Al L.
Yelp
With each trip to Vegas, we always have an AYCE sushi dinner on our meals agenda. We tried four different places over the years and there are now new places that have opened up. With two new places are my list, I opted for Smile Shota based on its high Yelp review ratings.
Located in the Cheongdam Food Hall, they are the largest restaurant there. We arrived at 5:30pm on a Sunday and were promptly seated at a booth. A cute smiley face is their logo and you see it at the check-in area and around the restaurant, which was modern and spacious with booths and tables. All the AYCE's I've been to had a 90 min limit, but they had an 80 min limit.
Our waitress, Lyssette, came to take our drink orders and since we had looked at the menu online and jotted down our preferences, we put in our first order. We started with some of the All Day Specials, which were limited to one per person and other one per person items on the menu. For our second order, we went with nigiri sushis, seared nigiris, salad, and grilled items. Lyssette was great and would frequently stop by to check on us to see if we need to place an order. Our empty plates were efficiently cleared by buss staff.
We loved the nigiris and for the fish ones, how they cut the fish at long piece and they sat on top of tine sushi rice balls. The salmon and yellowtail carpaccio, salmon belly, ama ebi, aomori scallop, soft shell crab, fresh water eel, seafood salad and cucumber salad were some of our favorites. We had the salmon and yellowtail kama and like the yellowtail one since it was good-sized and meaty. They are lightly battered and deep-fried instead of grilled. We were given complementary strawberry lychee soju tastings during our meal.
We were finished with our sushi by the 60th minute and finished off with our dessert, affogato and matcha ice cream.
We were happy campers with this delicious AYCE sushi meal. We agreed that this was the best of all the AYCEs that we've tried for the freshness and quality of the sushi. Great service from Lyssette and staff. We will back again.