Sushi Gozen — Restaurant in Santa Monica

Oh how I was hoping this place would be better than it was! It’s so conveniently located, and the staff is very kind and lovely. But the food? So expensive, yet so cheap. The $16 California roll was paltry and stank of canned tuna (which it contained instead of imitation crab), then I found a little piece of plastic wrap in my salmon roll (which was $20 for eight measly pieces). The “Gozen sauce” is a cheap sweet-and-sour meant to mask the taste of the low-grade fish. Honestly such a disappointment! At least the beer was cold. I spent $65 after tax and tip for: seaweed salad, house beer, California roll (one of the cheap rolls) and one of the Special salmon rolls. Will not be coming back...

As a traveler staying at the Hilton Hotel, I found this lovely neighborhood sushi place halfway between the hotel and the beach and pier. Do yourself a favor and skip Bubba Gump and the other tourist spots and head to Sushi Gozen. It is unassuming and unpretentious and has a wonderful variety of authentic Japanese - American choices. From standard sushi to fancier rolls, bowls of noodles, and other entrees and appetizers. My experience was the opposite of the one star reviewer’s report. the sushi fish was delightfully fresh and well “sauced”, and...

Let me start off by saying the food was not bad. This is about the service. The poor server. Yes, singular. The entire restaurant was waited on by a single server during a Friday night dinner rush. I felt so bad for her, I couldn't even get mad when it took forever just to get our orders taken. It took us 2 hours to get two rolls. Whoever runs this restaurant seriously needs to manage better, because cheaping out on hiring one extra person to help out during dinner rush made me never want to go...