text: After the epic meal in the tatami room hosted by Tony T see my review for the event Eric R bugged me to return here for dinner We arrived on Saturday around and were seated immediately at the bar The AYCE is an amazing deal as it includes the specials on the daily special board grill items salads rolls nigiri and all sorts of other thingsnnSome of the new things I tried included the grilled tofu which was quite tasty and amaebi shrimp head miso soup The shrimp were a bit harder to eat since they were not fried but the flavor of them in the broth was good The mackerel was cured wonderfullynnSince we were at the bar we had a nice view of the crazy action here We were taken care of by different sushi chefs and it took me awhile to even start a conversation with Chef Jun a real Japanese chef yay in front of usnnHowever the biggest disappointment is the rice Sushi is all about the rice The volume of this restaurant is huge because of the crowds and the rice is not acceptable for sushi rice First of all it was HOT I am talking just made no coolingfanning and hardly any vinegarseasoning HOT rice with ice cold fish tastes bizzaroooo It ruined the meal I noticed the first time we ate here that the nigiri slices were all out of whack Because of the volume the slices are not cut with precision but with speed I watched the chefs cut awkward nigiri slices that barely covered the hot rice nnEric R asked Chef Jun about the rice He said they have such a demand that they just use hot rice and he apologized because he knows it is just like sushi faux pas most sushi restaurants I have been to make rice in advance As someone who learned how to make the rice from a local Japanese market recently I know that it requires minutes to an hour of fanning and cooling prior to serving and that is for my small batches cups at a time Though there is a lot of variety and I have no complaints about the service or quality I could never enjoy hot rice touching cold uni or cold amaebi or cold hamachiyou get the idea