UMI SUSHI & SEAFOOD BUFFET — Restaurant in Houston

This review will cover two visits I made over the weekend. If I have to summarize my experience; it would be good but inconsistent.

Check in is through a tablet. Don't bother waiting for the text message: they were never sent. Luckily we were in the lobby when we heard it shouted out by the hosts.

Wait time was not that long: around five minutes for both occasions when I had a party of two on Saturday and a party of five on Sunday.

Seating is divided into the outdoor and indoor sections, depending on what spaces are available. The previous occupant of the space was a bar. Fountain drinks are included in the buffet ($38.99 weekends).

The buffet being from the east coast has no Mexican but a little bit of American style food. That was a nice change of pace.

I made a beeline for the sushi area as it was less crowded; the seafood area was constantly torn apart by the demographic it was catering to. The sushi rolls and the Nigri were quite large, if fact too large. You will definitely have to bite twice to eat a portion. The rice while firm was not well seasoned if at all, I could not taste any vinegar or sweetness in the rice.

The sashimi was placed individually on small aluminum platters, which was odd and a bit wasteful. Quality of the fish was above average. The fish was haphazardly cut, I saw some platters with small torn bits of fish in them. The fish eggs were ok but were slightly dried out from being out too long. Also there were raw scallops served on Sunday, but were replaced with shredded octopus the next day. Both the sushi and sashimi areas were constantly replenished with food.

I then made my way to the main attractions: the snow crab, oysters, and the lobster. Not surprisingly, there is a free for all for each of them. Be sure to give a good elbow to those greedy people who grab two plates of these. Here are a couple observations for each seafood item:

Snow Crab: The flesh is extremely soggy and brakes apart easily. I think what they did was they were placed in hot water and then chilled to remove some of the salt. Would be nice if the put that water in the seafood soup.

Oysters are in the medium side. Pretty fresh.

Lobster: I think they are“Large”size ones They are chopped up in pieces,deep fried and stir fired with ginger and garlic. Had no flavour Saturday; it was fixed the following day. It was constantly being wiped out Saturday until someone had a great idea to place it behind the grill counter with the short ribs and lamb. They had an uncle serving it out three pieces at a time. Excellent method of portion control!

More observations:

The abalone is served in small ramekins with garlic and vermicelli.

The steamed flounder was excellent, I had plenty of that.

The only reference to the local palate was the the crab, shrimp and crawfish boil that was near the sushi area. It is a must try, it is not too spicy and has a nice fake butter flavour to it.

Oddly, no one touched the battered frog legs or the snails both times I was there.

I had the ramen, which took about 10 minutes of waiting to get. In my opinion not worth the wait. Noodles were firm, that was a plus The egg had a chinese herbal flavour and the pork belly was nicely grilled but not much else to it. Most disappointing was the broth: I suspect they actually put cream of “_” as an ingredient, but it was definitely not tokonsu style soup I chose.

Other items of interest as the Charbroiled short ribs and lamb chops. Plus they have griddled salmon steaks as well. They were only seasoned with salt.

The duck was of the steamed herbal variety, it was quite tough. If you like chewing you food for a bit, this is for you.

On Saturday they had Thai tea in the coolers; the next day this was replaced with passion fruit tea.

In terms of comparison with other restaurants, I would say it is similar to Feast Buffet on Fry Road. The food is of a slightly better quality, but a bit inconsistent. As mentioned before it is a truly Asian buffet, so it is worth a visit for the unique dishes you wont find...

TL;DR Unmet expectations, subpar food varieties, unprofessional service for the price. Quality is better than estar but similar to Tokyo Japan sushi buffet

Detailed Due Diligence Report: Main Pro - Atmosphere and more varieties than other buffets in Houston (just the lobster, ramen, oysters, oxtail, crab legs) Main Cons - Reduced quality and service

5 topics, 5 ratings, here's my analysis: Atmosphere: 4/5 Amazing decor and vertical space, not enough lobby space for 4-5 full families. About 30 minute wait during peak hours.

Service: 2/5 (Optional) Person that guided us to our table rolled their eyes when we reverified our queue. The table we sat at was in a narrow hallway in a corner that can only sit 4 people, so we needed an extra chair. Another server helped us with empty dishes and refills but only seen him twice during the whole buffet. No interaction during the second half of our time. My dad had to bring trash to the people responsible for cleaning tables since it was so busy and our table was building plates.

Texture & Quality: 2/5 Sashimi - 1/5, Tuna tasted funky and smelled like it sat out for awhile. Pepper tuna had no taste besides pepper, literally. Escolar was bland and almost had no buttery flavor. Scallops did not taste sweet but had delicate texture. Arctic clam was bland, lightly chewy. Octopus was only saved by soy sauce.

Fried lobster/crab legs - 3/5, there was only lobster claws and it was almost impossible to open. Overcooked but the flavor was decent. Crab legs were underwhelming with its flavor.

Snow Crab Legs/Oysters - 3/5, Snow Crab Legs were so SALTY, my parents and I thought it was to have people eat the crab legs less often. Even with lemon it didn't taste right. Oysters saved the day as it had a clean taste and lemon gave a nice acidity.

Thai Tea/Passion Fruit - 4/5, Thai Tea lives up to its name and Passion Fruit a 5/5 only due to the right amount of sweetness.

Sushi - 2/5, had one of each sushi but rice was stale and some were cold. One sushi had slimy substance underneath its flesh and I instinctively spit it out on a napkin. Quality is similar to a $20-$25 AYCE buffet. Only the eel sushi was memorable due to its highly concentrated flavor.

Berry cheesecake/Tiramisu/Matcha Cake - 2/5, matcha cake was literally flavorless, only tasted like cake, but green. Tiramisu had thick coffee powder on top that coats your teeth and mouth, almost no flavor too. Berry cheesecake saves the day with its heavy berry flavor and cheesecake texture.

From my family's POV: My brother had crawfish that looked like they were frozen, steak was overcooked or whatever meat they got from the bar. I honestly felt bad for my brother as I told him to make it worth the 30 minute wait we had in restaurant queue.

Price: 1/5 Alternatives to $40 includes Korean bbq and hotpot, plates of barbacoa tacos, or bowls of ramen. Expected a value of $40, not subpar crab legs, sashimi, and sushi. I didn't even try the ramen or oxtail (my dad said it's okay) due to my disappointment. Despicable place for their prices.

Overall Rating: 2/5 Assume being a devil's advocate, of course I didn't try everything but that doesn't justify the quality I received. Going on a busy day, a packed restaurant needs consistent quality and they have failed to do so. Other people love this place, I agree, but everyone has different experiences; some, it's their first time. Others, their 100th time who knows, but my experience is as different as everyone else's. Subpar food, unmet expectations, just a disappointment in general that it took me 19 hours to rough draft and finalize my review. It's that bad. Many high reviews are deceiving given my family's experience here. Wouldn't be surprised that the restaurant comments in our reviews do nothing with our feedback as there has been a long line of negative reviews. Here's a related SpongeBob quote: "We've been duped! Bamboozled! We've been speckledorfed! That's not even a word but I...

I honestly cannot express the immense amount of disappointment that I had with this place. And not only have I been to several of their locations not in Houston, Texas. That were an absolute delight and very different than this one. When I saw the one in Houston open up on Westheimer. I was so excited to go. I am a big influencer and I was planning on filming which I did do a little bit of and I’m contemplating whether or not to post the videos of What I had I really don’t like leaving bad reviews or saying anything negative but the amount of money that I spent today is honestly appalling for the food quality that will most likely hospitalize people if they went to the buffet today. My husband and I are really big into trying new places and we are both and have been in the restaurant business for over 20 years. I cannot explain how much of a disappointment it is to be charged for dinner hours during lunch and an extra fee for holiday hours whatever that means. When it’s not Christmas Valentine’s Day or real holiday hours and times or days When it is literally George Washington‘s birthday you should not be charged a much higher amount for dinner or a holiday hour when you go for a slow Monday lunch. That is the first mistake they made. They will lie straight to your face and tell you that they told you I went to the bathroom and they did not tell my husband that it was that price for what we were going in if you were going to up charge people you need to look them straight in the face and say ma’am it is going to be $40 a person right now. To every party that walks in that door. I was not told. That is the biggest mistake they made. From the get-go so to my surprise when I got the bill for the absolutely world’s, worst quality of food I have ever put into my mouth the only thing that was edible that I could keep down was the pineapples The rice looked like it had been out for four days. It was not edible. The tuna tasted like it had full-blown chemicals on it. They use the sauce to cover up the smell and the quality of the food and how old the food is. this place is not fresh. I am so disappointed that I spent my hard earned money on this place. I would not go if I was you. I’m so disappointed in how the staff handled me questioning the bill. The manager was nowhere to be found. I would not even be happy if they wrote me a check For triple the amount of what I paid and how much I spent and how far I drove to try to have a nice date with my husband. I’ve never left a restaurant and got in my car with tears of frustration until today. I will see if my followers want me to do a live and full-blown video regarding this experience but like I said, I don’t like shining the light on negative things. This one though I really hope someone doesn’t spend their hard earned money like me and leave and disappointment. Or possibly end up with food...