Sushi Aboard

There are times when I get sucked into gimmicks.  It isn't often, but since a dining experience isn't necessarily all about the food, I have been influenced by ambiance, decor, service, buffets and/or theatrics.  However, I was pretty much dead set against visiting Sushi Aboard since the "bullet train" serving apparatus reminded me of conveyor belt sushi (which I've also indulged in just for the heck of it).  I wasn't going to buy into the hype and continue eating at regular Japanese restaurants.  But Nikita wanted to try it and since I really like Nikita, I couldn't say no despite my personal biases.

Since the place is setup for bullet train delivery, there are only tables of 4 available.  Hence we had to sit separately.  There are screens at each table where you can see the menu and order.  We began with some Nigiri including Tamago, Tuna, Sockeye Salmon, Unagi, and Chopped Scallop. These were pretty decent, if not standard.  Nothing out of the ordinary, but the fish was fairly good quality.  The way it was presented was truly like conveyor belt sushi.

We moved onto some appies next with the Chicken Karaage and the Assorted Tempura.  We found the karaage to be good with juicy and tender leg meat.  The pieces were medium in size and were properly seasoned.  The coating was light and was crispy.  As for the tempura, it was mostly seafood (fish, scallop, shrimp and squid with one piece of sweet potato).  This was also good with a light crispy batter that was a tad greasy.

Onto some Sashimi, we ordered both the Atlantic Salmon and Albacore Tuna. They were served in 5 pieces each with the salmon including a piece of belly as well.  In terms of appearance, there wasn't anything amiss.  Texturally, they were as expected where the salmon was buttery and soft.  I found the slices of tuna a bit big (which is decent value), so it resulted in a slightly denser texture.  It was still fine though.

One of the best values on the menu was the Mini-Charashi Don for $7.55.  It featured chewy sushi rice topped with tuna, salmon, hokkigai, ebi and ika.  For our first roll, we got the Spicy Salmon Roll.  As simple as this was, I enjoyed this as the rice was at a minimum and the amount of salmon was generous.  The spicy sauce wasn't actually all that spicy, but it had a good amount of aromatic sesame oil.  I liked how they put the minimum amount of cucumber in it too.

So I'm not sure how we ended up with 2 of nearly the same roll in the Hot Crunchy Ebi Roll and the Popcorn Roll.  There were a few differences where the base roll for the first one was a dynamite roll topped with fried shrimp and fried sweet potato and the second was a Cali roll topped with fried baby scallops topped with fried yam.  Both were sweet due to the toppings and usually I'm not a fan of these types of rolls.  With that being said, they were fine and we ate them.

Our last 2 rolls consisted of the Hot Summer Roll and Melting Cheese Roll.  Once again, our ordering strategy was flawed as the first roll had similar components as the last 2 rolls with prawn tempura, cucumber and imitation crab inside with seared salmon and fried yam on top.  The melting cheese roll had the same base roll but was topped with mozzarella, cheese sauce and tobiko.  This was quite pungent and cheesy.  It didn't need any soy (much like all of the other rolls).  In the end, the food at Sushi Aboard was decent and we didn't mind it.  However, it is truly about the gimmack of the bullet train here.  We thought the prices were okay with all things considered, but we would've been happy with just going to any other Japanese restaurant.

The Good:
- If you like the novelty of the food being served via bullet train
- Friendly service
- Decent variety

The Bad:
- Decent, but nothing extraodinary
- Due to the setup (and it is totally understandable), only tables of 4 available