Every time I come home to MD, I usually go to the same 2-3 haunts, so I'm always open to trying out new places. I met up with my dad in Bethesda at this low key sushi place in Bethesda not too far from the madness of Bethesda Row. Their claim to fame is that they have $1 sushi all day which can be either a great thing or a gross thing.
We sat down and right off the bat the service was so slow - despite there being only 3 or 4 tables being occupied. I went for the sushi/sashimi bento box ($14.50) and a few $1 orders of uni (yeah, I know, $1 uni?!?), salmon belly and yellowtail. The menu said that the bento box came with a bowl or rice and I asked if I could get mine with brown rice and the waitress rudely snapped that they don't do brown rice. Geez, ok. Then we waited and waited and waited. First they brought out the $1 sushi and it was as expected. They were small and definitely not of mind blowing quality but I guess for $1, what more could you really expect? The uni was surprisingly ok too but obviously I've had better. I could see how if you were just in the mood for cheap sushi that you could sit here and go to town on it. As for the bento box, it was much better than the $1 sushi. It came with miso soup, salad, 1 fried dumpling, 8 pieces of sashimi, veggie and shrimp tempura, bean sprout salad and seaweed salad - so a lot of food for $15! The sashimi was surprisingly decent given the quality of the $1 sushi - it was nicely cut pieces of tuna, yellowtail and salmon. The sushi part was eel, tuna, salmon, and shrimp and it also came with 6 pieces of a California roll. All mediocre, run of the mill sushi - it tastes a lot like "starter" sushi for someone who isn't too adventurous.
The tempura was pretty decent - 2 pieces of shrimp, 2 pieces of sweet potato and eggplant. The batter was a little bit thick but it wasn't overly greasy or oily. I usually like the basic green salad that comes with bento boxes because they are dressed with a carrot ginger type dressing but this was a thick glob of Caesar dressing which I wasn't a huge fan of. I was also excited for the bean sprout salad because that's one of my favorite salads but instead a carrot salad came out - boo! Also the seaweed salad wasn't the green kind but the black kind.
Overall, it was a lot of food and a fairly good bang for your buck if you're willing to sacrifice some quality. It's definitely not Tomoe or Tanoshi quality sushi (but then again I'm a total NYC and sushi snob now) but this is the suburbs, so for that I can see it being an ok place in a pinch. Total bill: $46 for 2 people with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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