Sushi Station is located about 2-3 blocks down from the UCR campus, in the same plaza as Tapioca Express. The place is easily overlooked since it is in the corner of the plaza. Once you enter Sushi station is a whole different story. You would never expect the place to look this nice by looking at it on the outside. As soon as you enter the waitress usually tells you to sit wherever you want.
The place has a lot of pictures of their items to give you an idea of what their dishes look like. Their menu also has a nice amount of pictures as well. I’m a visual person myself and I would like to see what I’m ordering before I order it. Not only do they serve Japanese food, but they also have some Korean dishes.
Before we even ordered our waitress brought us each a bowl of miso. I already knew what I was going to order before I stepped in the door. I always see people order the Spicy Chirashi-Korean Style($10.95) and I’ve always wanted to give it a try. It consists of rice on the bottom, a bed of salad in the middle, assorted fish on the top, and then topped of with some roe. Our waitress then gave me a red squeeze bottle full of the spicy sauce that you would normally eat with bibim bap (I’m not sure what it is called so if anyone can correct me on this I would glady appreciate it). This item is pretty much bibim bap with sashimi pieces on top. The different types of fish made it really enjoyable to eat and I would constantly switch off between the tuna, salmon, albacore, tilapia and tamago. If you are extremely hungry then this is the item to order and trust me the portion for this is huge.
Since the Spicy Chirashi bowl was so good I decided to try their regular Chirashi($9.95). Sushi rice is layered on the bottom and then topped of with sashimi slices. I’m not a big fan of imitation crab and I would have rather they not add to the bowl. I didn’t enjoy this as much I did the Spicy Chirashi and was kind of a dissappointment for me. Although I did get more fish in this one then I did in the Spicy Chirashi. If you are in the mood for sashimi and not that hungry go for this item.
My friend ordered the Spicy Chicken($6.95). The chicken is lightly battered and deep fried and then topped with their special spicy sauce. I particularly liked how they plated this and their use of a clear square plate. If you are on a budget or a student then this item is for you. It will fill you up and not leave your wallet empty!
125 N Highway 101 Solana Beach, CA 92075. (858) 481 - 9800.
I took Lynn to this restaurant a couple of weeks ago for her birthday. Her friend had recommended this place and so we decided to check it out for ourselves.
Yellowtail Sushi ($4.00?)
Nothing special. Don’t order it.
Sushi Roll?? ($11.00?)
This entree was our favorite. I forgot what this was called but it tasted great. I’m sure veteran sushi fans out there can identify this for us? Nguyen?
Curry Chicken ($9.00?)
The chicken curry bowl was shockingly huge! It could easily feed two people. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that good… The chicken and the sauce were okay, but I didn’t like the rice. It was way too moist for my taste and I would have preferred it if they had served the curry sauce and the rice seperately. That way, the rice wouldn’t have been soggy on the top
Lynn was surprised that I even ordered a curry entree here. She said that she couldn’t imagine it tasting good at a japanese restaurant but I said that some places make them pretty good. This place was not one of them…
The service was slow at times, but that can be expected. This place is quite popular and is located in a busy dining district. But I’m going to have to dock their score because they took forever in bringing out the menus and had accidently served someone else’s meal to us.
I got an email about a month ago from CP from http://epicurious-wanderer.blogspot.com/, saying how he was trying to plan a get together at Frenzy Sushi. I had read his post on Frenzy Sushi a couple months back and it literally made my mouth water. There was no way I could pass this opportunity up, even if I did have finals to take. After taking my first final on wednesday I drove all the way to Costa Mesa to meet up with CP and the rest.
Since this is my first time meeting everyone I really didn’t know what everyone looked like. CP had told me in the email that I should just look for people who look like they are food bloggers or people who eat a lot. I asked the hostess if the party for CP was already here and she directed me to the sushi bar.
The first item that we tried was the Hamachi Belly. Cp had told me that I wouldn’t be able to find this at any other place because the belly is usually discarded. This was my first time trying hamachi belly and it was excellent! The pice of fish was soft and melted in my mouth because it was so fatty. It is a shame that most chefs discard this part.
Shisamo was the next item to be devoured. At first I was thinking, “what is so special about this… it just looks like grilled fish”. Oh how wrong I was when I bit into it. To my surprise there was roe inside of the fish and that’s what makes this fish so tasty. The crunchy/grilled texture on the outside plus the nice bit of saltiness from the roe on the inside made me want seconds with a bowl of rice, but I stopped myself.
John San brought out our next dish, which was Fried Hamachi Bones. It was topped off with green onions and bit of ponzu. This item is good snack item to munch on. It’s kind of like chips once you eat one you can’t stop. I found myself picking at the dish with my chopsticks for bits of the hamachi.
The Cajun Tuna Tataki was then brought out It is seasoned with John San’s special cajun spice mixture, then slightly seared and topped with some ponzu. There are so many flavors going on at once that it is extremely difficult to describe how it tastes. I enjoyed it most with the grated daikon and ginger. The cajun spices left my mouth wanting more.
Some random guy next to our group ordered us a plate of calamari on him. Thanks for the calamari whoever you are. The piece I had pretty much gushed out oil when I had bit into, so I wasn’t a big fan of this one. When the guy had left, John told us he is a regular and is loaded. If he was so loaded, maybe we should have asked him to order us a round of kobe beef… I’m just kidding by the way.
I preferred the Shrimp Shumai over the Gyoza. The shrimp shumai was really flavorful and soft. I thought the gyoza was just similar to any other gyoza I have eaten in the past.
Next was the Bluefin Tuna. Now that I’ve tasted bluefin I don’t think I can ever go back to regular tuna. I was kind of sad that it disapeared so fast. I prefer sashimi over sushi and was kind of hoping that I would get to get to try it sashimi style. Luckily John San prepared it 2 dishes later, which put a big smile on my face.
The next dish was Chicken Karaage was a nice change since we were eating so many different types of fish. It’s basically fried chicken or as CP would call them “chicken nuggets”. I didn’t find anything special with the chicken karaage and was pretty much just chicken to me.
As soon as the Bluefin Tuna Sashimi came out everyone attacked it. Luckily there was 2 slices left for me to take a picture. CP said he just couldn’t restrain himself, which is understandable since it is bluefin tuna. It would have been a more impressive picture had the other pieces been there.
This dish is called Biwa and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of it. It’s similar to the scotch egg, but John uses quail eggs instead. The quail eggs are wrapped with shrimp and deep fried in tempura batter. Who doesn’t love quail eggs? Especially since it was deep fried and battered made it that much better.
This is my new favorite dish! Baked Butterfish-Saikyo Miso! The first bite made me realize why it was called butterfish. I was tempted to ask John San for some bread, so that I could spread the butterfish over the bread. The sauce was just perfect and didn’t overpower the fish at all. I wanted to know what was in the sauce, but John wouldn’t reveal it to us. Oh why do you tease us with your secrets?
John San preparing the clam for us fresh and cutting each piece individually, so that we may enjoy the different parts of the clam.
The first piece he made for us contained the scallop portion and he also added the muscle along with it. I really enjoyed the scallop, but when I got to the muscle part, I found the muscle to be too tough for my liking. I’m not sure if it was only me, but my muscle was a bit bitter. Everyone else had told me their piece was sweet. I wouldn’t mind ordering this next time, but minus the muscle. The next piece of sushi was the body of the clam. This was a lot sweeter than the previous piece and the texture was not as tough.
CP had told me this was one of his favorite rolls, the Firecracker Roll. It contains large tempura shrimp and is topped off with hamachi. It reminds me of the crunchy roll, but 10 times better because the shrimp are gigantic and the the hamachi on top makes it that much better.
I finally got to taste the Aji after recording John prepare it for us. The aji was topped off with grated daikon and ponzu. This is now one of my new favorites. I will add it to my rotation next time I go out for sushi. The way it was prepared was just perfect! No need for soy sauce what so ever. It was like eating a fluffy piece of fish.
Next was the Fried Aji Bones with a little bit of ponzu. I couldn’t tell the difference between this one and the hamachi bones we had earlier.
The first piece of Saba I tried with soy sauce and It occured to me that it might not need soy sauce. I then tried the second piece without soy sauce it was one of the best tasting things I’ve ever had. It was naturally salty that there was no need for soy sauce. I had asked John if he didn’t anything to it to make it salty and his reply was, “it was naturally salty and it his special way of making it”. Special way of making it… why must you continue to tease me with your secrets…?
John San came back out with a box full of Uni and presented it to me as an offering. I had thought he was really going to give it to me, but then he took it back. It saddened me for a bit, but I got over it.
I’ve always wanted to try uni, but the words “market price” on the menu always deferred me from ordering it. I don’t know if my excitement showed, I was extremely excited to finally be able to try it. When John San placed gave me my piece it had fallen over. I told him that it’s unbalanced and he should put another piece of uni on mine to balance it out. I didn’t get an extra piece of uni. I’ve never tasted anything like this before. It had a rich velvetty taste to it that coated my tongue and left it with a nice after taste. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end our meal.
We started our meal at 7pm and we finished around 10:45pm. I didn’t realize we were there for so long. The dishes came out at a nice pace. It was nice to have John meticulously make each piece of sushi for us. It was as if all his attention and focus was on making sure we enjoyed our meal. The bill came out to $50.34 per person not including tip. That really busted my budget as a student, but hey it was definitely worth it! My favorites of the night were the aji, saba, bluefin and uni.
Joe’s Sushi is known for their all you can eat sushi special, although you can still go there for individual orders as well. You might as well get the all you can eat special because it’s only $23 per person and you end up spending that much or more at other sushi restaurants. Whenever going here, I reccomend eating at the sushi bar because you get to interact with your sushi chef and occasionally he’ll make you “special” sushi. They will make you anything you want right on the spot, but the only thing is that if you want the more expensive stuff like toro or uni then you have to pay extra. Joe’s Sushi is more of a korean restaurant than anything because all the workers and chefs are korean.
some of my friend’s decided to drive up to Riverside because they had a craving for Joe’s. Unfortunately it was a friday night and the restaurant was packed. We were not able to get a seat at the sushi bar because our group was way too big to seat everyone. I apologize in advance for this post because everyone was extremely hungry and I was not able to take a lot of the pictures before my friends devoured the food. I will do another post soon when I get a seat at the sushi bar. Occasionally the chef will be impressed by how much you’ve eaten and make you one of his special rolls. You can try asking what the name of the roll is, but even they don’t know what it’s called or they will just make up a random name for you.
They felt bad because we had to wait so long for us to get seated, so they brought out a boat of sushi as soon as we sat down. It had a lot of various kinds of rolls that were very tasty! I was not able of obtain the names of each roll as they were consumed rather quickly by our table. I was even surprised that I was able to fend off the vultures for a picture.
We were brought 4 carafe’s full of sake and 4 bottles of Asahi beer. All of the alcohol was on the house because we were regulars and the manager felt bad for us having to wait so long to be seated. I had quite a few sake bombs and shots of sake. Free sake definitely makes your meal so much more enjoyable!
The crunchy roll was ok and nothing special. It just had some eel sauce and chili sauce over it.
This was the deep fried shrimp drenched with some spicy sauce and eel sauce.
The spicy scallop hand rolls are my favorite. You get a good amount of scallops and a nice hit of chili. Usually when we sit at the bar, we request a pice of salmon be added to the roll. The salmon makes the roll 10 times better.
The salmon was good as always and melted in my mouth. I would say the slices of salmon were a pretty good size. Luckily I was able to snap a shot before everyone took all the pieces.
The hamachi that night wasn’t as great as they usually make it. They must have made them in a rush. The slices of hamachi looked bad in my opinion.
Look forward to a more adequate post of Joe’s in the future. Since we had such a big party they were rushed to get all our orders out and the level of quality was not there. I will definitely get a seat at the bar next time. I was not able to order what I wanted, since what we had was more of a consensus due to our large group. It was not enjoyable this time around because we weren’t able to interact with the chef’s. They are always fun to talk to especially when they get loud and yell random words.
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