Umi Sushi

Umi Sushi
914 NE Broadway
Portland, OR 97232

Sometimes we stumble into a sushi restaurant with low expectations and find ourselves delighted with a surprise. Exactly that at Umi. The decor is nice, the staff pleasant and the sushi very good.

 This was around the 4th of July and there was a 30% off deal on the Sushi, but I think that's a standing offer. So we got away with some beautiful sushi for a reasonable price.

The crunchy rolls were a treat.

Sushi isn't complete without crunchy shrimp heads :-)

On the walk back from the restaurant we bumped into this delightful street art.

Cute couple!

Super Sized Sushi

Super Sized Sushi
8535 SE Powell Blvd, Ste 102
Portland, OR 97266

We succumbed to the lure of super size sushi offerings at a place called just that: Super Sized Sushi. It's there past 82nd, next to the food depot ;-)

The place is clean on the inside like other farther out SE sushi restaurants, pretty well empty at 5:30pm.

Super size sushi lived up to it's name. Not only were the portions quite ample, they were very affordably priced to boot.

The hand rolls were two fisted piles of sushi goodness.

We tried the Baked Mussels and found them to be quite tasty. We try to have something different every time we go somewhere.

Honestly, the Salmon Roe were just too much. Some sushi is best served in reasonable portions. Even the Unagi (Eel) was too much for me in the large portions.

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The shrimp heads were normal sized and quite crunchy and tasty.

All in all, very good value for the dollar. For my part, I think super sizing is best left to McDonald's though. ;-/

Mirakutei

Mirakutei
536 E Burnside St
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 467-7501

I spotted a new Sushi restaurant on lower E. Burnside so made the trek down. Very strong points for presentation as you can see by the octopus carpaccio.

The chefs here are authentic and the waitress, clearly still working on her english. We had a bit of a go round on the Amaebi. These sweet shrimp are a favorite but for whatever reason, will sometimes get served without the fried shrimp heads. Maybe we look too American, but otherwise, what's the point? As the waitress herself said "that's the best part".

Long story short, we told her to fish the heads out of the trash and fry them up. She was shocked. They dug around in the freezer and found some for us...

Yummy. Look at those tentacles!

Forget the name of this roll. It's fried dungeneous crab I think, in the chef's special sauce, it was a popular winner with us.

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One of the nice things about Mirakutei is that if you go with three people, the pieces are sold one each, so it's easy to order up 3 of any one item. It's hard to snap pictures fast enough though, cause they go quickly ;-)

All told, an excellent choice for high quality sushi. A bit on the spendy side though for the cost conscious fish eater.

Takahashi Sushi

Takahashi Sushi
10324 SE Holgate Blvd
Portland, OR 97266
(503) 760-8135
www.thetakahashi.com

Portland Sushi Blog made a couple of runs over to Takahashi this past month due almost entirely to their fried oysters. That's not to discount the charms of all the tchotsky schlocky brick-a-brack scattered from wall to wall and gathered over a 25 year history as Portland's oldest Sushi bar.

But make no mistake... the oysters are the highlight. We ordered a couple orders.

The prices are very good at Takahashi and the food nicely presented. They do have a tendancy to bring all the food at once. So it can take a while. Might be good to order up some appetizers.

If you are out in a SE kind of way and hungry for some awesome sushi. Definitely check these folks out. The fortune cookies are a nice touch :-)

Koji Sushi

Koji Sushi
1502 NE Weidler
Portland, OR 97232-1411
(503) 280-0992

Koji Sushi was an enjoyable place to have some good sushi. While the place was empty as we arrived, it filled to capacity before we left.

The hands down winner for the evening was the special fried okra. Not breaded like you'll find at some southern style restaurants, the okra was served in a tangy soy type sauce and was tasty.

Otherwise, you know us, unagi, sweet shrimp and we had the angry dragon roll - which was pretty darn spicy. Also a tempura asparagus roll that was pretty darn good.

We should probably try some of the other Koji locations in Portland to get a fair comparison. It was good stuff though and reasonably good service to boot.

Miyamoto Sushi

Miyamoto Sushi
8105 SE Stark
Portland, OR 97215
(503) 208-2253

Miyamoto Sushi is a tiny little sushi shop just off of Stark street and SE 81st. We found the food, service and ambiance outstanding. That said, be prepared to sit at the one tiny table or at the bar because there's not much room. The photo below shows the room from the perspective of the one table.

On the other hand, I understand that you can sit at Roscoe's next door and order sushi from Miyamoto's. So that could work. Roscoes is also better signed. Here's the exterior of Miyamotos:

Ha. But you know the service was very friendly and the sushi chef seemed personally interested in how we liked the food. He seemed to batter the shrimp heads before frying them, which was very very tasty:

And the presentation on the river eel was gorgeous:

We ordered up the Black Tiger and the Miyamoto rolls - both were super tasty...

My dad loved this place. The smile on his face gave it a 10 out of 10. Check them out if you can!

SanSai Sushi

SanSai Sushi
539 Northwest 21st Avenue
Portland, OR 97209-1105
(971) 544-1500


Spring is here. The tree peoni's are blooming. Let's have some sushi.

The best thing about SanSai is the prices. This place is super affordable and came in at the bottom dollar of our travels so far.

Our waitress was name Precious. Which is precious :-). 

These are the unagi handrolls. I think They were my favorites. They were damn good.

Had to try the crunchy shrimp heads - the sweet shrimp AmaEbi. These were quite good - crispy and with all those tentacles. Nice.

We tried a couple of the sushi rolls and enjoyed them quite a bit. Good stuff.

Zilla Sake House

Zilla Sake House
1806 NE Alberta St
Portland, OR 97211

Zilla is a Sake House that happens to serve Sushi. They have an extensive book sized menu of fine Sake. Sadly the Portland Sushi bloggers are philistines who drink their sake hot and eat sea urchin gonads :-0 Also called Uni:

It has kind of a nutty taste to it...

We got to pick out our own sake glasses though and that was fun and got a couple of mismatched pitchers to go with them. It was good sake.

We'd never had the squid jerky before and kinda stumbled into it. It was a bit salty and pretty tasty.

The atmosphere at Zilla was very much an authentic Portland vibe as might be found at a Fresh Pot or in a way Beulahland. If tattoos make you uncomfortable you'd probably be better off skipping them, but missing out on some of the best Portland has to offer.  Check em out if you get a chance.

Yuki Sushi

Yuki Sushi
(503) 281-6804
1337 NE Broadway
Portland, OR 97232

Portland Sushi ventured over to Yuki Sushi over on NE Broadway recently. There are a few Yuki's and we haven't made it over to the NW location, so can't compare them... yet. The NE Yuki seems to favor the fried sushi rolls so we tried some of those and some fried oysters.

As is our way, the oysters disappeared before a photo could be snapped. A little dry for our taste, on the other hand, the sake cups come with sushi printed on them... so there's that...

Our regular readers won't be surprised to read that we ordered up some Unagi, the fresh water eel. Served with a dark sauce, they are scrumptious.... oh yeah, we don't have any regular readers ;-)

The service was pretty lackluster especially compared with the very attentive service we got at Mio Sushi on Hawthorne the following week. We had to constantly flag down the waitress to order more sake. Sheesh.

The rolls were good though and we enjoyed ourselves as usual. I'd tend to put Yuki towards the bottom of the proverbial list, but not dead last. Nevertheless, if I was in the neighborhood and hungry for sushi, I'd probably make the trek up to Meiji-An which is excellent.

Mio Sushi

Mio Sushi
3962 SE Hawthorne Blvd # E
Portland, OR 97214-5258
(503) 230-6981


The Portland Sushi blog tried to go to Little Tokyo Sushi this week, but it turns out to be a fake listing. There's no building at that location on Division and the phone number is for some poor woman who seemed good natured but tired of answering questions for them.


SOOOO, we went to Mio Sushi on Hawthorne. I like Mio, and our experience was really very good despite the fact that Mio is a small chain. The service was excellent, the food very good and the shrimp heads were piping hot! I think we lucked into Alicia, who was very attentive without hovering, gave us good advice and was cheerful... and she's a cutie to boot...

The tempura appetizer was good and I managed to break out my camera before we'd devoured the whole thing.

Can't say the same for the Oregon Roll... it was good, but we mostly devoured it before I could snap a photo. That's real crab in the Oregon Roll. The menu differentiates between Crab and Real Crab so pay attention.

We did a taste test between the fresh water eel and the sea eel. We decided that the fresh water eel, Unagi, was better, but gave much of the credit for that to the sauce. 

The volcano roll has jalepena peppers on top, we pulled them off and it was still plenty spicy. Did I mention that the AmaEbi shrimp heads were served piping hot? Not only that, but the tentacles were still very much intact. How sweet is that? ;-) 

Pretty sweet actually, I guess that makes sense, they are "Sweet Shrimp".


 Overall Mio Sushi did surprisingly well and got a 9 out of 10 on the sushi rating.

Mazi Sushi

Mazi Sushi
2126 Southeast Division Street
Portland, OR 97202-1243
(503) 432-8651

Sushi Mazi is stylishly located on Division Street around the corner from the Mirador. We found the sign outside the restaurant and headed inside...

 We chose our selections and marked up the menu...

 We had the run of the place for most of the time we were there. Which is a shame, because Sushi Mazi was very enjoyable. The place should be crowded.

Edamame are soy beans which are steamed and served with salt. Suprisingly tasty actually...

 We ordered up 3 rolls, some Yellowtail Tuna (Hamachi), Sea Urchin (Uni), Eel (Unagi) and some Salmon Roe (Ikura)

A closer view... yum.

The Wasabi and ginger. we try to eat all of the ginger, but the wasabi is usually horseradish which has been colored green, if it were actual wasabi, I suppose we'd finish that off too...

I really liked Mazi. 7.5 star rating for me.