friendly place to celebrate birthdays.
I had read from yelp that they tend to "throttle" your orders. For instance, they will forget to bring certain items, etc. Of course this bothered me, but I knew it going in and figured we would just have to keep after them for those orders.
There are quite a few options on the all you can eat menu ranging from appetizers like gyoza and chicken teriyaki, to specialty rolls, nigiri and hand rolls.
Sure enough, there were a lot of "forgotten orders" that were marked done but we never received. Also for some of the nigiri, we would place something like 6 orders, and only get 4 of them. This was a bit annoying. The sushi was just okay. Boyfriend didn't really enjoy it and doesn't really want to go back. I agree the sushi wasn't very great, but I think this is a fun place to go to with a large group. It was fun to see people competing to see who ate the most.
My point and shoot camera really did not like the lighting at Yoshi Sushi. A lot of my pictures have a glare on them that I couldn't get rid of. Oh well. I tried to snap pictures of everything we ate.
Spicy tuna and spicy calamari cut rolls.
A Fire roll, caterpillar roll, philadelphia and rainbow roll.
Crunchy shrimp tempura roll and calamari roll. The calamari roll was probably one of my favorites of the cut rolls, but then I really like calamari.
Gyoza
This was one order of fried calamari. The four tiny pieces looked so small and they weren't very good.
Tempura roll. This roll did not go over well at my table. The flavors just didn't seem to mesh well together. And the tempura batter was more sticky than crunchy.
I'm not sure what the one on the left is, but the right one is a soft shell crab roll.
There were a lot of nigiri orders placed, but we never got the full amount we asked for. This one has tuna, salmon, shrimp and imitation crab. Boyfriend complained that he didn't like the nigiri because the rice was too hard.
Agedashi tofu. I was really disappointed with this. I don't remember why, but I remember not liking it at all.
Masago, tako (octopus) and surf clams. These were probably the most popular at the table and we kept not getting enough. Each time a plate would come up and they would be gobbled up and there were quite a few orders missing.
Baked green mussels.
Hand rolls. Two soft shell crab ones and one imitation crab meat one. It's funny. After these handrolls arrived and we eaten, Baby Bro and his girlfriend were arguing over how many handrolls arrived. Four were ordered. Baby Bro's gf said she didn't get hers because they only brought three orders. Baby Bro kept insisting there were four rolls. So out came the camera to check for proof! Taking pictures does come in handy. It even ends arguments!
A fire roll, Oh no roll and shrimp tempura. These came near the end of the meal and were really hard to finish. The Oh no roll became the "Oh No" roll. The people who ordered the rolls figured that they could just eat one or two pieces and everyone would help them finish. Obviously a big mistake. No one has room to "help" finish at the end of the meal.
More masago!
Salmon, yellow tail, eel, surf clams and octopus.
A final order of soft shell crab hand rolls. Because soft shell crabs are so small, you can deep fry them and eat the shell. The deep fried legs are wrapped in this roll. It was a pretty big and filling roll, but fun to eat.
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We recently went to Sushi Go 55 in Little Tokyo. We thought the fish quality was pretty good and reasonable prices. I’ve heard good things about Sushi Gen but haven’t been. In SD, we like to go to Kaito in Encinitas.
Too bad Husband doesn’t enjoy sushi!
If I had a smaller group, I would have gone to Tadashi. It’s too bad they don’t take reservations. I don’t remember what sushi chef we sat in front of last time..
I think the sushi quality is better at Tadashi but the service is not very good. And the seating is limited since you can only do AYCE at the bar.
I did notice that last time! I also felt that the Korean sushi guy wasn’t as friendly. But that’s just my opinion. I thought Tadashi was ok. Is there a place that offers good quality AYCE sashimi items (vs nigiri) ?
Hahahahaa… Poor Koreans.
It seems to me that most of the sushi joints I’ve been to in SD are owned by Koreans.
Hehe, I’m a little bit of a sushi snob myself but I’m willing to eat slightly less quality stuff if the price is right.
I haven’t been to a lot of places here in LA now that I live here because Husband doesn’t eat the stuff. Fortunately, he does eat teriyaki so I still get to go, just not as often.
I really enjoyed Sushi Nozomi in Torrance which is omakase style. K-Zo in Culver City was okay but waaaaaaaaayyy overpriced. We usually end up at Kabuki (chain) because it’s at the same shopping center as a movie theater. Quality is okay for the price which isn’t horribly expensive.
Where have you been?
Tadashi in La Jolla has better sushi, but as you pointed out, they make you sit at the bar for AYCE. Just make sure you sit in front of the Mexican chef. They tend to do a better job than the Koreans.
This was our go-to place MANY MANY years ago. My parents use to take me and sis here when we were kids. We had their lunch AYCE several yrs back and thought it was ‘ok’. But from the looks of it (from you great pics), perhaps the quality has gone down. Never heard of “throttle” method. VERY interesting. But I’m sure in hard financial times like this, every restaurant is trying to save a buck or two, here and there.
How do you think of this place compared to that AYCE in downtown LJ (can’t remember name – Tadashi or something?). Service is horrible at that place. But food seemed better?
Great post – thanks!
You know what was weird about the service was that they were super nice every time they came over. But they just kept “forgetting” parts of our order and marking them done when we clearly hadn’t received it. Some of the stuff was fine, but I think Boyfriend has become a bit of a food snob when it comes to sushi. We’ve been eating at a lot of sushi places in LA and now he expects all places to be of high quality. Heh.
I didn’t get to try the Oh No roll! I was so full by the time we ordered it.
I’ve never heard of Sushi n Joy! I’ll have to go check it out. Thanks!
Having lived in MM, Yoshi Sushi was our go-to place since it was all-you-can-eat at a decent price and the sushi wasn’t too bad. That was a couple of years ago though…sounds like perhaps their quality and service has gone down. 🙁 We always sat at the bar and never exceeded more than 4 people so maybe smaller groups/bar seating helps with the “throttling”?
The Oh No roll was one of the better things we would get there.
I highly recommend Sushi n’ Joy up in Oceanside. I think they do an all-you-can-eat option (could be lunch only) but I’ve never tried it. They are quite generous with their portions and the prices are really inexpensive. I love their salmon nigiri (like butter) and Bob’s Brother (I think that’s the name…) roll is tasty as well.