Hook's on 9th — Restaurant in Saint Petersburg

Okay Hook's must've changed owners or something. I didn't recognize any of the sushi chefs, wait staff or management. Hooks used to be a fantastic place to get sushi. I would've rated their sushi a 6 or 7, pretty darn good. It's been about a year since then and went back last night since my normal sushi dig has re-located or closed (Kinjo's). The food and sushi was horrible. I'd rate the sushi a 2/10. I've literally had better sushi at buffets. I ordered the Dirty Old Man, a roll I used to always get. The topping ( a mix of spicy mayo sauce and tuna sashimi) was all wrong. The tuna chunks weren't really chunks, it was almost like they were shreds of tuna. My guess is that they were the discarded tuna bits from other rolls and it didn't taste that fresh. The underlying roll had no tuna in it at all, just a piece of fake crab and cucumber.

I also ordered the freshwater eel roll and even this was bad. You could barely taste the eel and the sauce on top was bad.

Finally I had the uni, which was actually good. But I mean, how could you mess up Uni? It's a very simple sushi piece.

My girlfriend ordered the beef terayaki and it was also horrible. 1/10. The beef looked like it was boiled or steamed and the sauce was done very poorly. I expected the beef to be nicely browned on each side with a thin crispy caramalized glazing, but instead it was grey and covered with their nasty sauce.

What adds insult to injury is that the prices were the same or maybe even a bit higher. I paid $56 for a meal that I wouldn't have even paid $10 for. The service was okay but the wait staff didn't seem to be experienced or really know what they were doing.

All in all, this makes me really sad. Hooks used to be an awesome place to get some good sushi. Now it's just an overpriced sushi dig with horrible food. You're better off going to Publix and picking up sushi from them - or maybe just picking up a bag of dog food and eating that.

My final rating is 1/10, strongly advise against going to this place. I might stop by again in a couple of months to see if things have improved (Can you tell I used to LOVE this place). Too bad there isn't a negative rating I could...

We found @HooksSushi while in St Pete after I finished working - we were looking for sushi to please #SheWhoMustNotBeTagged, who'd rode along for dinner. I'm not an independent sushi eater, so I wasn't sure where to go. Of course I used Yelp in my hunt, but avoided downtown since I'm still on crutches. And after an inadvertent drive by, Maddie was all-in. She was attracted to the smallish size of the restaurant. And, indeed, the ambiance inside was warm & familiar. Plus, I'd heard good things from friends who live nearby.

Wednesday night is $1 sushi so we ordered some Crunchy, TST, & Salmon Sashimi. And Madd & I both ordered Miso Soup. I really enjoyed the taste of this: salty, but not overly. I also had the LA Roll, which arrived with delicious baked Krab & scallops on top - this was my fave dish tonight. Madd had the Florida Roll, which I also thought was very good. Howard had the California Roll & an order of Gyoza. The California Roll was good, but I didn't care for the Gyoza. The Crunchy Roll was also very good, but I didn't try the Salmon Sashimi or TST.

Service was fair... with 3 of us at the table, we only had 2 sets of chopsticks. Immediately after he brought our food, we couldn't get our waiter's attention right away to request them. Not a deal-breaker for me - IDK how to use chopsticks anyway - I just used my fingers. Hubs later let me borrow his while Madd tried to show me how to use them. Other than that, our waiter was decent: he kept our water glasses full & made himself available when Howard wanted more $1 sushi. And the bus boy was super-quick to remove empty plates.

Overall, we enjoyed our meal here, and we will...

The sushi at Hooks is reliably very good but sometimes the seating decisions are a bit frustrating. My wife and I called just after the restaurant opened to make a reservation for 2 and were told that they would only accept reservations for parties of 6 or more. We were told that we could call on our way to the restaurant which we did about an hour later. Fair enough. When we arrived at the restaurant at 6:30pm only half of the tables were seated and there were various 2 top and 4 top tables around the restaurant with "reserved" signs on the table. We were seated at a 4 top in the middle of the restaurant (almost surrounded by empty tables) and asked to move to one of the 2 top tables that were empty either along the wall or at the window. We were told this is not possible because the tables were reserved (remember, reservations are not possible for parties of less than 6). It would have been somewhat less frustrating if the reserved tables were seated while we had our meal but when we left at around 8pm only the reserved 4 top was seated and both of the 2 tops we had asked to move to were still empty (one was being seated as we left). We enjoyed the food; the gyoza, sushi rolls and nigiri were all very tasty but the seating problems made the evening a little bit...