Joy Sushi — Restaurant in San Mateo

My daughter found a restaurant "that she thought would be worth trying."  She picked the "Joy Sushi restaurant" and based that on over 1,000 reviews.

My only regret is that I didn't get a chance to review the ratings first!

Upon entering, the restaurant is very small with a half dozen tables on the first floor with another dozen upstairs where we were seated.

Our table, which appeared to still have remnants of "food particles" from the last customers wasn't a good start to our dining experience.

Although the restaurant was only half full, it still took quite awhile for our waiter to take our initial orders.

We requested hot tea and water and when it arrived, I was surprised to see the water, which was in plastic cups, had chips at the top of the cup, like it had just been dropped.

A sliced lemon was in every cup but there was also "something" else floating around in my "cup of water," which I declined to drink and stayed with the tea.

When our waiter finally took our order, we decided on their "Bento Box" which came with three selections.

Miso Soup was very weak in flavor and not much else in the way of garnishment.

The salad tasted good with the "Asian" dressing with the exception of "one" large green leaf, which was rotten and brown in color.

Squid sushi, tasted slightly warm and pasty and not the cool fresh flavor that I'm used to.

Tuna sushi was also somewhat warm but tasted good.

Salmon sushi was prepared well and the flavor was a smooth taste.  My only regret was I didn't order anymore because two pieces went for $4.59 a pop!

Salmon eggs sushi was the best.  The eggs were fresh, clear, with a clean taste.

The gyoza was hard and the ingredients for this famous dish was subpar in both flavor and taste.

During and before our meal arrived, I asked for tea and refills for water on "three occasions," which never came.

Our waiter acknowledged my requests each time but ignored us.  My tea was refilled when I received my bill...!

They "only had one waiter working," which I do feel sorry for but that's the restaurants fault for not adequately staffing the place.

Our waiter was taking care of at least 10 tables by himself and in a way don't blame him for forgetting simple requests of refills or extra napkins.

Our check took 15 minutes to arrive and about the same for them to charge our meal.

Overall: this places received over 1,000 reviews but a lot of those reviews are "2-3 stars" with a lot of the complaints in their service.

Someone there should take a "hint" and "maybe" read their "negative reviews" to improve their ratings......  I...

Decided to check this place out last weekend with my girlfriend as I'm always down for some sushi! From the moment I walked through the front door there was a strange mood about my waiter, she kind of just eyeballed us and would speak very bluntly, briefly, and rudely. I'm a white guy and my girlfriend is black, I'm not sure if this was the reason why but BOY did it feel like we were being treated differently than the other customers. I could chock it up to our waiter just having a bad day, and usually I don't mind if the waiter is rude as long as the food is good, but the fact she was greeting other tables with a smile just really rubbed me the wrong way and made our experience very uncomfortable. Luckily it was just her though, one of the cooks wished us a good day on the way out and seemed genuinely nice.

Unwelcoming atmosphere aside, the sushi itself was pretty good. Though the salad they started us off with was completely room-temp, and had clearly been sitting out for a bit before reaching our table. Not sure why they'd pre-make those salads as they quite literally are just iceberg lettuce with dressing, perhaps the heat wave had their fridges a bit warmer than usual. The rolls we got weren't cut correctly, leaving very large, over 2x as wide chunks on either end of both of our dishes, making that part very difficult to eat. Not sure if this is stylistic but I've never seen it before and I eat a lot of sushi. It certainly looked pretty and all tasted good, but with the rude waiter, resulting uncomfortable atmosphere, room-temp salad, and failing at the fundamentals of preparing a sushi roll, I really can't imagine giving Joy...

I've gone here a few times in high school and college, but nothing recent enough that I could recall my previous impressions about the food or service. I came here the other night and was reminded why I keep coming back. There was no wait at all on a Saturday night, so our party of 4 was seated instantly after walking in.

I love when sushi places have a ton of different rolls to choose from. I'm allergic to some shellfish so I tend to not be able to order most items at any given sushi place. That wasn't a problem here. There literally was 4 pages of rolls to choose from, so I ended up picking one roll and sharing another with a friend. I also may or may not have picked a few pieces of another roll from my other friend as well, heh. I can't remember what they were in particular other than the Hurt Attack Roll (LOL), but all three were pretty good and very filling. The rolls were decently priced and well worth the price, seeing as it did come with free miso soup and salad.

I was a little disappointed when they only came back to refill my water when we were paying the check, but other than that the service was fairly quick. Between us getting there, ordering, eating, and paying, it couldn't have taken more than an hour. I'm hardly ever in the San Mateo area anymore but the efficient service and affordable food definitely gives me a good reason to...