We ended up at Shimogamo trying to quench a sushi craving. We picked Shimogamo because of the Yelp reviews and it's proximity to us. I was not impressed at all...
We started off with the fried calamari. It looked great but tasted awful. It was sooo overcooked that I could barely bite in to some of the pieces and it also consisted of mostly tentacles. We ended up arriving at the end of happy hour so we ordered a few items off of the special happy hour list and some from the regular dinner menu. I appreciate that sushi rolls can take time to craft but it took an exorbitantly long amount of time to get from our appetizer to our rolls. And the restaurant was not overly packed.
After the rolls finally arrived they were average, very bland, and some of the rolls flavors seemed off. There was nothing about them that made me want to eat the next piece. As a result, we put our utensils down and requested the check.
Unfortunately Shimogamo left a bad taste in my mouth. This is the fourth sushi place I've been to since moving to Phoenix two months ago and it won't be on my go to list. There are much better establishments in the area - Roku in Scottsdale is amazing. I would even rate How We Roll in Phoenix better than this place.
I was surprised on the way out of the restaurant when I realized there were two American guys rolling the sushi.
On another note ...
The atmosphere was nice. There are tables in the back that are more intimate and the waitress was very nice.