Umi Sushi — Restaurant in New York

I have to caveat this review by saying that I've only been to this restaurant once. That being said, I'd likely visit again the next time I'm in the area. I visited Umi as half of a party of two. Our timing was fortuitous as the place filled up fairly soon after we arrived (circa 6:15) on a Friday. The place is pretty small and has maybe 10 tables in it. Turnover was pretty good, though, as people who came while all the tables were occupied seemed to have to wait no more than 10-15 minutes for a table to open up. The demographic seemed to skew fairly heavily toward the college-aged crowd, likely due to the restaurant's proximity to Saint John's University.

The restaurant's staff was polite, but, given the amount of business that it was doing, not waiting on customers hand and foot. Our food took a while to arrive. While we were waiting, we were served an order of shumai "on the house". While noshing on this, we noticed a truly astounding number of takeout orders being prepared. We assessed that the number of orders being prepared for takeout likely figured into the wait we experienced for our food. The place doesn't have anything in the way of decor or atmosphere, so it helps if your dinner partner happens to be a deipnosophist. The staff seemed to speak Korean and Mandarin, so it may be possible to use these languages to interact with them.

We started off with miso soup that was pretty decent. The aformentioned shumai tasted like typical premade shumai. The sushi itself was pretty competently done. The rolls didn't look ragged and were not pencil-thin. À la carte sushi was sold by the piece and was similarly decently done. The pieces were of a good size with a decent amount of fish on them. The fish was pretty standard fare (i.e., didn't seem old enough to have to worry about it but lacking the buttery smooth texture of super fresh fish). The roll selection was pretty basic, though, and the place doesn't serve alcohol. Prices were a bit high for a place that small and lacking in personality, but, given the fact that it was in New York and the sushi was decent, one can argue that the prices...

Today I went to eat at Umi Sushi with my family. The way they treated us was unacceptable.The service was disgusting! We waited a long time for someone to take our order. When we constantly looked at them, finally someone came. We started ordering appetizers then ordered the main course. We asked the waiter to leave the menu because if we liked the rolls, we would order more. He gave us a dirty look and said that, “if you want to eat here, you have to order at least $10 per person.” We asked him where is this rule written. He said that it is not written anywhere but that’s the rule! We were shocked by his demeanor. I became very upset and told him that’s why we kept the menu as we are going to order more food. We ordered plenty of food including appetizer which was enough for us. However; even if we had not they have no right to kick us out of the restaurant because of how much we ordered. We sat there as the waiter walked away without even listening to us. Then he started screaming about us to the manager who kept on staring at us. Finally after we made eye contact with him, he walked over to us. He said, “what is the problem?” We told him everything that happened and how it was very rude of the waiter to speak to us in that manner. He replied by saying, that is the rule and the waiter was not wrong at all! Then we asked for the bill and said that we will pay and leave. He said that, “we can stay this time but we better follow the rule next time!” This disgusted us even more and we demanded for the bill. He said that we don’t need to pay and don’t need to eat this either. Then he took the appetizers from the table and left. My family and I left feeling embarrassed and humiliated. The staff is uncultured and filthy. They do not have basic manners and hope they realize how they treated my family when someone treats...

3/5

They seem to have good takeout business, but that means that my family and I were sitting for almost an hour and a half waiting for our food to arrive.

The Golden Dragon roll was a mushy mess in your mouth and it was hard to taste anything past the canned peach and avocado.

The spicy salmon roll was more panko and spicy mayo than actual salmon.

The cooked roll combo: The salmon skin roll was good but considering they blamed our hour long wait on that, it was hard to find it worth the wait. The eel roll and shrimp roll were mostly avocado with minuscule pieces of eel and shrimp.

The Rock’n’Roll was good, but it was sliced thin, especially for a roll of that height, and easily fell apart under our chopsticks.

Edit: 1/5 I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it since I know the restaurant workers are busy and clearly understaffed, but apparently the owner thinks that it being Mother’s Day excuses them from seating us and taking our order around 6:10pm and us not getting our food until about 7:40pm. Thus, I’d also like to include that two tables were seated about fifteen to twenty minutes after us and got their food over twenty minutes before my family did. The staff and owner passed by our table several times without a single word about our food or the delay until I flagged someone down to ask after almost seventy minutes of waiting. Yes, it was Mother’s Day, but the utter lack of communication or empathy makes it clear that this was the wrong place to choose to bring my senior mother to...