Restaurant: Yoshi Sushi Location: 6755 Mira Mesa Blvd. #111 San Diego, CA Phone: (858) 587-4755 Price Range: Lunch $5.50-$11.95, Dinner $6.50-18.95

Number of visits: many
Last visit before review: September 5, 2001

Randy has had: Lunch special with chicken teriyaki and vegetables tempura, lunch special with beef teriyaki and vegetables tempura, hot green tea.

Jeff has had: Lunch special with chicken teriyaki and vegetables tempura, lunch special with beef teriyaki and vegetables tempura, iced tea.

Lunch specials include miso soup, green salad, California rolls with wasabi (green horseradish), and two of: chicken teriyaki, dumpling, vegetable tempura, fish teriyaki, beef teriyaki.

Rating 7 (of 12) Good

Randy says: On the lunch special, the salad consists of a few pieces of nice lettuce mixed with iceberg and red cabbage. It would be better if there was more romaine and less iceberg, and if it were on a different plate because the juices from the other items soak the bottom layer of the salad. The California rolls are average. The tempura is very difficult to eat since it's in enormous chunks. You have to grab them and bite bits off. The beef teriyaki ranges from not very good to average. It consists of small pieces of very thin beef, and each piece has a edge of fat that's extremely difficult to remove with chopsticks. The miso soup, like at many restaurants, tends to be slaty, some days more than others. The hot green tea is decent tea.

Jeff says: On the lunch special, the salad also contains some raw onions and a pink dressing that's similar to (but still a little different than) thousand island. I like the salad as long as I can successfully avoid those raw onions. Since I don't eat seaweed or imitation crab meat, I give the California rolls and dollop wasabi to Randy. In exchange he gives me some of his beef or chicken. The first time I tried the beef teriyaki it was awful so on subsequent visits I chose the chicken instead. The chicken is in strips that are not well separated and also have fat and gristle on the ends, making it hard to handle with chopsticks. Sometimes I resorted to grabbing a piece with the chopsticks and shaking it to attempt to detach it from the rest. The quality of the chicken was sometimes okay and sometimes not so good. At some point I decided to try the beef again and that time is was pretty good, but its quality fluctuates also. The tempura has a very heavy batter on it. I have had tempura elsewhere that had a very light batter which just added texture and the taste of the vegetables came through, but here all I taste is something that's been fried. But the dipping sauce improves it greatly. I like the miso soup. I don't remember ever thinking it was too salty. Miso soup is one thing I think Yoshi Sushi does better than other places I've tried. Another one of those things is the iced tea. It's got a very pleasant flavor that I haven't encountered in iced tea anyplace else. I don't usually get the hot green tea, but I like the cup it comes in. The cup has multiple indentations all around it which makes it very easy to hold on to.

Yoshi Sushi is a very popular lunch spot in Sorrento Valley. Sometimes when we go every table is full. There is an extensive sushi bar and we're told it's excellent, but we don't know because we don't eat sushi. The staff are very nice, although if it's busy sometimes it's hard to get the attention of one of them if you want a refill on your tea. Other times they're on top of it. We continue to visit Yoshi Sushi because it's a convenient place to lunch and the food is usually passable.