Todd F.
Yelp
We were passing through the Denver area this weekend and wanted to find a reasonably priced and highly rated sushi/Japanese food restaurant that was able to get us in and out in a reasonable amount of time. 7:15pm on Friday night, called JP Nori and they said they would be able to seat us immediately. Arrived at 7:30, got seated, place looked nice and fairly busy. Slightly slow but friendly service at first, but eventually got our waters, tea and a beer for me. Immediately ordered a kids meal bento box for my daughter and edamame and soup as we were quite hungry. 15 min later we ordered the rest of our meal: A Yummy role which was recommended by our server, a rainbow roll, and 3 orders of nigiri (toro, salmon and albacore).
The main reasons I'm giving two stars has to do with how long our food took to arrive in addition to the quality and presentation of the food. It took 30 min for the edamame and miso soup to arrive at which point the server apologized for the wait and said they would not charge us for the edamame. Then 5 min later my daughter's bento box arrived (teriyaki chicken meal). Chicken was tender and sauce was quite sweet (decent flavor), but the sauce for the stir fried veggies that the chicken was served on top of was quite spicy due to an excessive amount of pepper (I tried it and it wasn't bad for an adult, but would recommend taking it down a few notches for a kids meal). The rest of the bento was mediocre. Steamed rice was a bit dry.
We then waited another 30 min before our sushi arrived and by that time the restaurant was not full at all. We could not understand why it took nearly an hour for our small sushi order to be served. They apologized and said they had a lot of take out orders.
The sushi was not good. The blow torched seared Yummy Roll had a tough, almost rubbery texture to the tuna (think it was tuna on top) and just seemed messy with sauces overall, not presented well. Rainbow roll was similar, not quality fish, not presented well. Same with the nigiri, albacore was seared via blow torch, not good texture or taste and the toro was thin and chewy (not what you expect when eating toro). The salmon was the best of the three in taste/texture, but again was thinly sliced and presented poorly.
Not sure how this place has a 4.5 star rating. Friendly wait staff, however poor service overall and generally poor quality of food.