Kabuki Sushi and Grill

Excellent food, although we didn’t get our meal until about 25 — 30 minutes after we ordered.

The bestie and I have birthdays this week, so you know it had to be Japanese.
I was a little torn about whether or not I was going to give Kabuki a three or a four star. It’s not a four star. I agree with a lot of the reviews when they say the food is rather average. It’s tasty enough, but no eye-​rollers.
The service I found to be decent. It’s not that she was inattentive. I think she was just unsure and inexperienced, as I could see her constantly checking us from afar. Very sweet and friendly.
The atmosphere was clean and soothing. My bestie is in love with the subtle minty/​avocado green of the walls, and the pretty tree with the fabric flowers in the middle of the room.
Did you see my photo of the ‘Love Boat’? It was twenty dollars-​half price-​on Tuesday, and it definitely filled us both. It just wasn’t super special or anything. But for twenty bucks, I’m not going to complain!
The bestie tells me she’s ordered take-​out here and is pleased with the food and the price. I think that’s what I would do, is order take-​out from here, rather than coming in to eat. Then again, I’d love to try their beef tataki special as well.

Their foods are good, but they are not using the Japanese rice to make the sushi, and the rice which is use to make the sushi is not that sticky.
And this time I had order a box dinner, the beef in the box is awesome, but it only include a little bit rice for the beef. If they can include more rice will be better.
Also they have some special deals, therefore I had order the dragon eye roll. Because it’s half price on that day I went there.

I’ve been here a few times for lunch and quite like it. I’m pretty sure that the owners are actually Japanese so it feels more authentic already.
They have a fairly extensive menu and a small page of specials for lunch. I always get the salmon bento box, which in addition to the typical items like miso soup and rice, it comes with grilled salmon, a chef’s special item (last time it was tempura salmon), and salmon sashimi. Healthy fatty acids galore! The sashimi is always fresh and the box is very filling. Note that service can be quite slow, even if you’re the only ones there, but they have accommodated me in the past by letting me order over the phone so that my food is ready when I arrive.
Last time I ordered some maki as take-​out. Three rolls, spicy salmon, negitoro (green onion and tuna belly), and chop chop, came to $ 20 which I thought was reasonable. The rice was cooked the right way (not mushy) and there was a good ratio of it to the filling. The spicy salmon was nice and subtle — seems like they might have mixed a bit of sriracha sauce in the filling. It could have used a bit of that crunchy tempura bits — oddly, the ‘crunchy’ option is available for the spicy tuna maki but not this one. I’m sure they could have accommodated it but I didn’t bother asking. The chop chop scallop had a touch too much mayonnaise for more but fortunately it wasn’t super thick, and really wasn’t used as a filler, so it didn’t bother me. One thing I really liked was that they cut the fish and scallop into fairly large chunks (see photos). Too many places these days pulverize the filling and you can’t even tell if you’re actually getting what you ordered.
One fun thing they have here is the Japanese soda Ramune. There is a little marble at the top that seals the carbonation in that you have to push down in order to drink. Definitely novelty but it was fun!
Overall I am pleased with my experiences here and would come here again. FYI they do take visa.

Good food. Pricier than the average sushi place and their prices change without notice. I wouldn’t sit down to eat. They take forever to bring food out. I always grab to go so I don’t have to deal with their slow service. I would rather go to their other location for a sit down than here.

A very pleasant family-​run place with a few distinctive dishes (grilled asparagus, spicy chirashi, etc.)

I am from Montréal where there are a lot of fantastic sushi bars, so I am really disappointed with this restaurant in our trip to Edmonton. It is below average to my standard. The rolls are full of rice that I can’t even taste what is inside.

I have been trying different sushi restaurants in the Strathcona area lately and so far Kabuki is my favorite.
The menu is fairly standard for a sushi restaurant. I do find, however, that the prices are comparable to or better than nearby sushi restaurants and the staff at Kabuki are generous with the quality ingredients (e.g., fish). The rolls and nigiri (what I’ve tried so far) just taste better here as a result, and on my student budget I feel much happier.
You WILL wait a long long time to get your food. If you can wait, it’s worth it in my opinion, as the food is tasty and the price is right.

One of the best sushi place in Edmonton for sure.
Reasonable prices with fairly good quality, with friendly servers.
Also, their chrasi don and diet spicy chirasi don is the best in the town I dare to say.
Their vegetarian option might seems narrow, but if you ask them, they will gladly make it with vegetarian options!
Also they have big sakura-​tree in the middle of place. It’s quite nice and unique I think.

After tonight, I am done with this place. It was empty on a Saturday night, yet it took forever for the food to come out. For a party of 3, there were about 6 dishes ordered — two were completely forgotten. The stupid thing is, both those items were bigger ticket and probably a nice profit. The server apologized, but that was it. No offer of a discount or anything. Business must be pretty darn good that they can be that careless, even with competition right across the street. Guess where I’ll be going. Maybe it was empty tonight for a reason. Too bad, and now they’ve lost two more good customers. So. Not. Impressed.

I would give this place five stars for the food! Unfortunately the few times I have been there, there has only been one server and so service was quite slow. But I have to say the server makes up for the slow service with her great hospitality. The quality is awesome and the prices are great.

Came for sushi on the go. We were catching a show at the Garneau sooner than we realized, and we were starving because we’d planned to have dinner first. We asked if we could get several orders of rolls in 15 minutes and they delivered. We were in such a hurry that we dined in the bus shelter nearby.
Certainly not the best sushi ever, but for Edmonton, it was pretty decent.

Jiro Doesn’t Dream of this Sushi.
Where do you go for dinner prior to a screening of a documentary about sushi? How about the Japanese restaurant two doors down from the theatre. That’s where we found ourselves this past Thursday evening.
The room is relatively small and we were seated at a somewhat claustrophobic table by the window. It took awhile for our server to come by. Initially, we chalked this up to the fact that we were still waiting for the fourth member of our party. Over the course of the meal, however, I would generously label the service «unattentive”– friendly, but unattentive.
The sushi and sashimi courses emerged from behind the counter promptly, with the grilled squid following a little later. My order of tuna sashimi was generous, but the pieces were too thick and cut quite sloppily. The sushi rolls were also very sloppy– the inside-​out rolls were falling apart and nearly impossible to eat without a fork. My aunties would never let rolls like that leave their kitchens! Aesthetics aside, the food was tasty, and the fish was of decent quality.
If you value quantity over quality, Kabuki may be the Japanese joint for you. It’s not the best Japanese food in town, but it’s far from the worst.
Now, to start saving for a trip to Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo!

Whaddya mean, I’ve eaten my weight in sushi here and never reviewed it? The quick rundown goes like this:
One star for the friendly and attentive staff, even when it’s busy.
Another star for the location. Sushi and a Garneau flick (right next door) date night? Perfect.
A third star for the delicious sushi boats and selection of bento boxes.
Penultimate star for the giant fake cherry tree in the middle of the restaurant. Can I have this in my house, please?
The final star for the great prices. Makes for a very affordable dinner date!

Went for sushi on a Friday afternoon. The restaurant was not very busy, but it still took quite a while to place our order and get the food. My food was good. Not amazing, but certainly not worse than the average Canadian sushi place. Many items on the menu, so we only sampled a small selection. The service was alright, nothing more.
The place is decorated in a slightly crazy way. A big plastic tree with lights in the middle of the room, apart from that a bit dark, a fake tombstone next to the tree (Halloween leftovers?), storage shelves in a corner. Personally, I prefer bright, clean and tidy to dark and eclectic, but I’m sure there are many plastic tree huggers out there who would disagree in this particular case.

It’s difficult to judge a restaurant after having just one dish but what I did have, I liked.
I ordered the tuna tekka don, which is just slices of raw tuna on rice. The fish was very good and came in nice thick slices. My friend had what she said was a California roll but I couldn’t see the crab. I tried one and couldn’t taste it either but I still thought it was good anyway. I also had the house wine which was full of body and nice.
The service was fine. Nothing really stands out. I hope to try more things at this place.

I didn’t show up at the busiest time, it took a little while to get what we ordered but it wasn’t bad at all. We had a pleasant atmosphere to talk and it did not hinder at all the «date-​night». Great food, great staff, very appealing sit-​in restaurant.
+1star for good atmosphere and getting all the way with someone special
*EDIT* –1star for price. Money doesn’t grow on the pretty tree in their restaurant.

The parking is terrible at Kabuki. They only have 2 stalls behind the Garneau building. But they apparently have a few more in the residential further west. You have to check their website for the exact location of their stalls or pick up one of their brochures at the restaurant.
Once you manage parking and go inside, the restaurant is quite unique in terms of their décor. It’s quite simplistic but there is a giant cherry blossom tree in the center decorated with lights, which create a romantic atmosphere for the place. The walls are painted a greenish-​yellow with green bamboo accents.
And, of course, we care about the food. For friends who love eel, Kabuki boasts a huge selection of unagi dishes on their menu. Typically restaurants only offer the one and only unagi roll, but this restaurant offers a great variety. What attracted me most to the menu was a couple of flaming rolls. What was disappointing about the rolls was the rice was not rolled tight enough or was the wrong type of rice used (?) but it has that s
What we ordered:
— Flaming unagi roll (forgot the actual name) — It wasn’t exactly flaming. They put the roll in a handmade tinfoil box and made it flame underneath the roll. The flame was for décor purposes and enhanced the roll in no way, which was a little disappointing for me, but still beautiful to look at.
— Dragon eye roll — Ahh, the Mikado-​made famous dragon eye variation. The sauce was not bad, but comparing to Mikado’s original sauce, it tastes nothing like it. What made this stand out for me was they mixed fake crab meat (pollock) in with the rice. It’s hard to notice, but if you stop to look at your food carefully, you will notice the flaky addition. Very nice touch to make the roll unique.
— Sockeye salmon sashimi — A rare but classy addition to a few Japanese restaurants in Edmonton. This is the second place where I found this on the menu. At $ 16 ($ 4 more than regular salmon sashimi here), it’s quite an expensive indulgence. But the sockeye salmon was VERY lean. The texture seemed a bit weird for me… almost flaky like cooked salmon. I haven’t had too much experience with raw sockeye salmon, so I can’t say whether this is the correct texture or not. But it definitely differs from my other experiences.
The service was good. Since this is quite a new restaurant, I think they just need more time to work it out, but definitely A+ for trying. We ordered tea, but instead of giving us a pot, like they did with the table of 4, we had to wait for the waiter to come by to get more tea… a slight inconvenience. I assume our waiter is the boss as he was super polite and always smiling. What impressed me the most was he bows every time he comes to our table and tells us to enjoy our food quite often. It was to the point where I thought he was starting to go hunchback from doing it too much. But definitely A+ on the Japanese mannerism. In fact, he caught me spying at his parking sheet on the wall and rushed to give me a brochure (for the parking spots) and told me about the website. Needs improvement in some areas, but great service still.
All in all, I would be willing to try this place out again some time in the later future.

Kabuki has become our new go-​to place for sushi. I love the cozy atmosphere, the service, and that fact that it’s just a little closer to home. Furusato is still probably the best in town, but if I’m lazy and just want a quick sushi fix, it’s Kabuki.
We always order the beef tataki (lightly seared beef slices in ponzu sauce) and a couple sushi rolls to share. The sushi portions are quite generous, not like those dinky little sushi rolls they give you at fast-​food joints. Two different rolls are usually enough for two of us to share. Ingredients are always fresh, and the rice on the sushi is usually made just right so that it doesn’t fall apart on you after the first bite (I hate that — test of really good sushi!). I would recommend the Crazy Boy roll (deep-​fried California roll) and the Rainbow or Spider roll. The seafood udon is also very good, filled with chewy udon noodles and lots of shrimp, squid, and meats.
Service is usually quite fast, though I have never seen the restaurant packed to full capacity yet. It’s usually about half full on a busy day. The tiny restaurant is decorated with framed photos of Japanese kabuki theatre, and there is a huge cherry blossom tree in the middle of the place, towering over everything and everyone, strung with tiny white lights for a wonderful romantic touch. It’s one of my favorite things about the place :)
I really wanted to give Kabuki five stars, but I have to be honest, the last time we visited (last week), it was not up to par as usual. The beef tataki was not as great; the slices were a little thicker than usual (beef tataki should be thinly sliced, it makes a big difference), and the sauce was not the same. Service was also a little slower, although there was only one other table besides us. Granted, we came during late night, about an hour before closing, so that might have been why. Hopefully the next time we go, it will be back to excellent! Because it’s still high on our list of sushi places in town, if not one of the top two!

I had a pretty good lunch at this new Japanese sushi bar and robata next to the Garneau Theatre. It was rainy out so I didn’t feel like waiting on the corner to cross over to the Kyoto.
Because it was my first time, I ordered the Deluxe Sashimi. I figure if the Sashimi is any good, then the rest can’t be far off. It was 25 pieces of fish and more than I really needed, but it was a good indication of what they can do. First, the pieces of sashimi were huge; some easily twice the size of sashimi servings anywhere else. I leave it to you if that’s a good thing or not. If quantity is your priority though, this is your place. Unfortunately, quality was hit and miss. Some of the selections were simply out of this world: smoky mackerel, nutty toro and firm smooth roe. Oddly though, I found the tako (served with a little spring onion on top) and the hamachi to be sub par. If the fish were all of equal quality, I’d be a real fan. They’re fairly new and might still be working out some kinks.
All and all a perfectly good lunch. I’ll be back to give it another try and to try out some of their robata items. Their biggest advantage to me is that they’re in easy walking distance.
Delivery is through Dial and Dine.