Gen Kai Sushi — Restaurant in Dana Point

Monday Dec 19, 2022 We arrived about 6pm at Gen Kai Sushi, our friends recommended it, and said ( Won’t regret if you do/will if you don’t). Intrigued me since I’ve been called a foodie by my friends who know me. We were seated right away.

The place is really noisy and very difficult to hear each other much less hear the Server. Personally, I prefer less noise, but hey I’m here for the food. Gen Kai has been around for over 40 years at this location. It was busy so of course it was a good sign.

When I am in a new place I typically ask the server “since I’m only here this one time, what do you recommend?” The server suggested the following: we added the Lobster roll.

My wife ordered the Whitefish(saute with mushroom and asparagus in a special sauce). It was accompanied with Tempura, salad, rice and more. We also ordered a Lobster Roll. (Tempura Lobster, avocado with soy paper, Tiger shrimp Mayo sauce) and Screaming O (seared tuna sashimi on top of radish noodles in a ponzu shoyu/mayo sauce, at least that’s what it looked liked). Screaming O is one of their specialty dish. Haven’t encountered it anywhere else. Dessert was Green Tea ice cream, Mango ice cream.

So how was it? The first inkling this restaurant might be exceptional started with the miso soup, your typical first encounter for a Japanese restaurant meal. If there ever was umami in miso soup, this place definitely had it. It's miso soup (was…full body, earthy, substantial taste and flavor). My wife also raved about the soup.

Now I've lived in Denver over 35 years and have tried numerous restaurants in Denver and throughout the USA, and have sipped a lot of miso soup, practically all the miso soup I’ve tasted in the past is thin, dishwater like, no flavor and no body to it. I guess I should move to California (LOL). I could have just drank a couple bowls of this miso soup and called it a night. It was superb!!

My Wife ordered the Whitefish, she wanted something different, not your typical salmon, mahi mahi, ahi ahi, etc. Since we are in California, I guess the whitefish they served might be the California tilefish ( I forgot to ask the server what type of Whitefish their chef used in this particular dish)

The whitefish was very tasty, great flavor, firm and even a bit of crispness to it when you took a bite. The chef seasoned the dish marvelously and served one of the best whitefish dishes I have tasted in a long time. We usually avoid whitefish dishes because, many times, it is a bland over cooked dish made by inexperienced cooks. Everything else that accompanied this dish, even the tempura broccoli, truly hit the spot!.

I ordered the Screaming O. Okay, my fault, I didn’t ask enough questions, such as what is the sauce. Now I believe a ponzu shoyu sauce is a very personally created flavor sauce that is made differently by each person/cook/chef.

The basic ingredients are the same but you can add, subtract, and vary the measurements of each ingredient when making the ponzu sauce, and there’s the rub that makes the flavor unique for each individual.

This particular ponzu shoyu sauce recipe didn’t excite my taste buds. However I appreciated the way the chef built the Screaming O. It was a detailed work of beauty building this dish.

All the other dishes for our dinner were simply outstanding!! Overall from start to finish, this is a 5 out of 5. I hope to come back again and try some of their other dishes, and especially look forward to tasting the...

Seldom does a restaurant experience compel me to write a review on my experience- good or bad. My experience at Gen Kai Sushi was egregiously substandard and left me with a seething sense of buyer’s remorse. The dish I had ordered was the Sashimi Dinner. This came with miso soup, rice, fish, and ice cream. The fish that was served on my sashimi plate was the lowest quality that has ever entered my mouth. I was completely shocked that a sushi chef worthy of the name would ever serve such low quality fish to a customer. I live in Utah, a landlocked state, and I frequent a Japanese restaurant that serves the highest quality of fish for 2/3 of the price. I can get a Chirashi bowl with rice, miso soup, and a lot more sashimi for $19. The disgraceful “roadkill” served to me was $30. Since the restaurant I mentioned prides themselves in serving the highest quality of food, I would assume all other Japanese restaurants would share this same sense of dignity. Not this one. I attended dinner with my father and sister, who both had nothing good to say about the slop they were served. I cannot imagine how so many people can give this slum-bucket joint anything above 2 stars. I would have given it 2 stars if they had a single redeeming quality, but they seriously do not. The two waitresses who took turns serving our table were seemingly devoid of personality and took their time. This is the only Japanese restaurant that I had visited during my time at Dana Point, therefore I cannot recommend another one. I was filled with nothing except vexation when I discovered that a restaurant located less than a mile from the Pacific Coast could serve such terrible fish. My only hope is that my review can steer some people away from this awful joke of...

I have mixed feelings about this restaurant. The service was really friendly, fast, efficient and good. The restaurant was packed on a friday night. We started our meal with the Miso soup. It was overall good, but I felt it may have been a bit too salty and grainy for my liking. We then had the fried gyoza as an appetizer. It had a strange pork like mushy texture for the filling. It tasted good, but weird texture. Our entrees included the Spider roll, which was really nice and delicious. The pork Katsu meal was really good as well. it included a salad, fruit , rice and a sauce for the Katsu. The salad had the normal Japanese ginger,carrot,cucumber dressing. In my opinion, it tasted "off" and not like the normal dressings you would generally get in other Japanese restaurants. It wasn't sweet enough and may of had too much ginger flavor. Another entree we had was the sushi and sashimi dinner. It was beautifully presented and the sushi roll (california imitation crab?) was good. The sashimi pieces of salmon, white fin tail, shrimp and tuna were good and fresh. My only criticism was that they were cut way too thick to enjoy. Part of eating sashimi is the thinner slices that are delicate and will melt in your mouth. These pieces were "hacked" into chunks and thick slices. Way too thick. The last entree we had was the Chirashi. This is basically sashimi variety on top of a bowl of sushi rice. This was beautifully presented. Again my only complaint was that the sushi pieces were twice as thick as they should be, sliced. We finished our meal with a light and creamy green tea mochi ice cream. Overall, a pleasant experience and will return to try...