I don't normally do restaurant reviews here but I just ate a place so extraordinarily bad I feel compelled to warn you all.
Ariake Sushi on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale, California is that place. After my family and I sat down the table stank like a stale, sour, dirty dishtowel was used to wipe it down. When I picked up the top soy sauce dish from the stack of dishes, the dishes were all stuck together!
We moved to another, cleaner table. We ordered a couple of sushi combos, a fried fish dish, and udon. I went in the bathroom to clean up and the restroom reeked -- it was nasty gross gas station restroom bad, stinking heavily of old stale urine that's been laying in puddles for days. I also passed by the kitchen and saw what looked like gray water on the kitchen floor -- gross.
That pretty much killed my appetite, and then the sushi arrived. Imagine a tray of sushi you buy from Safeway for the office Christmas party. You bring the leftovers home and leave them in the fridge uncovered overnight, and that's the stale, rubbery tasteless fish that the waiter brought to our table. Even the rice balls were tasteless, the wasabi was dry and crumbly, and the soy sauce tasted watered down. The miso soup tasted almost sour, like it was leftover and left out from the previous day. The udon soup was from a cheap bottle of instant soup sauce.
Restaurant review for Ariake Sushi, 759 El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, CA 94087. If my family all dies of food poisoning overnight, you all know the reason. Now excuse me as I go barf.
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Wow, sounds awesome. I've had a couple experiences like that. One at the Plum Blossom in Sacramento. The servers were rude too.
ReplyDeleteBe glad you didn't get sick!
ReplyDeleteWow, that's terrible. I'm amazed that you stayed long enough to order. There is enough great sushi around the valley that the bad stuff just seems that much worse!
ReplyDeleteNext time try Yakko on Villa in Mt View, Sushi Tomi on Dana in Mt View, Sushi Zono at Hamilton/San Tomas, or Sawa at Lawrence/El Camino.,,
Assuming you guys are not permanently scarred, that is.
...sheesh...i don't think i wanna even eat good sushi for a while...stomach turner...
ReplyDeleteYou haven't commented back, i hope you don't have food poisoning..
ReplyDeleteHey! I've eaten there before. Once. Late one night when it was apparently the only open source of sushi for a couple miles up and down El Camino.
ReplyDeleteAriake is many things, but it's not good sushi. It's cheap, though.
Your voice of discontent ( and possible stomach upset ) is joined by a horde of commentators on yelp.com who have rated it about 2/5 mostly on the basis of its serving cheap, bad sushi. You might want to check next time before you dine.
Fritz and his family lives - I saw them at church last night.
ReplyDeleteahpook, thanks for listing Sushi Tomi on Villa, went there a lot during my Microsoft days - one of my first introductions to Japanese!
I found the reviews on Yelp also after posting my own comments. We just happened to be in the neighborhood and saw a random sushi place and thought we'd check it out. Ah Pook is right that there's plenty of good sushi around here.
ReplyDeleteMy son and I both like sushi, but right now even the thought of it is making me feel a little green.
Ariake has been that bad for a long time; we're amazed it's even still in business.
ReplyDeleteThe one and only time we went there, *cockroaches* ran across our table, and when we told the management we were stunned by their lack of concern (hey, the cockroaches were the *only* fresh food there!)
We call it "Are-we-yucky Sushi" now.
Given the Yelp reviews that seem to go back several years, I'm amazed also. It must be a CIA front.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a candidate for Kitchen Nightmares...
ReplyDelete