Toku Revolving Sushi — Restaurant in Lexington

I'll preface this by saying I've had conveyor belt sushi in Japan, at multiple American Kura locations, and now at a number of non-chain American revolving sushi restaurants.

This one, at least right now... is just okay.

We went on Sunday night and were seated right away. It was pretty busy. The server who seated us only gave us instructions on how to open the containers on the belt and that we could order on the tablet. There were no instructions on earning gacha toys, that many items come from the restaurant next door, or that clicking "bill" on the tablet does not end your order. The server who served us - brought our drinks and non-belt food items - seemed to be serving half of the restaurant. We had only 1 dish for wasabi or soy sauce for 5 people until we were almost done eating, regardless of asking for dishes each time the server visited the table (probably 6 times). We only got one refill on our drinks, and when one of our party spilled their water everywhere, no server stopped to help clean it up or even offer a towel... and they were never brought another water. I understand that this place is newer but please make sure that you have staff that knows what they're doing, know what to tell people about the tablet system, AND have enough of them to cover a weekend shift. Our server was incredibly harried and I don't blame them, considering how many tables they were covering.

The sushi was okay. The presentation was good on most of the plates. The rice sometimes fell apart and the cuts of fish varied in size and quality. There was a good variety of sushi on the conveyor belt (both nigiri and rolls), though some items took a long time to be replenished. I appreciated having seared salmon mayo as an option, but the cuts of salmon were enormous (not the best flavor-wise). Some things had weird after-tastes. There is no explanation of ingredients for rolls on the tablets or online, which was fine for us because we could identify most things. However, it might be an issue for pickier eaters and customers who are less familiar with sushi rolls.

The atmosphere was great for the most part. I love all the hanging scrolls and the murals throughout the two restaurants. Most people there seemed to be having a good time. The cars they have to deliver sushi worked great for us, though the amount of time it took to receive items varied wildly. The plate drop off worked fine, though the loud CLUNK each plate made wasn't ideal; at other places, the plates drop into water and are more quiet. Some of the empty plate containers on the belt were dirty though, or backwards, or didn't open properly, and were not removed while we were there. Also, there are typos (Godzilla → Gadzilla, Sesame → Saseme ) , and some things - like the capsule / gacha / "Lucky Draw" system - are only in Chinese.

So an explanation on the capsule / gacha / "Lucky Draw" system... every ten plates you are supposed to earn a prize dispensed above the conveyor belt. You click Lucky Draw on the tablet, it shows a short video, and you get a capsule. A capsule was left behind when we arrived, and there were no more on the machine. In fact, the machine kept audibly whirring the last 20 minutes or so we were there trying to dispense a capsule. When we told the server we were supposed to get four prizes but the machine was empty, they brought us just one. The capsules were not themed to the restaurant or to Asia in general; they were just toys you might get out of any American quarter machine. I honestly don't think they need the capsules; prizes like a free plate or one of the small plushes they have at the front would be better options for 20-30 plates.

I hope they can iron out the kinks here over time and with more experience. It's not a bad place to go if you're looking for a conveyor belt sushi experience, but it's not as good as...

I love that Lexington got another conveyor belt sushi (after a decade of losing the last one) but this is not great. The conveyor had mostly fried rolls (sad panda), no nigiri’s, and mostly empty. We ended up just ordering from the menu. Very sad excuse of conveyor belt sushi. But I understand, the majority of the customers were loving the fried rolls so it makes sense that they only had those on the conveyor. It seems like a waste of energy to even run the conveyor. Due to the fact that they have mostly empty conveyor plates and no variety, everyone is ordering a la carte. This is likely causing the sushi chefs to be backed up from a la carte orders so they can’t fill the conveyor belt plates. I hope they figure this out soon. Maybe try eating at another successful conveyor belt sushi for inspiration.

Note: the first plate of nigiri came by after 20 minutes of mostly empty plates coming by.

On to the actual food: they ran out of scallop (sad), it was good! the nigiri rice is awful, breaks/falls apart so easily. Does not taste great. Please experiment more with sushi rice recipe. It really does make or break a nigiri when the rice is bad. we got the wrong orders from the carts (this happened 3 times). It’s fairly hard to track down someone on the floor to notify them when this type of issue happens. We didn’t want to take someone else’s food. But the cart won’t leave. Not sure what to do in this situation.’ the matcha tiramisu was not tiramisu (the top layer was hard, because it’s ice cream). Regardless still pretty tasty matcha. Just don’t expect tiramisu consistency the uni was delicious! I wish we had time to get more but after waiting so long for the first order of uni, we just stopped ordering. ordered the pepper tuna, got peppered mackerel? I think they confused the fish. That’s fine, still good. We did not receive some of our a la carte orders: missed one plate of tuna with yuzu, two plates of squid, and a plate of negitiro gunkan.

Also, the gacha machines did not work.

Overall, not the best revolving sushi experience (even for Lexington). I miss School conveyor sushi. But, there’s potential. I hope they work out the kinks in a few months. We’ll be back eventually. Would love to update the review further.

Total spent for 3 adults: $128...

This was an overall pretty mediocre experience. My husband and I went here for a date night at around 7:30 on a Saturday, and the place was surprisingly not that busy, which was great because we didn't really want to wait for a table. The staff was friendly and welcoming, and they were pretty on-top of getting us refills and the like.

The little automated carts that bring you special orders were better at Toku than at some fancier revolving sushi places -- each one had a little screen to indicate exactly which table they were delivering to, so that was cool.

Overall, though, the variety and quantity of the actual sushi was so underwhelming. Throughout the course of our meal, we literally saw only three or four different varieties of sushi. They had a spicy crab with panko bread crumbs, a rainbow roll, a cucumber roll, and some inari which I believe had a spicy crab and seaweed salad mixture. That was literally it. And since we were sat near the end of the conveyer, most of the trays that passed us were empty.

Each table had both a printed and an electronic menu, but many of the (delicious-looking) items on the printed menu were not available through the electronic menu. Further, ordering off the electronic menu appeared to be much more expensive than individual plates from the conveyer belt, even though we were just ordering different varieties of sushi.

Overall, this is not an experience I would seek out again. If one of my friends proposes it, I may try going back again, but I think my husband and I would have enjoyed ourselves more at Happy Sushi or Osaka. The novelty of the conveyer belt wasn't really enough to make up for an otherwise lackluster experience.

Edit: I forgot to even mention the capsule system. I'd been to a revolving sushi place that had one of these before, and was excited when I saw that Toku appeared to have one as well, but no one ever explained how it worked to us. It didn't look operational, and no one else seemed to be engaging with it, so we kind of assumed it...