Chef Soon Contemporary Sushi & Bar — Restaurant in Woodridge

Short and sweet: the best sushi I have ever had

Long and sour: everything about the experience was perfect. Located near Naperville and right next to plenty of other restaurants and stores so it makes it easy to multitask and knock out two birds with one stone.

The restaurant itself has a cozy interior with booth seating to make it feel more welcoming. There is also a patio with a rain cover so that you can take advantage when the weather is nice.

The service we received was phenomenal. A very friendly hostess showed us to our table before we met our server. She gave us great recommendations and took our tastes into consideration. She also stopped by multiple times to fill out water, make sure everything was good, and take away dirty plates.

Finally, the best part, the food. It's hard to explain with words what the tongue can taste but I will try. I'm not the biggest sushi snob but I can appreciate a good piece of maki when I taste it. We got the chef soon special, smoky bear, something with mango, and a shrimp tempura roll because I always have to try it. It's hard to rank such good food from worst to best so I will go from good to great.

Unsurprisingly, the one I choose instead of having the server choose for me, was the good one. It has smoked salmon on top but I think there was a little bit too much cream cheese inside. It was still better than any other roll I have had but a great roll can't have cream cheese, let alone enough to slightly overpower the roll. The presentation was great with thin but wide pieces of salmon on top with a sauce drizzled on the side to let the customer choose. Smoked salmon roll 6.8

Secondly is the shrimp tempura roll. The top three rolls were all so close but just like cream cheese in the smoky bear, a great roll can't have shrimp tempura. I still love shrimp tempura but that is because it's hard to mess it up, and it tastes good, but is not authentic sushi. It had some flsort of white crunchy bits around the roll that enhanced the texture but the flavor is where it rose to the top. It didn't taste much like normal shrimp tempura so I could tell it was a higher quality than what you get anywhere else. Just like the other roll, it had a great sauce on the side. Shrimp tempura 8.1

In second place was the mango roll. I call it the mango roll because it had mango on top but you can find out exactly what is in each roll by looking at their menu online. The roll itself was great, but I am a huge fan of mango and fruit, especially on sushi so this one had high expectations. It perfectly met those expectations. As the tiny diced mango never tore apart the roll, slid off, or overpowered the fish. If you are new to fruit on sushi, I highly recommend this one. It also had a bit of spice but the perfect amount where it was just a bit after you already ate the piece of sushi. Mango roll 8.6

Last but certainly not least... The chef soon signature roll. Listed first on the speciality rolls menu, it did not disappoint. I usually prefer salmon over tuna but this roll has singlehandedly changed my mind. The presentation was very demure. It knew where to fit in and it knew where to stand out. The interior of the roll looked very basic, just yellowfin and some accessories but the top lured you in with some edible flowers that have a little flare to an otherwise, standard looking maki roll. The first bite was the same as the last... Perfect. I could eat this roll every single day for the rest of my life and not get sick, unlike some of the distinct flavors in smoked salmon, mango, and shrimp tempura. It executed a pretty basic recipe to perfection. The rice was fluffy yet dense enough to hold the roll together. The nori was almost invisible to my mouth and let the tuna talk. The way I described it in person was "creamy", but in the best way. That must have been a good piece of fish because it was the equivalent of a nice marbled piece of steak with the rendered fat that melts in your mouth like butter. Also a great lemony juice that balanced the richness of the fish. Tuna...

Chef Soon is a sushi genius. The creations he comes up with are never, EVER, subpar. They are always thoughtfully and strategically prepared with flavors that will keep you coming back for more. Citrus vs umami vs both together, omg it’s perfection always. Tonight we tried an app special which had raw scallop, clementine orange, & avocado slices, topped with a mango salsa & micro greens and roe. We’ve never had raw scallop and this literally melted in our mouth. It was so fresh, buttery, scallop perfection. There are vegetable maki rolls, we tried the shiitake which was so simple yet perfect. There are also specialty rolls galore. Specialy roll of choice for us this time was the ‘dragon breath’. It was still warm, flavors just melt together in a display of pure foodie genius. Make a reservation and you can sit directly in front of Chef Soon and his magical sushi team, who give a beautiful performance of sushi roll, maki roll creation, including the absolute most precision cuts to fish directly imported from Japan and other areas trusted by Chef. It’s unfortunately been a few years since we’ve been here but the quality has not changed one bit. Still the amazing, fresh flavors we remember when Chef was sharing a building with the Asian mart off of Maple, to when he first moved here at 7 bridges. Whatever our economy goes through, Chef Soon provides consistency and flavor packed new choices for his return clients to try and enjoy. Would absolutely recommend to anyone, especially if you’re scared to try sushi. You will never have to worry about unsafe sanitation and/or fish that isn’t fresh. This is a win/win, wish I could...

It's not too often that I go to a restaurant that has a fairly expensive menu but this place is one of the few places in Woodridge where I feel that the price for the food is accurate for the quality of the food as well. I'm a large fan of eating freshwater eel and I got the eel, the soft shell crab, sea urchin shooters and the egg sushi. On my last trip to Japan I had got myself an eel bowl and this flavor was about as accurate as it could possibly get. The flavors I experienced when I took a bite into the Eel we're the same flavors I got when I bit into the eel when I was in Japan. Chef soon signature roll was a very light flavored roll but I ate it with a heavier role and a combination of the both tasted fantastic. The service was impeccable as well. We had never been here before but the waitress who is helping us knew the ins and outs of every single item on the menu. I wasn't too big of a fan of the traditional roles like two rainbow rolls or the spicy tuna roll because they always taste the same at almost every restaurant but he has multiple recipes for his own rolls and from what I could taste the ones that I had were incredible. the atmosphere was okay if played mostly nightclub music which was a little odd but I could dig it. The area is also very small and you could be better if you had a reservation. I could definitely see myself coming here again within the next week...