Kyoto Sushi — Restaurant in Roseville

Up until end of 2021, this has been one of my favorite places to go. Sadly, my most recent experience really turned me off from coming here. Due to the pandemic and shortage of workers, the kitchen was very slow putting out food. This was not a problem for my husband and I as we waited for the food while chatting and enjoying the game that was projected on the wall. However, while waiting on our third round of food from the kitchen, the wait staff said there were lots of people waiting to be seated and asked to bring us the check. In his defence, we had been there for an hour and a half. Unfortunately we usually order about 4 to 5 rounds of food in one hour. We agreed but mentioned that we were still waiting on food. We received the food and proceeded to be shooed out. It was a very upsetting experience and not how I expected to decide to stop coming here.

Overall for Kyoto: The food is pretty good for all you can eat. They put eel sauce on most rolls which can make most things taste good. I particularly enjoy the #9 and Snow Mountain roll which are served all day. And their shrimp tempura is decent.

Things you may not like is that their rice is on the harder side. Sometimes the nigiri (fish piece on rice) comes with too much rice. Though the price is set by location for lunch and dinner, price overall has been increasing at every location. It is usually only a $5 difference between lunch and dinner. In those cases, I suggest going to the dinner since they have all the good rolls at that time. If you dont care about rolls, then I'd suggest you eat somewhere else...

TLDR: My dissapointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.

Let me start by saying that I loved this place years ago before I had much experience with sushi or Japanese food in general, and for the price point with all-you-can-eat there is worse out there.

HOWEVER

Having gone back today after recieving a gift card as a present, I can not in good conscience rate the food highly. The sushi is not high quality by any standards, I would probably put it as mid-low quality. Not nearly as low as gas station or grocery store level, but it was noticeably below average. After trying some of both their nigiri and maki, it was dissapointing but not outside of what could be expected for a $20 all-you-can eat experience, and if you are on a very tight budget but still want sushi, it's not that bad.

Then I ordered a beef ramen.

A flavorless broth with extremely thin, strip cut, low quality, overdone beef and broccoli. After having a bit to confirm that yes, it was indeed that bad, i could not finish the bowl on deeply moral grounds. I was still hungry. I could have finished that bowl easily. But I felt as though I would have lost something important as a person if I had.

If you are not on a budget, and looking for something worth your time, there's an Osaka right down the road that I would rate light-years ahead in quality. It's a higher price point and not all-you-can-eat, but it is actually worth your time.

I am sorry, Kyoto Sushi....

Maybe it could have been an off night for our waiter, but my husband and I went for the all you can eat dinner and the service was pretty poor. We were both there for a total of an hour or and a half and were only able to get 2 small orders in. We waited for about a good half an hour for our food to arrive for each order we've placed. We both noticed that the other tables around us were getting their order taken and brought to them at a timely manner and we were there before those guys. Keep in mind that the rolls are much smaller than your average size rolls at other restaurants and the nigiri are thin and long with a thin piece of fish on top. There's no way that it takes 30 min to make 5 small pieces at a time. Also as an appetizer, it does not take roughly around the same amount of time to dish out a small bowl of miso soup. So, roughly 30 minutes later out comes the miso soup. Then, another 15 to min later out comes the 2 rolls or sushi. After an hour and a half of being there and only able to get 2 small order of the nigiri, 2 rolls, and 1 miso soup, we both left and called it a night. We were both still hungry, but didn't want to wait for another 30 to 45 min...