Aburiya Bento House — Restaurant in Seattle

Ok. So I rarely write reviews, but I was so infuriated by my experience that I had to leave one.

First of all, I want to first say that service here was superb. The servers were all respectful, kind, and attentitive. Sadly, I could not say that the food was up to the standard that I was expecting for an "omakase" experience.

The bill for two was expected to be $200 + tip + tax, generally inline or even a little cheaper than usual omakase dinners. I came in with an open mind and lower expectations than places such as Shiro's or Kashibas. The first few red flags came out when our appetizers consisted of friggen Shu-Mai dimsum and bland miso-soup. I was a little puzzled at first, but again, a little cheaper than expected so I decided to keep my mind open. A third appetizer came out as some lightly torched beef nigiri, followed by some ahi-tuna sashimi.

I figured that it could only go up from here. Boy was I wrong.

Our main dish came out all at one time which consisted of a bento-box, compartmentalized into seperates pieces of Sashimi, three pieces in each compartment, and two sides of sushi rice which I might add were VERY heavily dousted with vinegar.

Generally you'd expect some creativity or a small chef's twist in each of the pieces served, but sadly all we received were really thick cuts of fish that could find at Costco.

1. There was no Toro at all to be found. All we received were lean cuts of Tuna.
2. Ama-ebi is generally sweet, but we were left with what I found was old shrimp, leaving fishy after tastes. The heads of the the shrimp are usually deep fried to also be enjoyed, but the server stated that there was no kitchen, so we were provided with raw heads to look at (lol).
3. The most creative that the chef ever got was adding edible gold flakes on a old piece of fish that left me and my significant other pondering if we enjoyed the flakes more than the fish.
4. There was literally just a lump of uni on top of sushi rice, that was again heavily dousted with vinegar.
5. Sadly, there was not one fresh piece of fish in the entire "experience".

Again, the servers were all kind, polite, and provided great service. The only thing I wish was better about the service was that I had wished the server warned me about how terrible the fish was.

I honestly could have ordered a $20 Chirashi bowl from the poke restaurant down the street and had the same quality. Instead I ended up spending $260, taking half the fish home and inevitably throwing it in the trash because I didn't want anyone else to experience what I had just gone through.

By FAR the WORST Omakase experience I have had in Seattle. I implore you, please do not waste...

The only one star is for the service and the dessert. The sushi was really BAD even in Seattle.

We ordered restaurant week special along with other items. When reading thru the menu you can quickly realize this is a specialized sushi place. They have mainly serve nigiris and rolls. Which I’d expect “okay quality” sushi. The restaurant week special and other items we ordered was almost all nigiris, which is simply BAD. The rice was so hard, some of them was even undercooked. Not only hard but the rice also always falls apart, I had a hard time to dip the fish portion to the soy sauce. And as soon as the giniri was upside down, the fish and rice falls apart too. All of the above are simply objective facts. The subjectives: fish quality was bad too, ebi(shrimp) was clearly frozen, salmon wasn’t really salmon, tuna was artificially colored and frozen. So really, I can’t even say if there’s any part good with their sushi. I’d even go do Kura, the revolving sushi place.

The service was warm especially the lady was nice to us, so thank you! But they are really understaffed, took 35min to see the appetizer, 45min to see the main.

The restaurant week was not really cheaper than ordering thise a la cart, the 9 piece bento was more expensive than ordering them a la cart. So I’m sure the owner is pretty good at math. They change 18% tip (which is fine, but) not noted to us beforehand. Over all the price was close to $200 for two. Similar price you can get a incomparable quality of food in ilovesushi bellevue, or for half of the price you can get a similar but better quality...

Made reservations and came to this place on a Saturday night. We arrived right on time but had to wait a few minutes for our table to be vacated and set up - no biggie. The restaurant has a casual modern atmosphere. The servers were friendly and attentive throughout the night.

We've seen the photos of the nigiri boxes online and they looked so pretty! Of course we had to try that. We ordered a scallop carpaccio and the aburi hamachi as appetizers, the aburi oshizushi and the 9pc aburi nigiri box each. Miso soup and salad were served right away and those were decent. The appetizers were good, but the aburi nigiri looked better than they tasted. The sushi rice was a bit mushy and under seasoned. The fish also wasn't the best quality. Aburi is supposed to have a nice charred flavour and aroma, but you can hardly tell the nigiri was torched. The oshizushi was not bad but too much rice in each piece.

Overall, service is good but food is mediocre. I would say the presentation of the dishes are better than...