Okinawa Asian Cuisine — Restaurant in Arlington

We came in on a Sunday two weeks after the opening of Okinawa Asian cuisine. Our arrival time was at 6:20ish. All of the booths were filled, but there was still tables available. We were greeted instantly by the hostess/manager. I believe it was the still the soft opening phases, but I'm not too sure. It was me and my guest for a party of two. Our starvation levels were at an all time high that day, so we were going to order basically everything.

We put in our food order around 6:30. Miso soup and mushroom soup were delivered about two minutes later. After that, we waited a grand total of 40 minutes before our server came back and told us some details. Apparently, the sushi kitchen was a backed up from all of the sushi. I'm sure they ran out of some of the sashimi because when we got ours, you can taste the and feel the ice on it.

Kudos to our server for coming back and being transparent with us. I respect that a lot and just letting us know what was going on. Basically, the sushi station was backed up, but everything else was normal. I kind of wished that the manager would have told us the situation because we didn't see anyone for 40 mins. Now, to the food.

Ahi tuna tower. I highly recommend this appetizer. It tastes really fresh and the flavors are there. Not too much sauce/rice and it has a refreshing taste to it. Portions are perfect

Fried gyoza came out nice and fresh. It tastes like an eggroll inside. Sauce is good, but it tastes like it was watered down?

Katsu chicken came out hot and crispy. It's a pretty good appetizer to start off with. They give you a solid 5 pieces

I usually don't use soy sauce (which they have a less sodium version on the table), but the salmon lover roll needed it. It definitely needed a sauce. It's an okay roll, don't think I would recommend.

The spring time roll was pretty nice and flavorful. The protein and rice portion were balanced pretty well. Not too much rice with the rolls is a win for me.

Now, on to the sashimi. We got tuna, salmon, white tuna, eel, octopus, surf clam, and pepper tuna. Overall, the sashimi was decent. Nothing too crazy about it. I will say that I believe they ran out of the defrosted sushi early, because our salmon not only was ice cold, it definitely was still slightly frozen.

The golden buns were really good. Definitely recommend getting those for dessert versus the desserts at the bar. The ones are the bar remind me of something you can get Asian buffet.

Overall, I believe Okinawa Asian cuisine definitely has some kinks to workout, and I would definitely give them a second chance after a month or two. I can tell they were swamped. At the end of our meal, the manager stated that they had a couple of call outs, so I understand. They were still on their soft opening, and she apologized for the service and thanked us for our patience. I will come back and give another review. It was just an off day

Tuna tower, golden buns, and the eel sashimi was the best.

3/17/25 update This is our second time being here and everything is much better. All the food is still really good. I would definitely recommend the Ahi tuna tower, gyoza, katsu chicken, eel/smoked salmon sashimi, and red dragon roll. Alice was our server and she is absolutely phenomenal. She's really attentive and overall was great. Vibes are still great...

Did you know Arlington has a history with AYCE sushi dating back to at least the early 2010s?

There once existed two competing locations offering nearly the same menu, both doing super low-budget $10-15 range sushi buffets. Only one still stands today on S. Cooper near their own ramen spot. Hint: 🥷

Fast forward to late 2024 and we finally have two more competitors in the Arlington ring but fighting at higher weight classes battling for those mid-range dollars at around $20-$30pp. Thankfully the food quality has also risen for those price points. While there's no ama ebi, toro/chutoro, or ikura to be found at either location, I still think it's very much worth the price due to the vastness of the other menu choice options.

The twist here is that there's no getting the food yourself (well except for dessert at this one) like you would expect to at chinese food buffets, nope here you instead order what you want from a huge menu and you let your server know what all you want to try--its unlimited obviously but usually it's good to get up to 5 or 6 items at a time as the norm. Ordering more than that at once can result in receiving too many plates that might not all fit the table so it's a good number to start with but they do come and go quickly since each roll arrives as four pieces at a time. Probably to encourage more tastings, sharing, and trying out more items from the menu.

I enjoyed the Okinawa noodles which surprisingly turned out just to be a version of peanut sauce noodles. Wish they'd add sliced cucumber and sesame seeds to it for texture boost though, maybe I'll ask next time.

The atmosphere is nice, completely changed from what it used to be when it was a soup and salad buffet. The host is super cute and friendly. This would make a great date spot and I can see it being busy on weekends.

Is this place authentic to Okinawan cuisine? Hell no haha but for what it is it's fun and def worth a try for new or...

My wife and I are always looking for various new AYCE Places for sashimi and nigiri. The staff and host were nice at the front. Our server had a terrible attitude and wasn’t friendly at all, but that’s not what I’m here to review. The food was go god awfully bad that I’ll never go here again. The sashimi was dry. The snapper was almost like fish jerky. There weren’t many people there and I get why. I was visiting my home town for a nice lunch and we were both grossed out. Again, the host and appearing to be manager appeared to be nice, but I felt like the dude that was waiting our table was mad at us from the moment he saw we existed lol. We are polite, we always tip, but this was crazy. Again, I know in a busy place (they weren’t busy) that service can be stressful, but we ask nothing. We clean as we go and make it easy for the staff. We order minimally. We don’t waste food and we are polite. I left here legitimately grossed out by the food. That was the worst part haha. Hoping that they can fix their issues, but this place is not for me. I was of course never giving any grief when we dined there, as it’s crazy to do that type of thing. We quietly ate (what we could stomach) and left, wishing that our pricey lunch excursion was spent elsewhere. I did get a nice new fishing pole at the old Academy I grew up going to as a kid though lol. That’s the one positive I can say.

Please don’t spend your hard earned money here. Make the extra short trip to go to Japan House or Ohayo in Lewisville. No, I don’t work for those establishments. I do online SEO for a living. Just monumentally better experiences.

Again, I’m not a Karen/ken, but for me to leave a review, it’s gotta be really,...