Spicy Lidako
Sushi House Japanese

Sushi House Japanese

214 North El Camino Real, Encinitas, 92024, United States Of America

Tea • Sushi • Coffee • Japanese


"With so many poke places out there that I've tried over the last few months, Sushi House is the one that's closest to home. Which is why it's a bit wild to me that it took so long before I actually came here for a bowl. When I finally did ... well, the experience pretty much underwhelmed us all. First off, I haven't been to the adjoining sushi bar in a very long time, so I can't remember how most of their fare was, but when my son ordered a California Roll for his own lunch, we were a bit disappointed to see one of those fake crab meat sticks jutting out from the end. Now, I know that pretty much every place uses fake crab meat, but at least go the extra mile (or half block) and mix it up with something a make a little, vibrant looking, crab salad. Not this dry, oddly sticky disappointment we received. Oh, well ... at least the four year old at the table enjoyed it; plus, they As for the poke itself, the quick answer was that it was just alright. The fish itself was fresh ... enough, but we had some major problems with what was in our bowls: Looking at the bowl of salmon they offered, you could see multiple colors contained therein. And I don't mean one pink and one lightly whiter shade that just had a nice ribbon of fat on it, I mean there were multiple shades of red ranging from a bright pink down to a deep reddish brown. It was as if someone cut up two or three farm raised and wild caught salmon all up in one bowl and tossed it together. The Fried Onions they have as a topper are extremely stale, like a few days old stale. My better half grimaced when trying to take the first chew and had to suffer the rest of the way through struggling to enjoy what was worth enjoying under the non-crunch. The scoops of fish themselves were pretty small. Where most places load up heaping spoonfuls, this place seems a bit more carefully measured, making the whole of your bowl rice and fixings instead of the tuna and salmon you were expecting. On the plus side, they did have both Octopus and Scallops, two things I look for in my poke bowls. On the minus side, those scallops were a little spoiled that day (still edible, just a tad fishy as opposed just sea salty fresh). And because of that, we haven't been back. I'm not sure if some of those issues we had were just that day or if they are on-going, but with so many other poke places that rank so much greater in our eyes, we haven't been in too big of a hurry to try and find out. Unless we ever do, Sushi House Poke stays at a very weak three stars for me."