Suehiro — Restaurant in Jalisco

For a fine dining sushi restaurant that has been established since 1976, captured thousands of reviews with a dominance of 5 star ratings, and been blessed with a phenomenal Japanese-style garden and a water pond in the middle of a busy city, the expectation is understandably set at a level that even if it sometimes undershoots, the guests will still be happy. In fact, it was far from that. The restaurant, instead of focusing on some specific dishes but excelling with them, chose to offer a huge various of dishes: from sushi, sashimi, nigiri, maki (all kinds of raw seafood dishes), to katsudon (rice with deep fried breaded meat), karaage (deep fried), tempura, to fried rice, curry rice, eel rice, rice ball, teriyaki, chazuke, zosui (rice meals), to teppanyaki, hibachi, to hot pot, casserole, and even udon, sopa, and ramen (noodle soups). These are not just some Japanese dishes, these altogether forms the entire Japanese cuisine, and literally there are restaurants that serve only one of these dishes. Even the dessert menu requires multiple visits to try it all. Take sushi rolls, for example, almost all, if not all, rolls have repeated ingredients, either cucumber, or avocado, or fish roe, and eel sauce, plus the seafood choices which were limited to salmon, tuna, white fish, crab stick, shrimp tempura, and scallop. They indeed assembled the whole sushi menu of the restaurant. But even for the roll itself, there was just too much of rice, and too little of taste. Another instances are fried soft shell crab, and shrimp kushiage (deef fried breaded) appetizers. The crab was fried naked without any batter which are supposed to work as a seal locking the sweetness and the juiciness, and preventing crab eggs and tomalley from dissolving in the deep fried process. As a result, the crab was hard and dry, but not in a crispy way. On the other hand, the deep fried breaded shrimp was just oily and tasteless. Besides, the wasabi was dehydrated and barren that it fell off like sand grain. Therefore, a dinner in Suehiro did not cure our craving for sushi which forced me to treat myself a sushi meal when we were...

Our first Japanese dinner since leaving Los Angeles and we came with trepidation. With the exception of Sushi Koi in Mazatlán, we haven't had the best experience at Japanese restaurants. So we went without great expectations. Shab-shabu, box dinner, shrimp tempura roll sushi and eel sushi were the choices. What a pleasant surprise! The sushi rice, although falling apart from the sauces, was well seasoned and textured. The box dinner must have had at least fifteen differently prepared items plus soup and rice. The shabu-shabu is a hot-pot dish with option to have it prepared in the kitchen or at the table. I chose to prepare it at the table so I could prepare it as I wanted. A plate of nicely marbled very thinly sliced beef and a generous pile of vegetables, tofu and noodles to cook in a pot of boiling water. It came with my preference, soy lemon with green onion sauce and a peanut sauce. I missed not having a sesame sauce - my favorite one for the vegetables. But for a rainy night such as this one, the steaming dish was perfect! For a new experience, I would recommend trying this. Ask the waitress to help you get started - you will see first hand how the dish got its name - from the swish-swish of the very thinly sliced meat in the boiling water that is cooked in a few seconds. There were several teppan tables that seemed quite popular - all full by the time we left around 9. The chef prepares the grilled dinner right before you. The restaurant is large, with a spacious dining room with several teppan grill tables. There is a big lounge with live piano music in front and a lovely Japanese garden complete with koi pond in the center. But one thing that really impressed me aside from the delicious food was the waitresses. They were all dressed in complete kimonos. They each had to learn how to dress themselves in the kimono and under garment, a traditional obi, and maybe seven or more different cords and strings around their middle to hold it all in place. It takes them a half hour to dress each day. You don't find many restaurants that go to these...

Update: Went again today and experience was worse than last time. Server was extremely slow to visit our table for the first time, slow to take our drink orders, slow for everything. It was nearly 30 minutes before we placed our order. At that point, the server basically would not allow me to order the teppenyaki lobster without a lengthy discussion about the price. I told the server numerous times that the price was not an issue and he would simply not stop bringing it up to me and my guest. In the meantime our sushi was delivered without wasabi or ginger, which just seems strange, and we had no soy sauce cups. It sat there for 15 minutes while we waited for condiments. In the meantime I canceled my main course and still waited another 15 minutes for the check. 90 minutes in a restaurant to eat two sushi rolls is nonsense.

Past review:

The food and atmosphere here are excellent. Service is mostly good, but I repeatedly have the same problem when trying to pay the check & leave. It takes literally forever for someone to bring the check, and then another lengthy wait before someone brings a credit card terminal. Today I waited 20 minutes and this has happened to me twice before. Would be nice if this...