Orchid Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Raleigh

Summary: Orchid is a step up from a traditional Japanese buffet, everything you order is made-to-order, but still has the same options you'd find at a Japanese buffet. Would highly recommend for date night or family get together, would not recommend for anyone with restricted diets specifically vegan/vegetarian.

Pros No wait with a reservation and prompt arrival Extremely friendly and responsive service (during non-peak hours) High Quality Sushi for the price point Overall good food

Cons Non-sushi menu lacks diversity Would not recommend for vegetarians/vegans or anyone who does like sushi Ordering system is awkward especially for larger parties

Went to Orchid for my brothers birthday with 7.5 people (0.5 = infant). We had a reservation for 5:30, arrived around 5:15 and were seated immediately while waiting for the rest of the party to arrive.

They only give you one set of menu's (sushi menu and everything else menu) which for large parties is very inconvenient, as you have to wait for everyone to pick their food before you can place your order. To place your order or to get service you press a light on your table and the staff comes over. Once the order is placed the staff will bring out the food and only returns the menu once all the food is served, which again for larger parties is fairly inconvenient.

With regards to service, I have no complaints. We had several servers taking care of us and never had to wait more than a minute. Orchid has very high quality sushi for the price, that is according to my brother who was a sushi chef in the past.

The biggest complaint I have is the lack of diversity in the menu. If you like sushi, that won't be a problem, however, a few members in our party can not eat sushi and were disappointed with the lack of variety. Their vegetarian options are limited to: salad & soup, edamame, sweet potato tempura, rice, hibachi vegetables, veggie stir fry.

Would also be great to see more desert options, would love if they had things like...

In the Raleigh/Durham area this is one of my favorite Sushi restaurants. It's in a strip mall by the Walgreens and some beauty store. Food is fresh and prepared very well. My hubby can't really eat out due to his sensitivity to cooking oils restaurants use, but this place doesn't affect him. Fish is very fresh. They have Tuna, White Tuna, Yellowfin, Salmon, Red Snapper, Squid, Clam, and more. You can get Shashimi, Nigiri, make your own, they have specialty rolls, hibachi, udon (delicious), appetizers (very good options and quite a few.), 4 flavors of ice cream my favorite is the red bean (not pinto bean or red bean you see in the store but the Japanese sweet bean and then green tea.) They even have ponzu sauce (Japanese Soy Service), which to me tastes better with sushi than regular soy sauce, it doesn't overpower your food with salt, try it once. Service is great! Very attentive with a dash of humor, not impatient, quick on point. They haven't gotten an order wrong. You can get all you can eat, but they don't tolerate waste, so order small portions every 5 minutes if you must. It's honestly better that way. They have menus with a dry erase marker. They are open for lunch as well Only negative, dinner is $30 a person for all you can eat, that's not too bad, but when you don't eat much it's pricey. Drink is no longer included. Only dessert is ice cream, however the Japanese Red Bean and Green Tea are great, but you only get one person however you can order a larger portion for $5. They close at 2130 hours (930 pm). They don't have steamed or grilled dumplings, just fried. That's about it for negatives, which not much to not try. To me this nothing, service, freshness of food and preparation is number ones and they hit all those marks. Bonus: if you have children, they do have children's menus and if you enjoy Japanese drinks with your meal they do have green tea and saki. We do the green tea, but we saw they have quite a menu for several saki flavors....

Ohhhh man this place is awesome! All right so it's basically all you can eat. You can order from a limited menu and they will bring you unlimited sushi, appetizers, and entrees. I think there was soup on that menu too. I can't remember all of it because that "limited" menu had more than enough options to keep me entertained, there's no way that one person could eat everything on that menu. But if you can't find what you want then they have another menu with other options as well. I think we paid close to $17 a person, and that included our drink. So I guess to some, you could say it's somewhat expensive compared to a traditional all you can eat buffet, but I don't think that's fair because this place is different in a lot of respect. First of all, you have a waiter. You have these laminated menus that you mark with what you want using a dry erase marker, and you turn on a light at the end of your table to alert your waiter, then he/she comes by and takes that menu to the kitchen and the chefs make your food, then they bring out the food and menu for you to order again. So the fact that you are being waited on is reason enough justify the prices in my opinion. But the real difference here is the food, it's amazing! It's tiny food, it took us a couple tries to get used to the portion sizes. We were ordering one or two pieces of sushi at a time haha. But once we got in the swing of things we began ordering several rolls at once. Did I mention the food is awesome?! It tastes so good! It comes out looking fancy on the plate with artful drizzles and garnishes. The atmosphere of the restaurant is actually pretty nice, albeit a smaller restaurant. It's one open room that is partitioned into three sections. There are about 25 tables in total... Maybe less. So I guess I'm saying that the restaurant itself, although decorated and presented nicely, is pretty average, but the food is far beyond. Would...