Chiharu Sushi & Noodle — Restaurant in Brookline

Went here because the rating seemed high but wow…sadly won’t be coming again unless some major changes are made. We arrived at 6:59 for a 7pm reservation. They point to our table, which looked clean and cleared but told us to wait because they needed to set the new dishes. This took probably 10 minutes, but when someone comes on time for their reservation, I think it’s reasonable that the staff would be able to see you immediately. We stood awkwardly by the door/bench but there wasn’t even enough room for 4 people to sit there so my dad ended up sitting in one of the chairs that belonged to a different table. Finally we were seated. Our table was sticky. Waters took a while to materialize. Our waiter looked like some high school kid and was either brand new at this line of work or could have cared less. He took a long time to come take our orders even though we made eye contact with him several times. When he took orders it seemed like we were inconveniencing him, like he did not want to be there. My mom made a simple request to see if they had any plum wine (because most Japanese places worth their salt have it) and the waiter was dismissive. She had to ask a second time to get him to walk the 10 feet over to the sushi bar to ask the head chef (?) or someone else. The sushi was meh, nothing to write home about. I couldn’t tell if the entire time we were there they were simply understaffed or what. Staff were scurry about but not much was getting done. Waters were filled like once during our entire meal. There was food on the floor from a previous customer that they took a while to sweep up. An older woman from the back was frequently pulling the host lady to go back and do other things not directly related to the customers sitting at the tables. Also seemed like they were trying to man their delivery feed at the same time, which further distracted our waiter. And to top it off, the next morning my wife had clear food poisoning (vomiting and diarrhea). I would not recommend anyone go here until they can get better waitstaff/service and upgrade their...

Atmosphere: This is a relatively small restaurant. There are three 4-person tables, two 2-person tables, and four bar seats in front of the sushi chefs. They played some lively jazz music the last time I was here.

Parking: There is no parking lot of parking in front of the restaurant. There is some metered parking around the corner or parking on the street behind the restaurant.

Noodles: I've had their homestyle beef noodle soup. has udon noodles, about ten generous pieces of tender beef brisket, spring greens, bean sprouts, half of a small shiitake mushroom, and some small slices of a pickled vegetable. A couple of notes to be aware of: 1) This is not the same as the beef brisket you'd expect in an American bbq place. 2) Noodle and ramen dishes are in the same category, and this has udon noodles, not ramen noodles.

Sushi: The salmon sushi is good. The smoked eel sushi surprisingly came with a generous amount of avocado slices and was also sprinkled with sesame seeds. The eel was cleaned perfectly, not a single bone. The sushi rice holds together well. The...

My fiancé and I really enjoy sushi from this restaurant. I usually get salmon and tuna rolls with cucumber. The sweet potato rolls are the best in the city. On several occasions,I’ve also ordered the Unagi Don. I’ve always found the seafood to be very fresh and the meals to be very tasty. The sushi is a very good value for the area in my opinion. We are approaching double digits for the amount of times we’ve eaten here and have no intentions on stopping. I really encourage you to support this local, small business as it saddens me when businesses that offer a good value aren’t able to sustain being in the area. I hope you enjoy Chiharu as much as we do!

Update: As of August, 2021, this is still the best sushi place I’ve ever had. My favorite used to be Sapporo‘s in Portland, Maine. Recently I went back to Sapporo‘s and the sushi is delicious, but it is not as good as Chiharu‘s. One of the most delicious rolls at Chiharu’s is their sweet...