Sandfish Sushi & Whiskey — Restaurant in Palm Springs

Girlfriend and I were craving sushi and was skeptical about sushi in the desert. The photos and pictures looked good on Yelp and Google reviews, and we were curious why is the price a bit on the high side. We decided to go but to offset the prices we decided to have a light dinner.

Food: We ended up getting the beef gyoza, 2 scallop hand rolls, 2 salmon skin hand rolls, and the experiment roll. In all honesty, nothing really stood out as far as flavor; in fact there was nothing original about it. The beef gyoza being 16 dollars was mid; pan fried and flavorless and they served it with a sweet chili sauce that seems like it came out of a bottle you can find at your Asian grocery store; nothing wrong witth sweet chili sauce, but for 5 beef gyozas for $16, you would think there would be some special sauce or flavor that they would provide that’s made in house. The hand rolls were served with soft sea weed nori, the salmon skin was crispy, but the scallop did not seem as fresh as it should be. Lastly, the experiment roll was flavorless and the fish did not seem fresh as it should be either. They also said there would be snow crab in it, but it seemed that it was imitation crab and not the real snow crab we expected. They also love garnishing with micro greens. It seems like this is an easy cop-out to make it look “fancy.” I appreciate the presentation, but microgreens on everything though? It seems that it’s not very well thought out especially if they’re dousing the microgreens on rolls; it felt like I was eating a salad or a poke bowl. Maybe they’re also trying to mask the freshness or lack of flavor of the dishes. Either way there needs to be more intentionality and authenticity to the dishes if they want to charge these prices.

Ambiance: We had no reservations so they said if the patio was ok in the sun and we said yes. Although looking at the ambiance for the outside patio they only had one umbrella. For being in Palm Springs I’m surprised they do not provide more ample shade such as umbrellas or an awning of some sort. The ambiance for the inside was cool though.

Service: was good and might be the only thing going for this restaurant.

The bill: Came out to $120 for an order of beef gyozas, 4 hand rolls, one roll and one sparkling water. Yikes and we didn’t even order any cocktails!

Overview: I appreciate the effort of focusing on ambiance, but even then they missed some parts that’s important, such as providing ample shade for customers in the patio; they focused more on ambiance than the actual flavors of the food they serve. Maybe we didn’t order much, or maybe they had an off night or their head chef wasn’t there to oversee what was happening in the kitchen, but I cannot recommend this place.

If you’re curious about going just know you’ll be walking out with a deeper hole in your pocket than you already have in this type of economy. I really wish they would do better for future customers and for their...

We made reservations on a Saturday here for our anniversary after oogling and hearing about this place for years. First, the parking was not the greatest. This is not downtown near several public parking lots and the area is a little less walkable. There was no valet that night and they basically shoved the patio and the bulk of the outdoor seating where it looked like the parking lot had been. We were sat at a table outside that felt like it was placed in the middle of the aisle to squueze in more capacity. It was also right in front of the dj table so the speaker was right behind me, and the chairs were shorter which made the table look higher. It felt like we were at a kiddie table. I would have expected this if we were a last minute walk-in, but these were a reservation for a special occasion. Maybe we would have gotten better service if we were at that table that all the staff had to walk towards as they walk down the aisle to the back half of the outdoor seating, but my husband asked to move. (Also, we didn't get that anniversary card that I see in a few of the other reviews, though my husband told them the reservation was for an anniversary. Maybe someone can let me in on the secret.) We ordered sushi, and were immediately informed that there were only two trained sushi chefs that night and that there was going to be a long wait. I wasn't not having sushi at a sushi restaurant that I've been begging my husband to take me to for years, so we waited. Now we were the first table on the right in there corner, and it felt like we were passed over as the attention of the waiter was directed towards the larger parties. The food and drinks were good, honestly I had the best mocktail I've had in town so far. I'm glad I wasn't drinking a lot, my husband had to use the restroom, and he said there was only one and there was a long line, so he held out which just made the wait for our food even less bearable. We had miso soup to start and for dinner I had the yellowtail sashimi and he had the lollipop roll. It was pretty good. The sashimi was high quality. But I can't pinpoint anything about the food that is better than the kind of sushi place that's all over Southern California in a strip mall, some of which are deceptively excellent. The premium for a place like Sandfish is in the experience and the atmosphere, which fell very, very short. It's like during the pandemic they adapted the expanded outdoor seating at the expense of parking. But once things started to pick back up, they kept the extra seating for the revenue but did not expand the kitchen, staff, or...

Send this email to the restaurant after my visit, but even after a follow up it was ignored by the management:

I'm reaching out after visiting your restaurant in Palm Spring for the first time tonight.

I had a reservation for 3 people for 6.30 and showed up 7-8 min early and was greeted by a friendly guy. Giving him my name he showed us to a 2 top and we were a bit confused so I asked if we were supposed to pull another table over but his response was, if you want a bigger table we will need to clean one up and move you, which we said yes to so we were moved, but not sure why a 3 people reservation were given one of the small 2 tops, that definitely didn't have enough space for the 3 of us.

We then ordered a drink and I asked for a 'whiskey high ball with a Japanese whiskey' but when my drink arrived I got a lemon sour (with shochu I assume). Not sure how my whiskey sour became that, I even specifically asked for one with Japanese whiskey.

We then ordered our food and soon after started receiving dishes, first a sea weed salad that we hadn't ordered and then a sushi roll we also hadn't ordered. My wife thought I had ordered the sea weed salad and had already take an bite, so when the waiter showed up with the 3rd wrong dish we made her aware of the mistake and she took the wrong roll and grabbed for the sea weed salad, but we told her that we had already had taken a bite of it to which she said no problem, I'll leave it with you.

Less than a minute later our neighboring table got the wrong serving that had been sitting on our table for about 5 minutes which we found odd. We don't think they noticed luckily.

We then got the correct dishes that were great, except the blue mussels that, while tasting good, had about half of the mussels not opened. I know closed mussels are not dangerous to eat, which a lot of people tend to think, but I tried to open them and only having chopsticks and not even being able to do it with my hands, I gave up. So unfortunately half of that serving was really not edible.

Lastly, when we finally asked for our check to our surprise, the sea weed salad was on it. I got the waiter over and asked her why, because we never ordered and she agreed to correct the mistake. Not sure how that ever made it on the check though, as we had never ordered it.

All in all, while the food was tasty, this was a weird experience and its rare we see 5 mistakes being made during a restaurant visit. Being in the industry myself I thought you would want...