Roishi — Restaurant in Hamden

I chose Roishi for a lunch date. It was actually a first date with someone I met on Hinge. I live in Vermont, but drive down to Branford, CT regularly to see my parents. I am always looking for new spots to try in the New Haven area, particularly Asian/Japanese/sushi. I don’t eat beef, pork or poultry. I do eat pretty much all the creatures of the sea and Asian cuisines are perfect for that. Vermont is, honestly, a restaurant desert. We have few choices and most are not great. So I am always excited to try a new place when I’m in CT. Hamden really has quite a few places to eat and Asian restaurants are well represented.

I was specifically looking for a place with good food and good vibes. As in a nice, comfortable interior where you could potentially get to know someone over a meal. I checked out all the photos of Roishi online and I read through their menu. The interior looked nice, with booths and a bar with TVs behind. Nice, chill vibe and there were plenty of options for me on the menu.

Roishi has a full Ramen menu (which definitely was not for me on a first date…slurping my way through a huge bowl of soup! LOL) and all sorts of Bubble Tea. For those who are into Boba.

I don’t think Roishi is a chain. But the building is SO NICE I felt like maybe it took chain money to build it (LOL). It is a very new seeming, stand alone, building that is pretty much entirely glass on two sides. So you can sit in a booth right in the window. Which we did. The booths are very comfortable and there is a ton of natural light from the window. I thought it was a perfect spot for a first date: comfortable, nice, chill.

I was wanting to have some sake with my lunch and checked online to make sure they served it. They do, but they have a super limited selection. So I got one of those sort of single serving, pop top glass bottles. It was fine. Nothing great. But drinkable!

We shared a series of rolls. I ordered one or two at a time so we could talk and eat and go at our own pace. The date was going GREAT, so this approach allowed us to be there for hours and to be eating something the whole time. If your date is not going great you can just order your rolls, eat them and get out! Which is another reason why Roishi is the perfect choice for a first date.

We started out with the Baja Roll: Tuna, yellowtail, jalapeño, cilantro and tobiko inside with guacamole and crispy spring sheet with cilantro emulsion . It sounded good and it was good! The guacamole is definitely just pre mashed avocado they buy (i.e., not freshly made), but ingredients were good otherwise and the roll was well made and tasty.

Then I ordered the Roishi Roll (white tuna, yellow tail, avocado, tobiko inside green soy wrap, tuna, salmon and spicy mayo outside) and the Whitney Avenue Roll (tuna, salmon, spicy mayo, with no crunch. I do not like the crunch bits that are added to everything and it fills me up too quickly so I can’t eat as much. Plus, who amongst us needs to be eating MORE fried things??

Date was still going really well, so I ordered their vegetable roll, the salmon avocado roll and the spicy salmon roll with no crunch. Everything was really good. Super solid rolls. Well made/constructed. Properly sized and cut.

I bet the ramen is really...

My fiancé and I went to Roishi for the first time on a quiet Saturday afternoon. It was before 1 o’clock and there was only one other table seated. We were seated right away by the hostess and our server approached us shortly after.

Our first impression of the restaurant was that it was clean, thoughtfully designed, and well-decorated. The contrast of the artwork, light wood, and dark metal created a great ambience. There were wonderful floor to ceiling windows that provided excellent natural lighting. Lastly, I liked that the booths were comfortable and tall so we had privacy while dining.

We ordered 2 Thai milk teas with boba, a salmon avocado roll, tan tan ramen, and Tom yam seafood ramen. The Thai milk teas were pretty good and the boba was tasty, however, the milk to tea ratio was off so it tasted more like flavored milk than tea. The salmon avocado roll came out fast and was delicious. You could tell the quality of the salmon was present and the avocado was perfectly ripe. The tan tan ramen and tom yam seafood ramen were also delicious and served not long after we finished our salmon avocado roll.

You might be wondering if the food was so good and the restaurant ambience so attractive, why did she give the experience 3 stars? I’ve docked two stars for two important reasons. The first reason is that our server did not check in on us during our meal, and instead she was sitting at the sushi bar on her phone. We were the only table she was waiting on.

The second reason, and most important, is that there was a piece of metal in my ramen (see picture for reference). When our server finally checked in on us after we finished our meal, I kindly gave her the piece of metal that was in my ramen. She took the piece of metal and said thank you. She didn’t provide any sort reconciliation for the restaurant’s error. It would have been greatly appreciated if she expressed more concern and notified the kitchen. It’s one thing if you find a hair in your food, but if you find something like a scrap of metal in your meal, that could be a serious health hazard.

I am willing to return one more time since the food was delicious and I’d like to see the ambience...

Nothing we had was great, and the sushi was terrible. Specifically avoid the salmon crunch rolls; they have a weird texture and bad taste.

Two bao buns- not great. Overcooked pork, good veggies, with a thick sauce over them.

Tempura platter- sauce came spilled on our food; we could not flag down the server for more tempura sauce. The tempura itself was the best thing we ate.

The sushi: The salmon crunch roll was a bad texture, a bad taste, and no crunch. Neither my fiance nor I could finish ours. I ate two of 8 pieces; attempting the second with soy sauce.

The California roll was edible.

The yellowtail scallion roll had no taste, and no scallions.

All sushi had incredibly hard long grain white rice instead of sushi rice; the rice was overcooked and had no flavor; was not washed with vinegar. The seaweed wrapping the fish had no taste and no crunch.

Service: Our server was timely to take our orders and refill our waters. I was disappointed by the lack of interaction around the mostly uneaten salmon rolls- Our server did not question the mostly uneaten rolls, took them away, and it was on the final bill.

In all, it's a pretty restaurant that I would never eat at again, and all of these positive reviews must come from the ramen, since it surely can't be from the...