After reading other reviews of this place, I decided to check it out after work with Jason O. for a healthy and fresh Japanese dinner. I am disappointed to report that Wasabi offered sub-par sushi and even worse cooked items. My judgement of a sushi restaurant's quality of sushi comes in the tasting of two different types of nigiri. The first always being tamago as it is the piece with the lowest payoff for a sushi restaurant (if they take pride in their sushi, they will do the tamago correctly). The second is going to be a well textured, but very delicate cut of fish (on this day it was halibut). The tamago was presented fallen over and was overly sweet with a "frozen" taste to it. The halibut was not even prepared correctly, there was no grated yuzu (I may be asking for too much at this point) and no salt on the on the fish (you do not use soy sauce for a fish like halibut). The fish itself did not have a clean flavor and an off-putting texture. Finally, the most unforgiving of sins against sushi that Wasabi commits is their packing of sushi. Sushi rice is not to be packed so tight as you are supposed to dip the sushi FISH SIDE DOWN. I am sorry to say that grocery store sushi is better than the offerings here. We then had the calamari appetizer. I don't even know where to begin here. Calamari should not be like onion rings (in other words, the batter should not fall off of the squid like an onion ring. Utterly disappointing. Finally, we ended with the unagi dinner. The fillets of eel were obviously pre-frozen/pre-cooked, drenched in eel sauce, served atop a bed of rice that could feed a family of five, and also contained bones. The side to this dish was not the usual fresh or pickled vegetables that one would find traditionally used to cut the richness of properly prepared unagi, but was instead limp and bitter sauteed cabbage. All in all, this was a very disappointing meal and I would be embarrassed to serve this food and call it "Japanese." I rarely ever give out 1 star, but usually 1-star reviews go to venues that have rats and cockroaches. I'll just say that this is barely a step above a 1-star venue.
Is this review positive or negative?
negative