MAMA M SUSHI — Restaurant in Pasadena

It's kinda funny that what I enjoyed the most here was the seaweed salad and the tempura ice cream.

I ordered the Cute Devil after asking for a recommendation from the server. Their menu has a lot of variety, so it's great in that aspect. However, the Cute Devil was not so great. It was very rich. The description does say that it's shrimp tempura and spicy crab salad inside, and raw fish and more spicy crab salad on top. Too much creaminess from crab salad, bleh. What caught my eye in the picture was the raw fish, but the slices of fish were rather thin (disappointing because I was looking for that freshness), and the tempura was SUPER crispy... like way too crispy... like "where's the shrimp at?" too crispy because all I can taste is crispy tempura batter.

For that reason, my friend and I were debating whether or not to get the tempura ice cream, expecting it to be super extra too crispy like the shrimp tempura. But fortunately, the tempura green tea ice cream was delicious. The dough was lightly crispy on the outside and slightly chewy overall. The ice cream was creamy... it was a good way to end the meal.

Hm, I don't know if it was mentioned on the menu or anywhere in the restaurant, but they give you a discount if you pay with cash instead of credit card. Had I known that before, we wouldn't have ordered like fatties. We were short on cash by a couple bucks (and therefore too short too tip also), so we ended up paying with credit card.

The prices are reasonable and the service is good. This is not the place if you are looking for authentic Japanese sushi, but otherwise it's...

All the food was great. So many many interesting choices that it was hard to decide what to pick.

We ended up choosing the edamame, gyoza, and softshell crab appetizers... Very tasty. Softshell crab was delicious and the gyoza was also very yummy.

Then we went with the Dress Me Up sushi and the Crispy Tuna. Comes as 2 large pieces each. The Crispy Tuna was definitely the winner there. The Dress Me Up was good but totally outshined by the crispy tuna.

Next we had the Albacore Blossom, B.A.D. Angel, and the Tropicana. All three were delicious, with maybe the B.A.D. Angel as the favorite, followed closely by the Albacore Blossom.

Plenty of food for 3 people.

We also had a couple bowls of miso soup, 2 beers, and some hot sake...

About $60 per...

If I only ordered the dragon roll, I would have given 5 stars plus. Visiting from out of town: We ended up ordering takeout since the evening reservations were fully booked. We gave our order two hours prep time which worked for us and they were able to take the order since they were passing up on takeout orders as well that evening. I ordered two pieces of squid, one was good, one was unedible. So unfortunately I can't recommend that dish. However, the dragon roll was THE best dragon roll I have had from a sushi restaurant. It will be had to mach the next time I order sushi again. But that darn squid. The others enjoyed there meals without issues. Would recommend going back, just...