Jin Jin Fusion — Restaurant in Panama City Beach

My wife and I ate at Jin Jin Fusion last night, and we were literally blown away by the food. The atmosphere is very relaxing, with nice decor, excellent attention to detail, it's all there. The real star is the food! We ordered the tuna tartare and the happy family hunan style. We are very familiar with what you'd call "typical" Asian fusion fare, and this is decidely NOT it! In a very god way! Both dishes were absolutely mouth-wateringly great, and the stir fry in particular caught my attention especially - both for what it was, and what it wasn't. What I noticed right away was it didn't come smothered in MSG-sauce. It came with just enough of really delicious, smooth and light brown sauce I could tell was homemade. The veggies were crisp and fresh, real scallions instead of just onion slices, fresh herbs and spices, tender, juicy, high-quality beef, shrimp and chicken, the works. I like my food really spicy, and my wife doesn't so much. I told the server that I'd like real peppers/chiles chopped and cooked into the meal, not chile paste, but actual chiles. It came out perfect, and I can tell you this does not happen very often at all. It's usually over-spicy to the point the food cannot be eaten by my wife, or they just sprinkle dried pepper flakes all over, or they use the chile paste anyway. In this case, the food itself was mild and delicious, and the chopped peppers were good and hot...meaning both of us were perfectly happy with the meal. She could avoid the peppers and I could eat them with the other items. Again, this is usually NOT the case.

I've ordered this same type of dish plenty of times all over the world, and I can tell you that the chef at this place would be right at home in any of the finest Asian fusion eateries in New York, L.A., Tokyo, Dubai, literally anywhere you can get 5-star food if you want to pay the price. It's that good. And these prices are very moderate, under $15/plate for what we ordered. All these check marks make Jin Jin Fusion a solid go-to for anyone with a family craving some quality Asian cuisine at a decent price. We'll back back every time we come to PCB for sure! Well done, thank you for getting it...

Despite the 4 star rating, I would have to kindly disagree. Our waiter didn’t say hello or introduce himself like the usual introductions, he approached us and stuttered as if his mind went blank. It was awkward. We ordered a Modelo and he brought us a Michelob Ultra. We ordered one Kani salad and he brought us 3 and insisted that’s what we ordered. Mind you this is all you can eat but you can possibly get charged for not clearing your plates so it was a bit upsetting. If I was alone, he would have made me second guess myself about ordering incorrectly but there was 5 of us and I was the only one who ordered a kani salad. The octopus salad is probably a lot faster to make than 5 sushi rolls but it came towards the end. It was also disappointing bc it was few, cut up tiny pieces of baby octopus with a LOAD of shredded cucumber. The fried sushi was overstuffed with cream cheese so you couldn’t taste anything else. The carpaccios would taste better if they used the proper soy sauce. It looked like they used the black Chinese cooking soy sauce for everything which was overbearing, even the miso soup was too salty and tasted more like soy sauce than miso. There are different types of soy sauce for different dishes and they definitely didn’t pair them correctly. The clear soup tasted like those seasoning packages you get from ramen noodles. Also, not cool that they refused to give us sashimi, if we ordered the raw fish it is required to be on a bed of rice. That’s just too filling. Also, with the hibachi and teriyaki it is required to come with rice and veggies and cannot be ordered without it. Don’t you agree that’s a little ridiculous? I am from Houston and we have a ton of all you can eat sushi and none has such requirements. Of course they’re strategically trying to overstuff you with rice so you can’t finish your food and be charged extra fees. Or not eat a lot to get your moneys worth. At least that’s how I take it. I like exploring new restaurants but this will be our first and last visit. Almost forgot to mention, the calamari was soggy and drenched in oil as well as the gyoza. I took a pic so you can see the excess oil...

Driving thru, we kept seeing Jin Jin signs for a buffet. On a Tuesday late afternoon, we arrived at Jin Jin Fusion, thinking it was the Jin Jin buffet that post advertised on the billboards. Next to Jin Jin Fusion is Jin Jin 88, which was closed on Tuesdays (I think). This really confused us and our server, who was awesome - told us that there are multiple Jin Jin’s in the area and non of them have the same ownership. Ummm, okay. But, we are looking for AYCE!!! Our server was like, you found the best sushi AYCE!

We are very familiar with AYCE ordering. I really would rather have ordering style vs buffet. To me, it is cleaner and fresher. Anyway, our server was very proficient in the art of AYCE ordering, giving suggestions and hints how to enjoy AYCE. When taking our roll orders, she did give feedback as she said she wanted us to enjoy every roll and NOT have to pay for something left on our plate.

When the first rolls came out, VERY VERY impressive! Large cuts of uber fresh fish. Excellent presentation and our server was on it, making sure we were doing well, refilling drinks, chit chatting! Overall an excellent experience, I would give it 10...