JJANGA Sushi & Yakiba — Restaurant in Spring Valley

So, my wife and I finally tried Jjanga after reading how they won awards for their food for 2020 and 2021. I consider myself a conneisure of sushi, as I always make a point to visit new sushi places and see how they compare. We live locally, so we have been to most of the sushi AYCE's in Vegas. So, lets talk about our review of Jjanga:

First, the good; we had no problem parking on a Saturday night. The nigiri pieces were well proportioned with a little rice and fish covering it completely. And, the fish was very fresh and tasted great. These two are of major importance for any sushi restaurant. The atmosphere was also pretty nice and lively, with nice decorations and style. And, the wait staff were attentive and we were never without water.

Now, the bad; the rice was cool/room temperature, not warm. We ordered several times over the hour we were there hoping that it was just a bad/old batch of rice that they were pulling from. But, all of the sushi we got had the same cool rice, which really took away from the enjoyment of the food. I had to order a deep fried roll in an attempt to get the rice warm, and even then it didn't seem very warm. It is crucial to serve warm rice with any Asian dish, but especially sushi. This was a huge let down. Second, the "crab" that they use (aka imitation crab meat/stick) is my most hated version of it. There are several manufacturers of imitation crab meat, and they vary in flavor and consistency. I've tried many types, and this was the cheap stuff. Unfortunately, that really took away from my favorite and one of the simplest rolls, the California roll. That imitation crab meat ruined for us any rolls that had it inside, which is many. And last but not least, no uni (sea urchin). I've been to some other sushi AYCE's in Vegas that buy the uni regardless of season and price. The owners told me that they feel that they owe it to their guests and don't mind paying extra. But, then there are sushi places, such as Jjanga, which choose not to buy it due to the price. This is always a pet peeve of mine because, when I pay a premium sushi AYCE price ($31.99 for dinner), I would expect that price to cover an order of uni. I see this as a penny pinching strategy of sushi AYCE's. An average dinner rate for sushi AYCE in Vegas seems to be $29.99. So, charging a few dollars more should provide some additional benefits which will make the restaurant stand out and cause guests to want to return again. We did not feel this way as we left.

Unfortunately, my wife and I ranked Jjanga lower than many others sushi ACYE's in the city primarily because of the cool rice and cheap imitation crab meat. If these two things can be improved upon, we would likely return to give it another try. But, as is, we have other places that are cheaper and serve warm rice and the good crab meat. And, some which even serve uni all year.

Hope this...

I’ve frequented a lot of AYCE sushi places in the Valley and finally decided to try this one out as it’s just down the street.

My first impressions weren’t great, there was a line out the door and the hostess was on the phone when I walked up, she didn’t acknowledge the lady before me or myself until after she had passed off her phone call to another hostess (Possibly the manager? Unsure.)

I was told it was going to be a 35-45 minute wait, they took my name and number down and told us they’d notify us when our table was ready. Personally, all of my calls from unknown numbers go to voicemail because spam calling recently has gotten ludicrously out of hand, I was expecting a voicemail or text message.

Once I checked my phone I had noticed that a call was made 15 minutes prior, no voicemail left and no text message.

We got back inside and were told it would be another 10 minutes, that’s fine. The hostess did apologize, but it was a half apology, I understand you can’t send texts from a landline, but I would have gotten a notification if there was even an attempt to leave a voicemail. It may seem small, however the small things are what keep people coming back. There’s 100 sushi places in the valley I could have went to, some of which who know me by name, but I decided to go here, and yet the time to leave a voicemail was seen as too much of an inconvenience.

The reason this got bumped up to a 5 star review is because the rest of the staff blew it out of the water when it comes to hospitality. They were attentive without being pushy and timely. The food was prepared correctly and any further mistakes were addressed promptly.

The cuts of nigiri were generous with fish and light on rice, a personal preference of mine, the rolls were flavorful and presented beautifully.

One of the runners even offered to bring us more ginger, which as small as it is, is something I really appreciated. Not many places will offer it, but the ones that do I tend to frequent much more.

An experience that started off with being made to feel like we weren’t worth the effort was flipped around by serving staff that made us feel like the most important people in...

Wow! What a let down! Google maps seriously failed me this time. I have no idea how anyone could enjoy this restaurant unless they were getting drunk at the bar. Every item we ordered had a serious problem.

We started with the spicy garlic edamame, which came out so fiery hot that it went unfinished. Imagine going to a wing joint and ordering the hottest fieriest sauce on the menu, and that's about how they served edamame.

The sushi pizza, which the waiter told us would be "big" , was completely underwhelming and covered with onions which weren't even supposed to be on it. It was primarily cheap imitation crab smeared on some rice paper. For $14.

The two types of sushi we ordered were bland and had such a minuscule amount of rice on them that you would think it was made of gold.

The teriyaki chicken was way overcooked, dry, and flavorless. Along with the fried rice which wasn't fried, had almost no egg in it, and had no flavoring. It tasted like plain brown rice.

The thing that brought us to the restaurant originally was that it was supposed to be all you can eat, but when we got here the first thing they told us was there was no stake on the menu. Despite the fact that the name of the restaurant has "steak and sushi" in it! On top of that they proceeded to tell us all the things from the menu that were not included in the all you can eat price.

Bottom line, I would not recommend anyone visiting this restaurant. You'd be better...