Ginza AYCE Sushi - Torrance — Restaurant in Torrance

January 2023: Came here again for dinner. Lowering review from 4 stars to 2 stars. Service was just way too slow. We had been sitting for 90 minutes and still hadn’t gotten all of our second round. It took about 20-30 minutes between portions within each round. Rolls came from the first round and then we had to wait 30 minutes for the nigiri to come from the same round. Same thing in the second round too. The servers weren’t attentive. Any time we needed anything I had to shout for assistance because they weren’t coming by our table.

The flavor this time also was just flat. Didn’t taste as fresh as the first time we came. The rice didn’t hold together and the rolls seemed sloppy. I was super looking forward to coming here again but felt really let down. I wanted at least a third round but got tired of waiting. May not come again.

Oh yeah, other reviews about them forgetting orders are completely true. This happened the first time we came and sure enough it happened this time too. We wrote no avocado because of an allergy and our rolls had huge chunks of avocado in them. On the second round we waited 30 minutes for our nigiri. When it finally came out, it was still missing nigiri we had ordered and so we had to wait even longer. Other tables around us too were complaining about missing items.

When they returned the paper menu to us each time by the way it was dirtier and stickier as it the chef had gotten sauce all over it. Disappointed in myself for coming here tonight. I probably won’t come again but I hope they can improve some these issues so that other customers can have better experiences.

October 2022: Fish on the sushi was fresher than most places. They also cut the fish thick which I personally like. The rice portion however is quite large. The rice they use is seasoned very similarly to what I’ve had in Japan and properly sticky. They also don’t stop you after three rounds as other places do so you can get quite a lot.

The service was so-so. About half of our items were missing from the second round. I brought it to the waiter’s attention. He then brought out the items but there was still one item missing. I asked again and it finally came. They also don’t give out drink menus or ask what you’d like to drink. Ask for a drink menu so you can see the options.

For the flavor and freshness this place is worth it to go. I personally like it much more than Aburi in Long Beach, but would rank it just below Sake2me in Cerritos. In terms of ingredient quality though I think it could be argued this is the best...

I thought I'd give this place another chance, but it was even more disappointing than the first.

The first time I came at night with some friends. Arrived 1.5hrs before their posted closing time. We checked in online, and they said the table was ready for us, but we waited for about 20mins before a host gave us any attention.

As we sat down, we asked for the AYCE menu, and the waiter said their cutoff was 1 hr before closing. I checked the watch, and it was barely into that period, approx. 3 mins. I confronted them about the fact that we waited for 20mins just to get seated, and the party that arrived before us could do AYCE. Why couldn't we? He brought the manager, and they still couldn't accommodate us. After arguing for 15mins, we finally got to order off the a la carte...just as we finished ordering, they said it was the last call already. It seemed like they didn't want us to enjoy our experience at their restaurant.

The food was mediocre at best, and we were hungry too. It's not as good as the sushi rolls from Ralphs... That was my expectation. I did not try to set the goal too high.

Flash forward to today. We came here not knowing it was the place we had been before, but once we got here, we recognized it. I thought about changing places but decided to give it another shot. The food was again mediocre. The best thing and only thing I liked was the Jalapeno poppers. The albacore we ordered was dry DRY, like beef jerky dry.

This time we did get to do the AYCE option. However, we only were able to order 1 round of food because we had ZERO service. Our waitress came to drop off the menu and water, then came to pick up our order sheet, dropped off the food, and never saw her again. The food came quick, which was the only thing that went well. We never got a refill on water, nobody came to see how we were doing, and we never bothered to ask if we wanted more food. I filled out the sheet for round two and waited about 20 mins before I was finally fed up with their lack of service. We couldn't even get somebody to help us check out. Keep in mind this was about 5 pm. Not even close to their busy peaks. I did my own calculations left the cash and left. Didn't even get a "good-bye". I will never...

I am super tempted to leave a 2 star rating because the service upon entry was so poor. My brother is in the food industry, I did some consulting for restaurants and UXR, and we were both perplexed at how anyone could be so bad at this.

We put our names into a tablet after waiting around inside the front for awhile. When our time came via text, it had like no impact. We spoke to 4 different people after no one called for us (again, we were just inside the entrance, no one else was waiting near us). We were outright ignored by 2 employees. When we were seated, we were basically abandoned. No one explained the ordering system. The instructions had 3 categories but the menu had many more, but the key words (like "kitchen") were completely absent from the menu but critical in the instructions. This doesn't even include the grammar issues (I have an MA in teaching English to non-natives speakers, taught at CSULB and in Japan for several years), and those grammatical issues seemed more like bad writing than a consistent language development issue.

When we finally got a server who got it, it made things better, though he didn't know what bonito/katsuo are. Wait staff also didn't seem to know anyone's orders. Half the staff were friendly enough, but even the friendly people didn't exactly seem experienced.

The guy at the bar also gave me super bad vibes. I don't know if the yelling was supposed to be someone's idea of Japanese service (he spoke English and... grunted at us?), but it was off putting. I was pretty clear why I didn't see a lot of Asian customers.

The food wasn't bad though. I was surprised when my tempura included what looked liked fried fish (NOT tempura, just regular fried) turned out to be a hunk of calamari, but it wasn't bad, just very much not tempura.

If you need AYCE sushi, this might be your only decent choice right now. Outdoor seating was serviceable until the sprinklers came on and hit me a bit, but we were ready to leave anyway. Pretty sure management doesn't know how to organize people and some others lack training. It could be much better, but for the price, you...