Southport Gourmet and Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Southport

We've been going to this restaurant for several years (as well as their fairly new Yummy's Hibachi). Usually the food is all right (not the best sushi in the world but okay for the area); the service is always good.

We went about 3 weeks ago and we noticed the rice was different - not sticky and didn't adhere very well to the sushi. Tonight we went without apprehension, hoping for the usual fare. Hot & Sour soup was good but then came the sushi we ordered (6 different rolls/types).

The avocado was overly ripe & mushy; the rice came completely off the rolls; the shrimp tempura rolls were twice as large as they should have been on a couple of them (had to use a knife to cut them in half) and the others were chopped into such tiny pieces you didn't know even know what it was. Bottom line - nothing was very good tonight. We spoke w/our very pleasant server and she went to get her manager. When the manager came over she looked at the platter - which was only partially eaten (one or two of each type) and agreed that it didn't look right; she said the guy making the sushi was having a bad night (even tapped her head and said he was having issues all day).

She apologized and said, "Let me make this right for you with your bill." Nice, we thought after talking w/her and explaining that we were regular customers and tonight was just "off" with the food. Our server brought the bill & guess what??!! We were given $7.00 off our check so our bill was now $70.00 plus tip. WOW! How gracious; that didn't even cover our two soft drinks!

As we were leaving the manager walked us to the door and again apologized. I told her that it just wasn't good and how surprised I was that she gave us $7.00 off our bill and that I didn't think that was right because we didn't eat but a few pieces of what we ordered. She smiled & laughed and said she gave us 10% off but next time ask for her and she would give us a free roll. Again - just WOW!

Well, that just is not acceptable. We have never spent less than $85.00 each time we visit this place and we drive 40 minutes to get there. Tonight the manager just made our life a little simpler - no more long drive to get to a "local" restaurant that doesn't appreciate our business and is so cheap that we have to pay $70+ for a meal that we didn't eat. BTW, we won't be visiting their sister restaurant "Yummy's" either.

We will speak with our money - no more will be...

Wow! We have been coming to Oak Island/Southport for several years and have never eaten here due to the lackluster yelp reviews. But the parking lot is always FULL! So tonight we gave it a try…

Shame on us for not giving it a try sooner! It was some of the best Asian food we have ever had! My mother-in-laws long time partner was a Chinese chef and this place is equal to some of the dishes he used to turn out.

My wife started with the pan fried dumplings, they were not quite a dumpling like she was expecting, but she said they were packed full of filling and extremely tasty! I had a Philadelphia roll and added cucumber to it - their sushi game is on point! The rice was perfect sticky texture, fresh flavors, and tightly rolled. Well done 👏🏻

We split the Mongolian beef and my wife added lo mein noodles. The flavor was outstanding and the beef was as tender as any cut of filet I have ever tasted. I read someone else complained about the lack of the beef, but unfortunately I don’t think that person is familiar with how real Asian food is supposed to be. The meat is important, but the sauce and veg is of equal/more importance to the dish. This is not a quickie Americanized Chinese takeout place next to a food lion…

The only negative I could say is the pricing is on the high side. But you get what you pay for. Quality isn’t expensive. It’s priceless.

Side note - Nina was our waitress tonight and she was pretty epic! On the way out she commented to my wife that I looked like Christopher Reeves Superman… for that alone this is now my favorite place and she is the best server ever!!

This will now be in our regular rotation and it should be in yours as well. To those about to dine, I...

This review is based upon the takeout experience, service, and food quality as we didn’t dine in. We decided to call in an order to take back to the room bc we wanted a lazy evening relaxing with sushi after being on the beach all day & inside dining was not available due to the covid-19 pandemic. We were party of 4 so we ordered quite a bit of food and for the quality it was not expensive! Now it’s not cheap but you would expect to pay more for that kind of quality. So fresh and delicious. Everything from their hibachi entrees, speciality rolls, to the swami it was all delicious! They made the best “super California roll” ive actually ever tasted. The only downfall to doing take out was my fiancé tuna touched one of my sushi rolls and I’m highly allergic to tuna so I woke up at 3am looking like I had lip injections but that wasn’t their fault lol. They give good sized portions too, I know with my hibachi entree the egg drop soup was huge which was nice bc most places only give a small amount. Everyone enjoyed their food. I didn’t get pics of all the food but I did get some of mine and my fiancé (I just forgot to get pics of the other couples food). Highly recommend. We are visiting again in September and we plan on hopefully actually dining in (they have a really nice area to dine outside that we hope will be open in a couple months)! The staff was super friendly, food was made quickly, and the restaurant appeared very clean (we didn’t go inside due to the pandemic, they brought everything...