Kibo Sushi — Restaurant in Ventura

I have been to wonderful Japanese restaurants from Japantown in San Francisco to locations off Laurel Canyon Blvd in Los Angeles. I love the beautiful aesthetics of the food preparation & clean flavors of fresh sashimi & sushi rolls. I love a good Miso Soup and I was so thankful to have found this gem of a restaurant here in Ventura. My husband had read reviews and said they were good and wanted to try it out. We had become disenchanted with the restaurant we had been going to for 20 years. It changed owners and the fish served us was not fresh & not what you ever want when being served raw fish., presentation just seemed like they didnt care anymore & we had resigned ourselves to not having a local Japanese restaurant to go to.. I will be honest the location & outside area of this new restaurant did put us both off. So it took a while to finally try it. WOW the inside of the restaurant is nice. The food dishes & presentations are what I would expect to find in San Francisco's great Japanese cuisine. We were both so relieved when our food arrived at our tables with its high quality & consideration to the detail & beauty in its presentaion from food arrangement to the dishes it was served in. We now go there regularly. Everytime the dishes have been excellent. I also loved a dish I used to get in San Francisco which was a chirashi bowl that had a flavorful chirashi rice with selections of sashimi, pickled ginger, wasabi & a couple slices of sweet egg tamago arranged on top of a bed of shaved daikon radish. I have ordered this dish everywhere & been dissapointed as it just wasn't the same. Well it is here at Kibo. Take the risk, don't be put off by the outside & location, Go inside, order & really enjoy the wonderful tasty japanese dishes they offer. You will be happy. We certainly are! The only thing we would add is being able to have even a greater selection of authentic Japanese dishes to...

UPDATE 01/19/24

I reached out to the restaurant after they replied to my review. I was introduced to Claudio over the phone. He was kind and understanding about the issues I ran into with the particular employee. We decided to go back to meet Claudio and give the restaurant another chance because we always enjoyed their food and all of their staff are friendly (minus one).

Kibo did not disappoint. Our go-to rolls are Geisha, Lemon, & Crazy Horse. We regularly enjoy the spicy edemame as an appetizer. We always get hot sake and beer or sometimes the grapefruit soju. All items are delicious. Thank you to Claudio and the staff at Kibo!

Original Review Below

Been going here regularly for 2 years and I have referred a lot of friends here. The reason for my 1 star review is solely based on one employee. There's one staff member (Asian lady) who has terrible customer service even tho she knows I'm a regular customer. She never greets or says hi or even smiles!

On 12/16 I went in with my gf and our 4 kids. She didn't say hi and immediately asked "how many?" We replied 6, there's an open table for 4 and she says we have to wait for a table. No problem. I see they are serving customers on the patio and there's open seating for us, she tells us they are not serving outside. Weird. Then she asks if we want to wait outside! The weather was around 50 degrees and we are waiting with children. I said no thank you we will wait inside.

A couple walks on behind us and is immediately given the open table of 4. Why weren't they asked to wait until we were seated?

I always tip well and talk highly of this place but this lady is constantly rude and difficult to deal with! This is the only negative review I have...

Came to Kibo Sushi with my roommate. Tldr; Fish was just OK (was fairly fresh), service was good, atmosphere was dated

Food: I tried the rainbow roll, Ichiban roll, Mama roll, salmon nigiri and the gyoza. The fish here didn't really stand out in any way. It wasn't smelly or bad quality, it was just flavorless and textureless. The shrimp was on the better side for the price of the restaraunt, and I think the tuna was the letdown - it was chewy and slightly old. The gyoza was pan-fried, a little soft/chewy and ultimately not very flavorful. As for the menu, there are a decent amount of non-traditional rolls, and the place does not overdo it on the sauces, which is nice. However I almost would have liked to have more sauce options to help with the flavor of the sushi.

Service: Service was good. It wasn't too crowded on a Monday night, and our server came by several times to ask if everything was ok and if we needed anything. The food did take some time time to come out (about 10 minutes), but wasn't anything to complain about. The atmosphere is a mix of edo-style artwork, but all seems dated.

In the end, this place is alright and I don't have anything against it regarding the sushi in the area, but its not a place...