After a decently successful all-you-can-eat sushi experience about a week ago, I decided to find another one in a reasonable price range to try out and landed on Hanabi Sushi & Rolls on the northwest corner of West Sahara Avenue and South Fort Apache Road.

For my appetizer, I got soft shell crab tempura. It didn’t have as much crab meat as I would’ve hoped, but I still thought it was decent because it wasn’t over-fried and the sauce had a nice flavor to it.

Next up was some oysters. These were probably the worst oysters I’ve ever had from a restaurant in my entire life.

They were completely drenched in an extremely strong mixture of soy sauce and vinegar, so much so that there was no oyster flavor left and it was just shrivelingly intense saltiness and piercingly intense sourness shooting into my sinuses as if I had just taken a pure shot of a repulsive concoction of liquid smelling salts. To compound the problem, the oysters were extremely gritty, so it tasted like I was just biting into sand while my nose was falling off.

My next plate consisted of three limited specialty nigiri options, two pieces each per person: bluefin tuna, sweet shrimp, and Hokkaido scallops. As you can see from the photograph, I was accidentally served salmon instead of scallop. Regardless of the error, all six pieces of nigiri had high-quality fish and tasted good.

Right afterwards, my baked green mussels arrived. This was also a bit heavy on the sauce, but nowhere near as much as the oysters—the mussels were actually edible, and I could tell that I was actually eating mussels.

Next to arrive was the rock and roll, a no-rice roll with assorted sashimi wrapped in cucumber.

The fish quality was good, and I appreciated that the sauce was served on the side for this one so I could control the portion. Rock and roll usually isn’t served with a special sauce, and I never really found out what exactly this particular sauce was, but I lightly dipped my roll pieces and it definitely en­hanced the overall flavor.

As you might expect, I like to order dishes with more fish than rice to get better value for my money, so I got three miniature bowls of poke salad—salmon and octopus, as pictured below, as well as one with yellowtail, which isn’t pictured. The poke salads had a nice zest to them without over­pow­er­ing the fish; the flying fish roe on top also added a nice touch.

Next were four pieces of yellowtail nigiri and four pieces of squid nigiri. Both of these were great.

The portion size of the yellowtail was large compared to the amount of rice in the nigiri, and the yellowtail had a very strong and fresh flavor.

The squid was probably some of the best I’ve had. It’s tricky to describe the texture of squid nigiri to someone who hasn’t had it. The exterior is a bit firm; once you bite into it, it retains just enough firmness that there is a small amount of resistance against your bite, but it is still soft and tender enough that it is easy to chew. When first putting it in your mouth, you almost feel like it’s about to pop, but when you bite down, it doesn’t fully surrender to your teeth and still maintains its form. That description is what I would consider being “squid-ey,” and the squid from this restaurant was very “squid-ey” in a great way.

My next plate had three more “one order per person” dishes: sea urchin, salmon roe, and sea trout. Again, as you can see from the photograph, there was another error in my order and I didn’t receive sea trout. I’m not actually even sure what I received, but it was extremely fishy and had a strong ocean taste. It wasn’t bad though, and it added a bit of flavor variety to my lunch because I usually don’t order dishes that are so aggressively ocean-ey.

Uni is my all-time favorite food, and this uni did not disappoint. The seaweed holding the uni and rice in the gunkan together was a bit stronger than u­su­al in flavor, though it wasn’t so strong that it affected the ability of the uni flavor to shine through.

For dessert, I got some pineapple sorbet. The size of the scoop was generous, and it was fairly unremarkable—which to me, was a good thing. It was ex­act­ly what you’d expect from straightforward and good-quality pineapple sorbet without any oddities.

Similarly to the other all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant I went to a week ago, I showed up at an unusual time between lunch and dinner when it’s not that busy except for some delivery drivers showing up for pickup. I was the only customer in the restaurant throughout my entire meal, and consequently, I got great service.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

I went before regular dinner time started, but I still paid the dinner price for all-you-can-eat so I could order the premium items that aren’t available at the discounted lunch price.

I’m a fan of omakase and other “chef’s choice” experiences, and when I go to a sushi res­tau­rant, I’m not too picky about choices and all I care about is eating great fish, so I didn’t mind the mistakes with regards to the wrong fish coming out on two occasions. However, they are still technically mistakes that should not have been made.

Excluding the oysters, I liked everything else, and this restaurant is definitely on my “recommend” list if you’re focusing more on nigiri. I noticed from some reviews online that people were dissatisfied at the pricing of this restaurant relative to its quality, but I disagree with them—I think their all-you-can-eat price is reasonable considering the ratio of fish to rice, the quality of the fish, and the available selection of premium fish options.

After a busy few weeks of traveling, helping a friend move into a new house, doing a long chain of work, and eating lots of fast food and at quick-serve res­tau­rants, I finally had an afternoon free to go visit and dine in at another all-you-can-eat sushi spot. Today, I decided on Super Sushi in Spring Valley, an un­in­corporated town in the Las Vegas Valley in Clark County, Nevada.

Upon my arrival, I was taken over to the back of the restaurant and seated at the bar. I’m not sure if this was just coincidence for today, or if I just picked an awk­ward time between lunch and dinner when it’s usually not busy, but I was literally the only person in the restaurant for the hour or so I was eat­ing, and the only other people stopping by were delivery drivers picking up orders.

I went with the all-you-can-eat menu. Because today is Sunday, I wasn’t able to take advantage of the discounted weekday lunch price. Super Sushi also has a premium upgrade where you can pay a little bit more to gain access to some pricier dishes as part of the all-you-can-eat experience.

For my appetizer, I started with some poke salad. The picture below makes it look smaller than it actually was because the bowl was shaped like a ladle, but the portion size was massive—and big portion sizes were a recurring theme across the board with menu items. You may think that portion sizes don’t ultimately matter for all-you-can-eat, but it did make a difference on multiple occasions.

The poke was fine, but the fish was much firmer than I would have hoped. I generally expect poke to be made out of the “scraps” of the fish’s flesh that can’t otherwise be used for nigiri or other cuts of sushi, so it’s not always guaranteed to be the highest-quality fish, but this was notably less tender than I’m used to.

Next was sashimi moriawase that had four pieces each of salmon, tuna, and yellowtail.

The salmon chunks were huge—so much so that, from the photograph, it looks like I got eight pieces instead of four because each one was split down the middle. The quality of the salmon was only a little bit better than the poke—it visually looked decently-marbled, but it was firmer than most other salmon sashimi I’ve had. The tuna had minimal fat and was basically what you’d expect cubed up in a poke bowl. The yellowtail was the best out of the three—it was much more tender and was com­parable to what I would hope for from good sashimi.

Remember how I mentioned earlier that the portion sizes of everything was way bigger than most other all-you-can-eat places? This is one situation where it actually mattered. All-you-can-eat restaurants usually try to fill you up with a lot of rice and have very few sashimi options that are vastly re­duced in size compared to the amount they give to à la carte customers. I noticed that Super Sushi does not do that—the amount of fish I got in the moriawase was very satisfying.

My next set of sushi was uni gunkan, ikura gunkan, and ama ebi nigiri topped with avocado. The salmon roe and sweet shrimp were both good.

The sea urchin… was incredible. It was very confusing to me that I had been eating fish of below average to decent quality up until that point, and then suddenly the sea urchin was top-tier. It had the melt-in-your-mouth buttery texture with a very strong sea urchin flavor and a very large portion size. Sea urchin was part of the premium upgrade, and I’d say the premium upgrade would’ve been worth it even if this sea urchin was the one and only item on the premium menu.

You know what was not worth it on the premium menu? Tonkatsu. This is another time when the portion sizes mattered, and for this one, it was for the worse—the fried pork belly was humongous. This was extremely filling, and an overwhelming majority of the mass of the tonkatsu wasn’t even pork belly, but instead, a thick fried crust.

If you also go to Super Sushi, I implore you, do not get the tonkatsu. It is absolutely not worth it.

I was looking forward to trying out a variety of nigiri on their menu, but by the end of the tonkatsu, I was pretty bloated. To wrap up my meal, I got two pieces of octopus nigiri and two pieces of escolar nigiri. The quality of the octopus was decent, but the escolar was a bit sub-par—again, it was a bit too firm and lacked the soft tenderness you usually get from super white tuna.

This is the final time the portion size matter came into play. Usually, all-you-can-eat restaurants will serve a lot of rice with the nigiri so diners will get full off the cheaper rice and they can cut costs by using less fish. Super Sushi does not do this, because the amount of rice for each piece of nigiri is rel­a­tively small, so the ratio of fish you get is actually extremely high for an all-you-can-eat restaurant.

For dessert, I ordered mango mochi ice cream.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

I tipped almost 30% because the service was impeccable. Of course, I wouldn’t really expect any­thing less considering that I was the one and only person in the restaurant, and the waiter probably literally had nothing else to do, but either way, he was very attentive to me through­out my meal and had perfect timing when I was ready to order my next round of dishes.

Because I’m someone who usually goes to very high-end sushi restaurants, the fish quality at Super Sushi was a little bit underwhelming, but to be clear, it wasn’t bad. The fish didn’t have a “fishy” taste, each fish had appropriately sufficient and proper flavor, and I didn’t get sick after the meal. If you’re someone who doesn’t have an ultra-refined taste when it comes to fish, I think Super Sushi would be a great place to try out. In fact, even if you are picky about fish quality, I think Super Sushi would still be worth it if you’re just looking for a really good-value sushi meal, considering the affordable price point.

I look forward to my next visit to Super Sushi, during which I will absolutely not order tonkatsu (or any fried food in general) so I can actually try out more of the nigiri.