Chris Y.
Yelp
I'm not typically down in this part of the San Pablo area, but since I was here decided to give Koi Sushi a try. Right down the street from the Lytton Casino and at the 3-way intersection where you enter Vale Road, it's located in the same shopping center as the huge Starbread, so really just look for the Starbread if you're trying to locate Koi Sushi. Everybody who came in to grab their orders to-go all night while I was there had a bag of senorita breads as well anyways, so just a thought. And years back, I was told this location used to be a Chinese food takeout place, so if you haven't been here in awhile either and can't remember a Koi sushi being here, that's probably because they're newer.
Let's talk decor. It's a nice little sushi spot, albeit, a pretty small one. There's a total of 5 tables, though one table seems to usually be occupied by the copious amounts of orders in pick-up abound. That's definitely the busiest table there all night. While it won't really be able to sit huge parties, I can imagine they might be able to piece together a few for bigger parties, but mostly set up for just smaller groups of people, and then there's some bar seating. It's not a large place, so probably designed for takeout as the previous restaurant was also mainly a takeout spot.
Pricing here is good. For the area, it's comparable, as before I made my way down here I do my research as I often have, and they were the best costed ones out of the other sushi places. Their bento value is great, which I'll talk about later. Sushi rolls are also on the more cost less side of things.
Staff here are pretty good. They're attentive, but they get so many takeout orders to handle at times, I can just feel how hectic it is for them to be handling both the takeout orders and service to people sitting down at the spot. I mean, they did a good job when we were there, but just a note to others that on a busy night if there's a ton of other online orders going on, the servers may be off somewhere in the back trying to coordinate things for pick-ups. I saw people just flag down some of the sushi chefs/preps sometimes to get their attention at least if you needed something more immediately, so you may try that as well if there doesn't seem to be a server at that moment, though, they're not servers so patience would be good during peak hours.
Now we talk food. We ordered 3 things: Bento dinner w/sashimi combo and beef teriyaki, bento dinner w/sashimi combo and chicken katsu, and a Moonlight Roll. We'll go with the roll first this time.
Moonlight Roll wasn't bad. It's a pretty saucy roll, which I like, so no complaints there. The ingredients from the different stuff on and inside were tasty too. It's a decently sized roll, so can be shared. Not a huge roll, but does have enough pieces to go around for each person if you order a few of these kinds of rolls as a meal. Again, wasn't mind blowing sushi by any means, but it also was more than adequate to fill my sushi needs for the night.
The bento here were probably the better options I felt I could get from this spot. The dinner bento comes with two options you can choose from, two lists of option A and option B. One went with the beef teriyaki/sashimi, while the other went chicken katsu/sashimi. The dinner bento includes soup and salad. The salad is mediocre, but hey, it's free. Miso is fine, nothing out of the ordinary, lots of seaweed though so for those who enjoy seaweed. The sashimi combo here is definitely worth it from the bento.
The pieces of fish they cut here are basically blocks, rather than slices. And I am not saying that as a complaint, but more so to point out that you get a pretty decent quantity of fish per sashimi combo. I am interested to order their sashimi now if I'm ever back to see how big those pieces would be too.
Beef teriyaki here is tasty. The teriyaki rather than flat pieces of shriveled meat, is really more like a small piece of steak just cut up into slices. It was quite decent really, since most places their beef teriyaki is dry to no end. For meat eaters, I would recommend getting the beef teriyaki, though it is a fattier/tougher cut, so be aware.
Chicken katsu was also tasty. When it came out it was very crunchy and flaky, and the chicken was nicely cooked. It looked like it was going to be dry when you first see the chicken, but once you bite it, it was pretty well done and tender.
Overall, Koi Sushi is a nice little sushi spot located down the road from the casino and down Vale Rd from a bunch of medical offices there. I assume they probably get some good traffic from patrons at those medical offices as well, so things to keep in mind if you're ever down there after a visit. They're affordable, and bentos are an especially great value for nowadays, but honestly, even before prices went wonky everywhere they probably are still priced on the cheaper side for sushi. Service is good, food is good, and that's really what matters.
