AMA Sushi — Restaurant in Montecito

This is new, so I only see one other review here, but I expect to see a lot more in time. Eventually this Omakase will be so hard to book, due to it's extreme attention to detail and customer experience, I wouldn't be surprised if you were looking at 3 months wait and a Michlan star.

Ama Sushi is located on the Rosewood Miramar Beach Resort property. It is very new being only a few weeks old as of 9/14/22, renovated from an old bungalow building.

Pulling up, in your car or ride service, to the front of the resort you will be greeted by staff. Just ask where the Ama Sushi restaurant is located. Easy. Or you can walk around like us and eventually figure out where to go.

The process to attend this experience is pretty seemless, book online, fill out the form, and confirm when needed via text. When we arrived it was also an easy check in just go with the flow and respond.

Despite there being 13 seats, only 4 of us were enjoying this experience.

We met another couple who were smart and got to the resort early and had a few cocktails at the many options around the property. Of course, we were nervous being underdressed and out of place killed time by walking around aimlessly before dinner...no one should feel this way.

Let's talk food and pairing. Highly recommend to include the Sake pairing option...period. Perfectly/specifically curated for the courses and they nailed it.

Make sure you don't fill up too much during the day before your visit to make sure you can finish the Omakase. You will be happy you did.

Our sushi chef was originally from Japan as a child and immigrated with his family to Ventura, CA. His first position in a sushi restaurant was washing dishes but after learning quickly he wanted to make sushi for a living, he returned to Japan interning under master sushi chefs over 9 years. That brings us back to CA and Ama Sushi.

The Chef brings a simplicity to the presentation, however the courses built more complexity and flavor as we went along. Staff supporting the chef's courses made sure they timed each dish and Sake pairing perfectly. I know the experience is only going to get better over time as well as the quality of the ingredients.

My favorite dishes, although may vary from others, were the kampachi (amberjack), Miyazaki A5 wagyu Nigiri with 2 slices of black truffle, uni nigiri sourced from Hokkaido, o-toro nigiri sourced from Spain, and black sesame rare cheesecake.

My favorite Sake was the "Sumikawa Brewery Toyo Bijin Asian Beauty Junmai Ginjo." Just amazing. Could have gone through all the courses with just this bottle. BUT, each Omakase Sake did offer a different and perfect balance to the dish.

Not to keep going on, I'll end off with, just go here. Yes it's expensive, believe me this is the most I've paid, even in Japan! Very much worth it.

I would say very special occasions, and if you're staying at the Rosewood property this isn't a normal resort restaurant. Make the effort to book it.

I'll let my pictures speak for themselves but they do not do justice over the actual experience.

Very much...

AMA Sushi offers great service, a trendy upscale environment but extremely mediocre sushi.

We tried the Omakase to get the best selection that AMA had to offer. To start with the good parts the restaurant itself looks great. The room is filled with dark woods and dim lights creating a moody whiskey bar style with two glowing white stone bars serving as the focal points. It's definitely a memorable environment. Staff is very attentive and pretty knowledgeable sometimes a little overly attentive but overall a good experience. Cocktails were unique and the sake selection was expansive.

The food unfortunately was a major low point. The first course was a seaweed salad which was decent but nothing memorable. The second miso soup course lacked a strong miso flavor but used some unique mushrooms to create a nice earth flavor. These were the best course. The next was a large plate of tempura vegetables piled high on oil papers. An obvious filler course the vegetables were not cooked well and batter was bland. The next sashimi course of salmon and tuna was great but nothing exciting or different just good fish. The final course of Santa Barbara uni and abalone was the worst. Rice was a little hard, the abalone was rubbery the seaweed was tough.

Overall everything was ok. If this was the corner sushi store with cheap prices and friendly service it would be fine. But given the location and the price...

Massively, massively disappointing.

User interface to make a reservation on their website is not intuitive, making it extremely challenging to book the omakase instead of the smaller set menu. This has happened to us twice now.

First experience at the restaurant in January this year was good. But it was disappointing when we expected for the meal to be full omaskase (I even asked the server at the start and he confirmed), but it was the set menu so that was annoying.

Experience this weekend was really underwhelming. Not only were we expecting the omakase experience, we were the let down by the 4-course menu that had such a ridiculously small amount of raw fish. The fish wasn’t anything exceptional, and the 2 maki rolls that came with one of the courses was just stupid silly. In each maki roll was 6 pieces of just a little bit of fish with rice, essentially those cheap maki rolls that you can get anywhere, and lacked flavor. And do NOT get the braised pork belly dish, that was such a sad dish where the entire thing was really soft and floppy, including the fat that should’ve been crisped.

You can get higher quality and better tasting fish in town at Sushi Bar, Teru, and Arigato. And Teru and Arigato would be much less expensive. If you want a nice setting and something upscale, just pay the extra $40 or so and just go to Sushi Bar - you’ll actually eat a decent amount of fish...