Carmel Sushi — Restaurant in San Diego

My wife and I had the pleasure of dining at Carmel Sushi and when we say pleasure, we mean it. The friendliness of the staff is what you notice right off the bat, being welcomed by everyone there and quickly being seated with menus. The restaurant is clean and bright with comfortable, spaced out seating. The menu is a wonderful mix of traditional sushi/nigiri dishes, bentos and even amazing Korean soups!

We started with mixed tempura which was a great sample of shrimp, broccoli, onion, sweet potato, and zucchini. I opted for the pork and kimchi hot tofu soup which came with banchan of seaweed, picked radish, and kimchi. The soup was a very flavorful broth with nice chunks of pork and soft tofu served with fresh white rice. My wife chose the vegetable yakiudon noodles which had a sweet and savory sauce with mixed vegetables and tender udon noodles.

We added on the avocado roll and veggie roll as well which were bright and fresh and a great palate cleanser before having a sweet macaron ice cream!

Kay and Kevin and their whole team are amazing and we really enjoyed our evening and were made to feel welcome for our stay. We hope to be back soon and try some other...

Very very slow service. We ate here on a Sunday. The restaurant was around 20% full at the time we came in around 1:15. It was painfully slow. It took them maybe 20 minutes to take the order. One miso soup came out after another 20 min (though we ordered two). It took more than an hour to get the 3 rolls we ordered (and the third came 10 minutes later). During that time, there were at least five to-go orders that filled, as well as a table that came well after us served before. They apologized several times but it was beyond painful. My little glass of water was empty most of the time. The food was OK though the Ponzu sauce was missing on one of my items. The older woman working there at one point blamed the waitress for being new but if you look at the reviews this has been happening for a while. If you are under staffed, just tell people you are only doing to-go orders and don't seat them. This was an incredibly negative experience. I would have rather gone basically anywhere else. Don't be deceived by the high...

It's unbelievable that this place has so many five star reviews, then you get here.

You see the care of the initial floor plan, making sure that everyone is not a sardine, and that you have a walkway, not judging people as you pass. Real estate is expensive and I'm glad they took the hit on seating to have patrons have a proper eating space.

I will state that my service was a bit biased, as there were only two parties when I was eating lunch here, but for real, why isn't there more people? Probably because I showed up 45 minutes before they closed. Even with that said, I felt no rush by the staff to eat and move on.

Lastly, the food... Fresh sushi, defining what fresh and delicious should be, or at the minimum can be. I've eaten at good places and I was still questioning the five stars here. They earned each one of them, not by buying stars, but serving greatness. I need this sushi shop closer to my home, but I'll take it as an on the way meal from the...