Hikari — Restaurant in Jersey Village

UPDATE: During our latest visit on July 22, 2023, the cuisine was quite underwhelming and much worse than expected. The sashimi didn't even taste the same anymore. While it would be rash to pass judgement because of this, at the very least, it shows that Hikari has all the same problems as Asakusa in Fort Wayne: A place that can be good, but is wildly inconsistent.

As such, I have to knock this place down to the tier of "below expectations".

---------- ORIGINAL REVIEW ----------

Cheap and good sushi in HOUSTON? No freaking way!

So I used an UberEats promo to get myself an Avobomb and a sashimi combination on the affordable, fully expecting suburb-class sushi. After all, this summer's been hell on the sweats, and I really needed some cold food to cool my tongue.

And lo and behold they actually brought me the gouda cheesefish (what I call good hamachi). The only other place I've been to in the U.S. that has gouda cheesefish is Sushi Ukai in the great Chicagoland.

Now, is it the best sashimi I've ever tasted? Heck no. I'd be kidding myself to suggest that it's in the same class as Sushi Ukai or Sushi Hokkaido Sachi in Saigon. But the fact that it's even close is already quite commendable, considering how this set is like $2.25 per piece, UberEats sale notwithstanding. Each piece is also cut quite long and thin: Big, yet easy to digest, unlike the usual blocks of coldwater wrapped in protein fibers that so often adorn the prime real estate of American strip malls.

You see, a good piece of fish should have its own unique, distinctly defined flavor. One may think that raw fish would taste like freshwater for the most part, which is true in any place named "Sakura" or "Fuji". However, in actuality: salmon should taste soft and creamy, tuna bold and savory, escolar smooth and buttery, octopus fresh and chewy, albacore sharp and sardinish, tai (red snapper) like nothing at all, and hamachi (yellowtail) for some reason tastes like gouda cheese. All of which describe the sashimi set at Hikari perfectly. A light down the infinite highway of Houston, indeed. ("Hikari" means light, by the way.)

Oh, and uh, the avocado bomb is good too, I guess. It's one of those American-style over-engineered and deep-fried appetizers that I enjoy in a vacuum, but would rather not write much about.

TL;DR...

Probably learnt my lesson for picking a random place for lunch because I was so hangry! Honestly, food wasn’t so bad but service was clearly their biggest issue. It’s a small mom and pop shop so I figured it would be friendlier but kinda got the. Cold shoulders from the 2 waitress that day. When we walked in, it was supper dark in there! Rather gloomy and depressing looking. As we sat, waitress kind of just walked off. Then finally came time to order, she didn’t seem to write down any of our orders. So after placing our order, she legit ask “so what was your order again” holy cow.. I was like in disbelief.. Didn’t you just nod and say okay to what we just ordered and now have to repeat ourselves again?! WOW unbelievable.

So 10 mins gone by, another waitress comes over and kinda just randomly placed two soups and two salads down. We didn’t order them. miso soup was okay, salad was different. Extremely tangy. Barely touched it, just placed it aside. Oh well no explanations. Food was mediocre. Spicy udon wasn’t very spicy and the noodles were too chewy. A little too al dente for me. I enjoyed my spicy chopped scallops because you really can’t mess that up! But the Ice Roll was horrible. It was nothing like the description or the picture. It was like eating a sweet dessert more so than a sushi roll. Horribly disappointed. So I had waved down the waitress so I can order something else to eat. Well bc frankly, at that point I only ate 2 pieces of scallops.. She was upset that I didn’t like the roll. Even though it was voided off the ticket, she was not kind about it. So after that fail attempt at sushi, I just ordered shrimp tempura..I figured it would be accompany with some rice or veggies but nope. Just 4 pieces of shrimp and tempura sauce. $12 is quite pricey for 4 pieces! It tasted fine. Well I left very disappointed and still very much so hungry. I went to Burger King...

e walked in last night at 9 PM and as soon as we walk through the door I see a server throw her hands in the air out of frustration. There was nobody else in the restaurant so at first I thought she was happy someone finally came in... as soon as we sit down the waiter says “late dinner?”. She takes our drink order and comes back within 2 minutes and asks if we’re ready. I told her we haven’t had a chance to look at the menu yet and need a few more minutes. She replies with “well we close at 10” by this time it’s barely 9:05. My boyfriend and I look at each other and I told the server that we will just leave because at that point we felt unwelcome. She gives me an excuse saying she wants to make sure they have enough time to cook our food and asks me why I’m mad but from seeing her reaction when we walked in and the side comments from the time we sat down just turned us off. I am a previous server so I understand it’s frustrating for customers to walk in 15 minutes before closing but we were there an hour before. Another couple walked in right before we left so she could have made the double the tips if she would have been...