Shima Visited 11/11/11 2 Forks

Shima 188 2nd Ave Frnt, New York, NY 10003

I'm going to be honest and say that my review is totally biased by the fact that I saw that they had a health rating of a C before I walked in.  I think if I hadn't seen that the review might have gone up by a little bit but probably not by much.  A bunch of us decided to go here only because it was across the street from the movie theater and we needed to be in and out in 45 minutes.

The menu is your standard sushi menu with lots of roll combinations, bento boxes,  and udon noodles.  I ended up getting a river roll (eel with salmon on top)and a east village roll (salmon, white tuna, tuna, salmon roe on top and spicy mayo) and a miso soup.  The rest of the table got some other rolls and Aarti got a vegetable bento box.  The first sign that our meal might be difficult was that the waitress clearly did not understand anything we said.  She had to ask at least 2 or 3 times what we ordered.  Now I'm trying to be nice and English clearly was not her first language but it just really makes for a really painful ordering process if the waitstaff doesn't have a firm grasp on what the customers are ordering.  Aarti had asked for a side of spicy mayo and jalapenos and the waitress just kind of stared at her, so we clearly knew she wasn't getting that. Usually when one orders miso soup you'd think it would come out very quickly.  But here we must have waited at least 15-20 minutes for soup to come out.  Now I know that most places have the soup pre-made, all they need to do is spoon it out!  Then one of the other girls had ordered a tuna tataki appetizer and the waitress brings out tuna tartar, so we had to send that back. The rolls came out and we started diving into them and half way through they finally brought out her appetizer.  Now if I were to judge this place just on the 2 rolls I ordered, I would have said that they weren't half bad. They clearly weren't amazing or super high quality but they were your standard fare sushi that was just ok.  But I tried the rainbow roll and something was a bit off about it.  Plus when the tuna tataki finally came out the girl said it was a bit funky and chewy.  Those are 2 works you never want to associate with fish or sushi. This was when the C rating started to flash in my mind and it just kind of turned me off to the whole experience and made me wonder what was going on in the kitchen.

The total bill ended up being $35 which frankly is too much money for non-super fresh ok sushi.  Granted we did have some beers and wine but still, I could have had a much fresher, cleaner, and generally nicer experience at Kanoyama that's literally across the street.

Photo Credit: Yelp