In how many different ways can you arrange the same ten ingredients? If this were a contest, Temari would win, hands down. This looked like one of the most promising places in a very generic East Valley sushi scene, so we decided to give it a shot. When I sat down, our eager waiter asked me what I'd like to drink. I asked him if they only have fountain sodas, and he looked at me like I was speaking Greek. I said, "What do you have, bottles?" He said they don't have cans or anything; it just comes out of a gun. So... Fountain sodas then. Got it. My friend said his Mr. Pibb tasted off, and asked to switch to Coke. He said sure, but he'll have to pay for the Coke. Now, on to the food.... I looked at the menu. I saw about three pages of rolls. I looked at the specials board. More rolls. Looked at the regular menu.... Standard Japanese fare. They have teriyaki. TERIYAKI! Who eats teriyaki? This isn't Samurai Sam's, is it? They have some sashimi. All very standard cuts of fish. Tuna, white tuna, salmon, yellowtail, sea bass, and mackerel is probably all they had. Maybe the weakest selection I've seen, well, anywhere. The nigiri sushi (which I'm pretty sure I heard our waiter pronounce as "NIGH gi ri" sushi to the diners at the next table) was pretty standard as well. Ra has better selection. Yes, that's right, Ra, one of the most notoriously generic sushi restaurants in the world, has a better selection of fish than Temari! Anyways, at about six different points while I was looking through the tome they call a "specials menu" (which consists of about 99.5% rolls, plus tuna poke), our eager waiter asked us if we know what we would like yet. Sorry, bro, can't you see I'm reading here! I'm like half way through! My eyes are getting tired from reading the words "spicy tuna," "eel sauce," and "chili sauce" so much! Because 75% of the rolls have one of more of those ingredients! It was amazing how many different rolls they had, yet how few of them actually sounded appealing. Most of them seemed to be more focused on sauces and spice than actual fish flavor. It's like people who eat sushi in Gilbert don't want to taste the awful flavor of fish! Gross, right! Fish, ugh! I pointed out to my friend that one particular roll "has like three sauces: chili sauce, eel sauce, garlic citrus sauce, and kiwi sauce. Four sauces!" (imagine the Spanish Inquisition.) Anyways, about our actual order: we went with the "chef's choice" sashimi platter, a romantic roll (cucumber with a bunch of stuff inside), a sunkist roll (some fish completely drowned in citrus flavor), and amaebi and quail egg sushi. I think "chef's choice" means "cheapest," because no real sushi chef would put both tuna and salmon on his own plate if he were picking what he wanted to eat. The sashimi itself was OK I guess. The rolls were very boring, as we expected. The sweet shrimp was good, but you can tell what type of clientele they have when they placed the heads on our table, and the diners at the next table over seemed awestruck by the fact that someone would actually eat a shrimp head, what with those cute little eyeballs staring at them. This brings me to the conclusion of this review: this place utterly destroyed our hope of finding a good sushi bar in the East Valley. Shimogamo was respectable, but even there, the owner was unable to keep the best cuts of fish in stock because he had no confidence his clientele would buy enough of it to keep it fresh. This is the East Valley. People think sushi is a bunch of rolls. You ask an East Valley denizen about their favorite sushi place, and they say, "I like this place, they have great rolls!" Only here can a sushi bar stock just seven cuts of fish, and just offer 500 rolls with the same ten ingredients, and maybe serve some teriyaki chicken for those who REALLY hate sushi, and be successful. I think we're going to look for the East Valley sushi bar with the lowest yelp rating, because that one is probably the best. At least they didn't end up charging us for that extra Coke. Addendum: I was just reminded about the fortune cookie they served with dessert. A fortune cookie! At a Japanese Restaurant! On the back of the fortune it said "Learn Chinese." Not making this up.
How would this review be described in terms of sentiment?
Available choices:
(A). negative.
(B). positive.
(A).