Kuma Sushi — Restaurant in Reno

A friend was raving about Kuma Sushi to me so I had to come try it for myself! We were a table of 4 on a Saturday afternoon around 3pm and they were quite busy. A staff member was quick to order our drinks after we sat down! We were provided with ordering sheets for the appetizers and sushi. They have a huge and unique selection of appetizers and all day specials compared to other sushi restaurants such as French fries, chicken nuggets, and salmon/yellowtail kama. Of course I had to order their miso soup and mussels whenever I go to any sushi restaurant. The miso soup was a little too salty for me and one of my friends mentioned that rice would go well with the miso soup to balance the saltiness. The mussels were large in size, but the flavor of the mussels were drenched in sauce and all I tasted was a mouthful of mayo. They were out of the yellowtail kama, but the salmon was good - not overcooked and flavorful. The popcorn shrimp was good and reminded me of the Chinese dish walnut shrimp! I also loved the spicy garlic edamame because most places do not add extra flavor to them! We also tried the salmon skin salad and surprisingly it was pretty good. I never thought salmon skin would go well in a salad haha. By this time, I was filling up on only appetizers so I had to stop to save room for the actual sushi. We ordered a variety of long rolls and nigiri. None of the long rolls were very memorable except for Volcano and Popcorn Lobster rolls. With nigiri, we ordered a bunch of salmon, yellowtail, mackerel, and unagi. During the first round, they forgot to give us the salmon and we ordered quite a few things at once so we let it go. As someone that does not like the taste of lemon, I wish they did not put each piece of lemon on top of the salmon and put it on the side instead. However, all the fish we had on the nigiris were fresh and they sliced them THICK. The salmon was delicious if it wasn't for the lemony flavor on top. The mackerel was not too fishy. The yellowtail was good, but the unagi did not look the most appetizing. The unagi was very small compared to the other pieces of fish we've gotten, but they tasted good. There was just too much rice to fish ratio. I was not a fan of was the seared creamy salmon because it was too creamy and removes the taste of the salmon for me. There were a few more rolls that were incorrectly brought to our table, but we did not notice it until after we tasted them. Finally, for dessert they have the usual mochi ice cream, regular ice cream, and tempura banana ice cream. What excited me was that they have affocado here! Affocado is basically vanilla ice cream with Korean sweet coffee. I love how they put sliced almonds to give it some texture too! Overall, I had a great experience at Kuma! The environment was clean and modern. I believe Kuma means bear in Japanese and so the entire restaurant had cute bear decorations throughout! They do have a small bar seating, but the majority are tables. With the amount of customers, the staff were still very attentive and making sure everything was okay. There were a few wrong orders which dropped them to 4 stars along with the saltiness and overuse of condiments. If Kuma was not so far from my house, I might visit more often, but they do have one of the best selections of non-sushi foods at a...

This was not worth the cost. I will remain as objective as possible, but really, there are better sushi places in town. Skip this one.

My 4 friends and I sat down and ate all you can eat dinner. It was 33.99 a person. Some menu items are limit 1 per person. These are some of the things we tried:

Sashimi salad: a lettuce salad that had a sesame vinegarette(?) And chopped salmon. The lettuce was soft and overly dressed. It was a lot to start.

The mussels were very wet with a teriyaki mayonnaise that felt soupy in the shells.

We had several types of nigiri. Their simpler nigiri is good. I enjoyed the salmon and yellowtail, it was a highlight.

Their more specialized nigiri is not good. We had seared nigiri that was charred with crunchy burnt rice. The fish was fine but then something changed. We went from decent to truly bad. All the nigiri we had 15 minutes in and onward was so icy that my friend literally said she was chomping on frozen fish. Multiple people at the table reported the fish tasted "icy."

Their Donald duck nigiri was atrocious. Somehow, the yellowtail became slimy, they were topped with mountains of shredded imitation crab that was sweet and too much for the amount. Inside out shrimp and scallops were also covered in sauce and "soupy" the flavors soon became too sweet for fish.

We order two baked rolls, and there's something haunting about warm avocado. This is a personal preference, but also, the same wet soupy sauce combination covered our two baked rolls, one of which I remembered to be the volcano.

The worst things we had were the cucumber sashimi wraps, a piece of salmon and another unidentified fish with a stick of imitation crab wrapped in a thin cucumber skin. It was incredibly wet, cold, and texturally we all spit it out, ruthlessly, we declared "we will pay to NOT eat that."

Then finally the sashimi nachos, a bed of shredded onion is on a plate, then there are thick wonton chips topped with chopped fish, shredded lettuce, and thousand island sauce. It was the most offensive thing we tried to eat.

My friends and I decided to split the fee for not eating the food, frankly it was embarrassing not to eat but it was simply too icy, too busy, and too odd to try to finish it all.

Service was good. Our waitress was pleasant and informed us of the fee. And overall, the place is busy, family's, couples, and friends were at every table. But it was fair to say that everyone was having completely different...

Beware of shady tactics that are used by this restaurant to ruin your AYCE experience.

The fact that the restaurant will not return your ordering paper until they finish delivering all the dishes of a single round, the restaurant can purposely delay delivering dishes to force you to stop eating and to digest, disrupting your eating momentum and untimely ruining your AYCE experience.

I visited Reno with my girlfriend for the very first time, and my best friend who has been living in Reno for years recommended us this place.

My girlfriend and I ordered about 10 dishes for our first round. We got our first round dishes in less than 10 minutes, and we devoured them fast because we were hungry. While we were devouring, I submitted our order for second round which had about 5 dishes.

Our AYCE experience went downhill during the second round. We got 4 of the 5 dishes in about 10 minutes, which wasn’t a problem at all. However, the 5th dish, which was Baked Scallop, was still not served to us by the time we had already finished the first 4 dishes. Because the restaurant gets to hold your ordering paper while they make your dishes, this means we were forced to stop eating and to digest, killing our momentum of eating. We had to remind a waitress about it, and we ended up waiting for the Baked Scallop for 20-25 minutes.

The restaurant wasn’t busy at all, and they had 3 chefs working at the bar, so I still cannot understand why it took them so long to make a Baked Scallop dish. Additionally, based on what I’ve mentioned in the first paragraph, I have reasonable reasons to suspect that this restaurant slowed down our eating momentum on purpose.

If my speculation is wrong, then I would have truly appreciated if the staff had informed us about the long cooking time and given us back our ordering paper for us to order...