Omakase Japanese Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Oranjestad (city)

This really should not be called sushi. It’s more like an assembly of sushi looking ingredients. We reluctantly paid our bill and left midway through our meal to try again for dinner.

Service was really quite good though.

The rice and seaweed are pre prepared, in a stack of 20-30 pre cut rectangles, which are used as people order rolls to assemble a roll. This means all the seaweed is gummy and unchewable, and all the rice is dried out (and at room temperature because who knows how long they’re out on the counter for). I’ve never seen sushi prepared like this before, around the world.

The mackerel had bones in it, larger than pin bones, a prominent line of them sticking out. The skin on the mackerel was also unable to be masticated. The chef felt the need to enlighten me that this is how it’s supposed to be, and assured me it’s good....

The tofu in my miso soup was frozen in its center....how is that even possible? The answer, heavy use of microwaves to make the food. They have one front and center, which they used to warm a woman’s sake about 5 times while we were there.

Scale in my salmon...reassured that this is fine by the chef.

I explained why we’re leaving to my apologetic server. All the while the chef scowling at us across the 7 foot divide between us and her. Awful energy coming from that woman.

Manager didn’t bother to come chat with us, they discounted our bill by 20%, added a 15% service charge (not a tip; this is for the hotel, I guess it’s common in resorts in Aruba), we paid, and left.

Don’t go here.

We saved the night at a great pizza place, which even...

Staying at an adjoining resort and decided to check out this sushi restaurant. Family of four ordered 3 miso soups, gyoza ($12), and the omakaske salad ($18) for appetizers. The soup was fine, the gyoza only had 3 pieces which stunned me. And I thought I would share the salad with my wife, only to find a tablespoon worth of salad... 😂

The sushi rolls that we ordered was just average in terms of quality. This restaurant slices their cucumbers pretty thick, which for me was a negative. Also, their rice has WAAAAY too much vinegar, which really took away from the taste of the fish in the rolls. We ordered 2 crab rolls (because they "couldn't" make spicy crab roll?), 2 dragon rolls, a caterpillar roll and a rainbow roll... All told, with tip, we paid $215... Which we would have spent maybe $100 in our normal sushi spots in NJ. And we eat sushi often and don't mind spending $200+ but we usually order a lot more than above.

I realize that restaurants within the resorts are going to be more expensive and we certainly don't mind spending $$ for good food, but the value we got from this restaurant was definitely...

To begin.. most of the food was delicious and the atmosphere was nice... but that's about the only positive things I have to say. We started by ordering 2 soups and the fried dumpling appetizer and then 2 orders of sushi. After finishing the sushi, we decided we wanted some more so we order two more rolls. About 20 minutes later, I saw them set one of them on the counter to be brought out, about 25 minutes after that, they had the other ready and tried to bring them to our table. So we had been waiting for 45+ minutes on this order of 2 rolls, and one of them had been sitting out for about a half hour. We politely declined these roles as we decided we were done at this point. We had also went without a drink refill for nearly 45 minutes at this time as well. The restaurant wasn't busy.. there was another guy who went and told the waiter he had been waiting 1.5 hours on food and was leaving.

Had the service been good, we would likely go back another time or two.. but I highly doubt...