Kura Revolving Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Cupertino

Only come here if you love ipad. We had 5 people so it was hard to share 1 ipad (in booth). You have to be sitting on the inside of the booth so the people on outside cannot see i pad (and it is a little high so only tall people can order?

The reason I give low score is nothing was explained....seem like no waitress ( except one person who avoided explaining anything). That is why I said only come here if you enjoy sharing 1 ipad. The advantage is the conveyor belt but you have no idea how much everything is. I later found out that each plate is 3.95 but the sushi is so tiny. I dont think we ate very much as half the conveyor was empty. Alot of the sushi were very small, even the California rolls ( you get 4 tiny pieces). And the nigiri is Rice with hardly any raw fish.

The only way this place might be worth it is if you order Udon which i have no idea how much it is. Because we hardly ate any sushi and our bills came to over 100 dollars for snacks ( 123 dollars). At Hokkaido buffet you only pay $ 21 for lunch and it is All you can eat ( plus you get unlimited tempura too there). The only disadvantage is Hokkaido does have tons of California rolls but they also have Fried shrimp rolls and fresh tempura type rolls. At Hokkaido their nigiri is sometimes small but they give less rice and fish just seem a little bigger there.

I think we did not eat very much, that is why I was surprised our bills was over 100 dollars. Reading other people's review, they also complain it is a little overpriced. There are other better deals out there for Japanese food. You can go Tokyo Central ( Marukai?) supermarket and get much bigger raw fish on your Nigiri....at Tokyo Central ( supermarket) you get Huge pieces of Salmon or Tuna for less than $ 16 dollars or Tuna for much less.

Another better place is Azuma. They give you thick slices of Nigiri. They dont have 3.95 dishes but the dishes they have are good quality. The quantity at Azume is bigger and you basically get more protein. Another good Udon place is Uzumakiya? on Blaney & Bollinger. They dont have sushi at Uzumakiya but you get delicious Udon and you get alot more Tempura. For example at Uzumakiya you get alot more shrimp tempura for only $ 9.

Im just saying that dont get ripped off paying 3.95 for tiny tiny plates of food. Some of the plates dont even have 4 pc only has one piece of fish. My sister was stupid enough to take 2 of the dishes with only one tiny piece of fish on it. And some of the plates have tiny tiny Rainbow roll ( only 3 tiny pieces).....so you end up paying alot more since you have to take many plates to get full. We only got one prize ( other people review you get prize for every 15 plates....so that is why I got suspicious maybe we got overcharged as Mom & I hardly ate any food).

The only thing that might be worth it is try the mackeral ( it was Ok, pretty good). because at Hokkaido buffet the mackeral sometimes good but sometimes not. At Uzumakya I heard they have super good mackeral and you get bigger piece I think but they limit to serving only 10 per day.

The only thing good is this place is better than Mikiya. Mikiya is another rip off place where they charge you 55 per person and their Wagyu is not good for $ 55 per per person ( I think Mikiya is only good if you get the 100 dollar per person deal) so this place ( Kura) is less of rip off than Mikiya but still kind of rip off for the tiny tiny dishes. At least here at Kura you can try bad Wagyu and it only cost 3.95 ( I dont recomend the beef here). Anyhow, I think the only way this place might be worth your time and money is if you get either ramen or Udon so you dont end up eating over 50 dollars of sushi for each person. Just go to stevens creek Tokyo Central supermarket and get thick fish Nigiri for $ 16 or even Mitsuwa supermarket food court has ikura& salmon special...you get way more ikura ( I dont know if they still have that special...at Mitsuwa for only $ 17 big bowl of rice with ikura & salmon). Or just go Hokkaido buffet if you like California roll & tempura ( &...

I'm a big eater and my fav food is sushi. Whenever I visit Kura Sushi, I spend around 100 dollars avg between two people pretty easily. I'm really spoiled in terms of sushi 'cos I spent almost 2 decades in East Asia alone eating decent sushi every other day. So my sushi reviews are always harsh, even when I eat at highly rated sushi restaurants in Japan..... So keep that in mind.

Kura sometimes has bad days where their sushi tastes really off/fishy. Sushi should never have that taste if it's fresh. Leave early if it's one of those days. Most other days, it's fresh enough that Kura Sushi is known as the place to go to enjoy fresh sushi in the area. That being said, you won't know what fish selection will be available that day. It usually feels somewhat limited so I'll usually end up eating just 2-3 types of fish repeatedly per visit. Their rice is a hit or miss. Sometimes it's perfect, other times it's a crumbly mess, once it tasted like it was actually going bad so I threw it away. Sometimes their fish is still frozen, at times you get worse fish by ordering directly rather than getting it off the conveyor belt. So the keyword for Kura is "inconsistency."

The restaurant is hard to reach if you don't have a car. There's nothing to really do in the area (just other places to eat), so the fact that lately you have to go in person to put your name down and wait for an hour or more is tedious. Before, you could reserve a table online, but rn you can't for the San Jose restaurant.

They have a cute mini game where you get a random gift that rolls out above your head in those little plastic coloured balls for every 15 plates and before that a little animated cartoon plays on the screen. Sometimes the machine breaks. It ruins the mood when they have to bring you the toy/gift themselves so I saw that they made a little box to put your hand in and pick one for tables where the machine is broken. I thought that was awesome (esp for the kids). You can buy those little gifts separately too via the menu screen. Sometimes they have promotions going on where they give you bigger gifts for spending a specific amount that runs on top of that mini game they always have. Both smaller and bigger gifts are related to the current promo/collab. They recently ended their demon slayer promo which seemed super popular. The photo you see is the phone stand gift we got for spending over 100usd (that's including tax etc so you don't have to eat 100usd of sushi alone). You can check for those promos/dates on Kura Sushi's website. They do run out of stock for everything eventually so it's better to go earlier than later on those event dates.

Despite everything, it's fun to try out all their different menu options. They added an automated server robot that brings you drinks etc which is cute. I've only really seen variants of them at airports before. Anyway, it's a pretty fun time with the mini game and the revolving sushi so I eat here a few times whenever I visit San Jose.

Side note: Last time I visited, there was a group of Chinese ladies in their 20-30s at the table behind us (possibly tourists like me?) forcibly gripping the plate covers, opening a bunch somehow and not taking the plates... it was ridiculous. It's a health hazard so I wish staff would pay more attention.

The plates are confusing to pull out of the cover when you first use Kura Sushi, so ask for help if you don't get how to. There are helpful signs and images telling you how at the tables too. My best advice is to grab the plate and push down against the brown base of the device the plate is placed in with your fingers never touching the lid itself. And the fingers holding the plate would pull the plate up at the same time. This actually auto releases the lid. It's intuitive, but can feel confusing and...

ADDITIONAL NOTE - I got a reply on this review about 2 hours after posting. I'm impressed at how quickly the review was noticed and hopefully some of the issues will be taken care of the next time we visit. I honestly have such a love/hate relationship with Kura Sushi. I guess I can sum it up as such: "Come for the experience, but not for the food". First off, steel yourself - the wait, even with reservations, is ridiculous. You can only make a reservation through their app and even if make a reservation - say at 6:30 - you may find yourself having to wait an hour to get a seat. The reservation system is ridiculously flawed, and honestly, if my kid didn't want to eat here this badly, I would've left the line.

The experience eating here is an absolute delight. The sushi revolves by each table/counter, you can order directly from the screen at your seat and it will be delivered on a separate conveyor belt above the revolving sushi conveyor, there is a nifty little plate return that keeps track of how much food you're shoving down your gullet, there's a adorable little robot that delivers drinks around the restaurant, and for every 15 plates your party finishes, you get a capsule toy (we got adorable little DC Comic magnets).

Now the food...it's honestly about as good as Safeway sushi. The rice is heavily packed and shaped using a mold, the fish is fresh but ridiculously thin, and because they're revolving around the restaurant, fried rolls are normally pretty soggy by the time you get it. I've found that ordering handrolls is the way to go - they may take a bit longer, but the fried ingredients will be piping hot, and if you like sushi such as the spicy tuna rolls, you'll get WAY more tuna in that hand roll than you will in the two piece nigiri offered. That said, avoid the spicy tuna, it's minced down so finely, the texture is super unappealing (hello cat food country). As for variety, it's pretty decent and the kid loved grabbing what she wanted off the conveyor belt herself.

The tables are not particularly clean and I absolutely dreaded touching the soy sauce and ginger containers. Our soy sauce container was oddly sticky and leaking and the ginger container wasn't much better. After observing a server clearing a table, I noticed they barely wiped them down. Given how many kids sit at these tables, you are probably touching containers that many little hands have played with. Don't even get me started on how gross the plate returns look - that's where the servers shove all the bits left on your table into.

Finally, the service....because it's a conveyor belt sushi place, don't expect to see your server much except when the bill is to be paid. Most of these kids are friendly enough, but they're usually standing around chatting with each other a lot - perplexing to say the least when an 18% tip is requested.

For two people with 15 plates eaten, we paid around $65 before tip with only water requested. Again - if you're looking for quality sushi, you can get WAY better sushi with actual service elsewhere at a similar or better price. HOWEVER, just for experience, you probably won't find conveyor sushi anywhere outside of Japan, so you get what you get. As long you can handle the wait, it's a fun place to eat, but I will likely stick with other sushi restaurants when I'm feeling like satisfying a...