Sushi Jin — Restaurant in Mountain View

3.5 stars - in what world is it acceptable to call us after our dinner to let us know our gratuity was below average?

Let us start with the fact that the omakase is 14 courses (10 of which is their nigiri - each is considered one course) for $155 per person (as of 10/05/2025), a mid price range for omakase.

We walked in, friendly staff greeted us and seated us. There was a card that said "Happy Anniversary!" with nothing inside it. We've went to other similar restaurants where we were presented with the staff's signatures or something small to commemorate the occasion. We were then offered the food menu and a drink menu. It's a small place but had a lot of staff in comparison. When we were offered recommendations for the sake - we were offered the ones that costed $45+ per glass. Fine, we'll splurge since we were there for our anniversary. I thought it was odd that the waitress kept "recommending" when we did not ask for her recommendations. For example, she "recommended" that we get a full bottle if we will drink more than 3 glasses because a bottle is the price of ~3 glasses even after we let her know that we're not big on drinking and will get drunk because we have low alcohol tolerance so we will share a single glass and that will be enough for us. No water was offered until we asked for it and it was a little while after we had already received our sake in a glass.

The first course was good (the balance of texture and flavor was good), second was meh (fish had no flavor at all even with the mushroom wrapped inside and had to rely on the sesame sauce for taste), and the 3rd (classic steam eggs with crab) was good - the highlight was the sauce on top.

Each of the fish that was served was tasty, no complaints about the food. I've had better omakase but this was good. We are big fans of uni so we even ordered their uni tasting sampler which was $44 per person.

They offered us a yuzu drink at the end to celebrate and we had our last course along with the Japanese yam ice cream which tasted exactly like eating Japanese yam ice cream. We felt like we ended on a pretty good note.

Disclaimer: I will admit we are not big tippers (perhaps even on the lower side) and I've worked as a waitress at a sushi restaurant before so I understand the hustle to want a large tip. We also grew up in Asia where gratuity/ tip is an unfamiliar concept. If we like the food, we'll order more or we'll come back next time is what we're used to. For reference: the recommended tip on the check that evening was ~$100.

We're not by any means wealthy, so we left a tip that we were comfortable with after splurging for the night. Isn't that what gratuity is? It should be up to our discretion.

My take: If Sushi Jin wants to mandate a 15 - 20% gratuity like some omakase restaurants do then do that, but don't go calling customers while they are on their way home after they are tired and slightly intoxicated. We were on a Waymo so we panicked thinking we had left something at the restaurant. Then the person on the other phone said "I see that you've left us a tip that was BELOW AVERAGE, can you tell us if there's something wrong with service tonight?" I answered, "no". This is because it's very late, we are tired, and if I wanted to give you feedback I would have done it in-person. To me, you just wanted to call to let me know that I left a tip that you were unsatisfied with. What outcome were you hoping for by calling us? You could send us a survey, not call us when we're on our way home.

We ended the night with a bill that was almost doubled what we went in for, that should be enough for an establishment. That leads me to question whether the staff are being fairly compensated. When is it the consumer's responsibility to make sure the restaurant's staffs are adequately compensated?

This experience has left a very bad impression for us and we will not be going back nor will we recommend this restaurant for our friends and family. There are better omakase out there, ones that will not call us to passively aggressively...

Had a reservation here on Friday at 5:30 for counter service and we got the corner, which was great since we got to see all of the dishes being brought out to the tables and gave us an idea of what people were eating. We had ordered the omakase ($155 pp) with one order of the uni add-on ($45) to share along with several other additions, which we added throughout our meal up until 30 mins of our seating (2 hour limit). We both ordered tea, which came in different pots and we noticed the variety of tea pots they had that all looked fantastic!

The omakase dinner comes with 3 appetizers, 19 piece Nigiri, and a soup to end up. This is a pretty good amount of food but we also added on a Chawanmushi (wife's favorite), 3 additional Nigiri, and the ice cream to finish off and we were beyond stuffed but it was all so worth it! My wife wanted me to add that the first appetizer could have done with some added texture to it, something like jellyfish may have been a good compliment. We really liked the tempura and it really blew us away with the taste and texture. The Kinki was also pretty amazing and had an excellent texture and wasn't oily/buttery as we were fearing and had great balance. .

The nigiri came out one at a time with around a 3-5 lag between pieces so nice to be able to enjoy them (recommended with your hands and they give you a nice finger towel as well) and have a bit of conversation with some drinking in between before the next one came. They were all excellent pieces and it wasn't an easy 'better as you go' type of experience, which I love. Each piece was well selected to bring your taste experience through a journey. The chefs were very talkative and interacted with us throughout the meal along with the wait staff.

I love uni and was really excited for the uni set that we ordered and they had a few different types/regions with two of them being brined in their own salt water, which gave them an interesting twist that you don't experience much. Overall they were enjoyable but didn't quite hit the quality we were expecting.

Our add-on Nigiri were all excellent, with two of them being recommended by the staff, the hairy crab and the steamed prawn. Both were really great but my wife's favorite was the amaebi. She rated that Nigiri as the best out of everything we ate with the chanwanmushi coming in a close second. Overall, one of our best sushi experiences...

Sushi 🍣 Rising

With the restaurant industry still challenged by worker and food supply chain shortages, the high end restaurant tier ($100+) has focused on Japanese cuisine with a multitude of omaksase and kaiseki options opening during the pandemic.

Sushi Jin (from the restaurant group behind Hinata and Sasa) is the latest Japanese restaurant opening and brings city-style omakase dining to the Peninsula.

Other than Sushi Shin in Redwood City and the venerable Sushi Yoshizumi in San Mateo, Sushi Jin offers an elevated dining style to the surrounding area from the more casual Daigo (also from SF) and caters to a tech-heavy crowd with a few welcome twists.

It’s located in a low-key strip mall and the transformation of the interior space that previously housed a casual soup noodle is impressive. There’s a 10 person sushi bar but there is also limited table seating similar to Wako in SF so that families (with well behaved children) are allowed to dine-in as well. The other twist is that the omakase menu is not the sole option as a limited a la carte option offers more flexibility to different Peninsula and South Bay demographics.

Preparation and level of execution are not to the level of much smaller single person sushiyas like my benchmark Sushi Yoshizumi or Ken SF, but the team behind Chef Jing (4 sous chefs, 2 waitresses) is much bigger and caters to many more people at once…plus they are still in very early soft opening phase.

I had a great time interacting with the staff and I couldn’t be happier that a restaurant of this caliber has come to the area and continues to improve the dining scene outside SF. I look forward to my next meal at Sushi Jin and am happy to welcome them to the...