I keep forgetting about this restaurant because the signage doesn't stand out - and the hibiki lettering is difficult to read unless you are sitting in the rush hour traffic. Fortunately (?) Yelp reminded me of this as I was searching for sushi to fill my craving.
The decor is nice and inoffensive enough. I love the distressed wood behind the sushi bar and the eclectic plates that they use. And I am glad that it's not an AYCE place.
I came on a Monday night so it's slow, and ordered a few things that I hope are representative sushi dishes to basically gauge the restaurant. And it's basically "ok".
The tempura looked ok (if shrimp!), but it was oily; clearly the oil it was cooked in wasn't hot enough. The mixed sashimi, nigiri and maki platter wasn't bad - I liked the ratio of fish to rice in the nigiri, and they did an excellent job on spreading the rice in the maki - no thick rice skin! And the sashimi was fine - the knife work seemed decent enough. But there was a pretty obvious bone on the salmon nigiri and another pin bone in the sashimi. Both are firsts in quite a while. Aside from that, the dish was ok.
The dragon roll ($17) was offered only with salmon or tuna or avocado. Why is there a choice? Anyways, we asked for salmon and tuna and they accommodated us. The roll was huge - too big to eat comfortably. But I guess it was good. I wish the tempura shrimp wasn't so oily.
I think that at the end of the meal - there was 2 of us and we were decently full - we weren't satisfied. We asked for the menu again to check out desserts but was told there wasn't any desserts. The server brought out a lychee pudding which I think was ok. But I think I still need something acidic to rid myself of the oily feel inside my mouth 40 mins after dinner.
I'm mixed about coming back - I probably would since it's the only decent a la carte sushi shop around and I don't want it to go under like Toro did. But I hope it fixes these small issues - hotter oil for the tempura and a bit of QC for the fish, and something to cleanse the palette at the end of the meal - and then I think I would be a happier customer. For two was $56.xx, taxes in. Not a bad price, all in all.