Zen — Restaurant in New York

I cannot express how GOOD this place is! I’ve lived about half a mile from this place for an exactly a year now today, but I work so much I haven’t had the time to actually order from them before. Now I’m beating myself up for not trying it sooner! I decided to order their two roll sushi lunch special, a thai tea and their tom yum soup. I am usually pretty picky with my thai tea, mostly because some places will sell “thai tea” that tastes like water, sugar and some 2% milk but luckily this places thai tea tasted REAL! The flavor and color was strong and the tea was sweet without tasting like they dumped a whole bag of sugar in it, amazing cup of tea! When it comes to the soup, it was my first time trying it and it tasted really good! Will definitely be trying it again :) But the real star of the show was the SUSHI! So many places have done me wrong before, especially places that don’t sell sushi exclusively. But Zen gave me the BEST SPICY SALMON ROLL OF MY LIFE!!!!!!! Spicy salmon is my favorite and I’ve gotten it from SO many sushi places, but even the most expensive ones I’ve tried don’t hold a candle to this roll! So fresh, the rice to sushi ratio was PERFECT (I wish I got a picture but I basically inhaled it) it was jam packed with fish and the rice was a thin but perfectly cooked layer. Not stale or cold at all! The salmon was so fatty it tasted like eating butter in the BEST way. I seriously cannot express how insanely good this roll was 😭 I’m considering calling out of work tomorrow just to get it again! I also got a Philly roll, and while it honestly wasn’t my favorite the spicy salmon more than made up for it! I can’t express how perfect it was. The only complaint I have now is that every other spicy salmon roll just won’t compare! They also offer free delivery themselves which is perfect because I am a huge delivery app hater. For my friends too nervous to call, it’s on their website as well! I’m glad that ALL of my payment goes directly towards this amazing restaurant and my tip will fully go to my lovely delivery driver who was so sweet and patient upon delivery :) I also liked his hair! By the way, did I mention everything I ordered was only 20 bucks? Including delivery! In short, if you want an affordable lunch special, delicious drinks and delivery with mind blowing quality sushi, Zen...

My first impression of this restaurant was quite favorable. I liked the way it was laid out and decorated. I thought the Japanese wall paper was very cool, the bamboo stalks in the middle of the restaurant was a nice touch, and I especially liked the booths with the comfy pillows.

As soon as we sat down, we asked if we could order from the lunch specials listed on the menu. We weren’t sure if this was available on weekends and we were so happy when the waiter said yes. Unfortunately, the waiter came back and told us that she made a mistake and it wasn't available. Okay, fine. Everyone makes mistakes and the waiter was very apologetic.

We ended up ordering the kani salad, shumai, eel avocado roll, salmon avocado roll, Thai spring roll, Zen House fried rice and chicken pad Thai. The pad Thai was good. It had a nice spicy kick to it. Both the eel avocado and salmon avocado roll tasted fresh. The kani salad was smaller than I was expecting but it tasted good. I liked the crunchy topping on it. The Thai spring roll was a bit of a disappointment. It looked like the ones you can get at your local Chinese joint, albeit not as oily and with bigger shrimps. Overall, I thought the food was solid. It didn’t completely bowl me over but it was good.

I thought the service could have been better. The staff were all very friendly and attentive but clearly not all of them were trained. We were given the wrong info about the lunch specials, the ingredients in the Zen House fried rice and the Yelp offer for free ice cream. If you check-in on your Yelp app, you get a free scoop of ice cream. My friend and I asked if we could both redeem this offer and get a scoop of ice cream each. The waiter said yes and had us redeem the offer on our phones in front of her. She came back a few minutes later and apologized saying she made a mistake. Okay, again it’s not a big deal but I thought it was kind of petty of them not to honor it and give us both the ice cream. Such a small thing but it kind of annoys me when I...

I’ve been to A LOT of ACYE Sushi Places and especially all of the notable ones in Queens NYC. Sushi Village (OG SPOT), River (Bayside / Flushing) and Akino (TOP TIER in Elmhurst) but the spot I never noticed before Zen on Parsons Blvd was just MID at best. On my 10 scale it gets a 6/10.

Dinner was $32.99 with 18% Gratuity Automatically Added.

Appetizer Menu: There were about 30 options here ranging from Dumplings to Habachi Options. The Shrimp Tempura they used more beer batter kind of fry rather than your traditional lighter tempura batter. I’m not a tempura snobb but when AYCE places don’t at least use traditional tempura batter, it’s minus points there.

Sashimi: About 10 kinds of sashimi options you can pick. I got Red Snapper, Salmon, White Tuna, Yellowtail and Tamago. Everything was Mid for the most part. The best ones to me were the Red Snapper and the Salmon. The pieces were fairly large which can either be a good or bad thing.

Sushi: they had about 10 or so kinds of Special Rolls. I tried the Salmon King one and it was OK. Salmon with Avocado on top with Kani inside. They had a good amount of regular Maki Rolls but no option to choose Hand Rolls. Overall the rolls were OK. They packed A LOT of Rice which deducted a few points here.

Overall again it was just MID. There are much better AYCE Sushi spots in Queens. Definitely check out Akino for the top tier option. Amazing extensive menu. Very fresh and excellent rice portions. Double the amount of appetizer and...