Sushi Wave

Place is very dirty. The bathroom had the most rancid smell, which somehow permeated through the ginger. I was hoping this would be a hidden gem but was more like a hidden dumpster. The prices are cheap but you get what you pay for. The rolls are all basically California rolls with some thing on top of it, or deep fried. Very low quality food that matched the décor and shredded seats.

We have our favorite sushi spot in Garden Grove but its a little bit of a drive. Instead, we decided to try this AYCE sushi place.
Dinner price for AYCE is $ 22.95. I never expect a lot in quality at AYCE places but this place is lower than some of the other AYCE places I’ve tried. Nothing was really tasty to me. The calamari had a super thick batter around it and the handrolls were chewy. Usually, you can make up quality for quantity at AYCE sushi places but we couldn’t get past the first round of orders.
The service, however, was good.

Worth the 30 minute wait! Hostess and waitress were very polite and the food was fresh and delicious. Wonderful to see vegetarian options on the menu. Reasonable prices, and a clean dining area. I will be coming back for sure. My brother and sister ordered the jalapeño bomb, and the rainbow roll and they loved both :-)

Best all you can eat sushi, go all the time. Great quality and service. Good deals on happy hour too for saki

Pros and Cons — first time here
Cons: the sushi was not good at all… a lot of california rolls with teeny tiny pieces of fish… It just got so tiring and blah to eat the same thing over and over even though they were technically different rolls. Maybe it was because we got ayce and thats just how the rolls are.
Pro: service was good! The girls were nice, attentive, quick and made sure to check up on us frequently. In the end, they charged us $ 5 for the leftovers (we couldnt eat anymore), but when we said we didnt like it and why we didnt like it, they took off the $ 5 and said next time we could ask to take it back and request to have it remade. So thank you, maybe there’s a chance I’ll come back, but for the same price I could go somewhere else I know makes every roll to perfection. :)

Great local stop to grab an all you can eat. The fish is good & the service is great! Always a great spot to bring friends or to casually go by yourself. Highly recommended. Been going for years!

Be cautious about hair in your food!!!
Wont lie, the sushi was pretty darn good. But after our 2^nd round we found hair in the rolls… TWICE. Mentioned it to the waitress who didnt seem to mind the hair in our food. Poor service.

At first glance this looks like a pretty good sushi bar that might very well be a hidden gem of Costa Mesa, but that thought quickly diminished as soon as the food arrived. The three rolls we orders were either falling apart or too sweet (Mexican roll, spider roll and crunchy roll); which is not what you’re expecting when ordering sushi.
As far as my drink, I went with the tea, but it tasted stale.
The bench seat was lumpy and cracked, a piece I feel even good will would reject.
Service was pretty pretty good, which is why I gave them two stars, but the food and the seating really left me unsatisfied.

Disclaimer: The two servers were friendly and attentive. Not too much, not too little.
Chefs: I expect some kind of hospitality entering a sushi house. I got none from the chefs. I even tried saying hello.
The Menu: Very typical AYCE menu. Lots of California rolls covered in fish with goop on top. There are a few handrolls and nigiri.
The Food: All of the appetizers I ordered were bland (Kind of hard to mess up a Crab and Cream cheese wanton). Salmon skin hand roll was good (even though the last one was definitely burnt). One roll I ordered wasn’t made like the description. It was missing scallions, masago, and cucumber (the piece of cucumber inside was less than 1/​8″). I love Eal Sauce until it’s become a glaze…
Overall: It’s inexpensive for lunch $ 17.99 as of today. The food on the low end of my AYCE Sushi experiences. Probably won’t be coming back.

I would give a star off because it was slow today. But I can’t lie how great their sushi are… Their salmon nigiri is probably one of the best I ever had… Even though they put a lot of rice in, the rice is soft and tasty and done in a right way when other ayce places have their rice kind of tough. It’s a small location and you can easily miss this place because it’s well hidden. But I gotta say this is one of the better ayce sushis I had. Also, staffs there are really kind and do their best to accommodate customers’ needs and it made my time at sushi wave great! :)

why go anywhere else in costa mesa the fish is fresh the rolls are on point and at 5 plus time here (my dealer that i come here with is a regular lol) but seriously it has always been very good had a bunch of hand rolls today nice change up for me the teriyaki salmon is the bomb by the way.
for more see my previous review and ride the wave!

The All you can eat was so worth it, for 2 was $ 49, for $ 100.65 worth of food! Great quality, appetizers and special rolls included. Staff was sweet and Thang aka Mike was great! Will be back

I’ve been here about five times at the time of this review. I’ve never been to one Sushi place that many times. That says something, right?
Atmosphere: comfortable, not rushed, good relaxing colors, soft enough music to have a nice conversation.
Food quality: every dish I’ve tried tastes great. I’m lightly allergic to shellfish. Low quality shellfish creates a greater reaction than high quality. Call me crazy, but I still order shellfish sometimes and here it gives me only a nominal train. That tells me they have a quality source of their food. It never smells fishy and never tastes fishy.
Value: lunch right now is about $ 18 all you can eat and dinner is about $ 25. I know I always get my money’s worth. I notice I also pay less for the quality than many other sushi bars this good.

I am a huge AYCE sushi fan, and a sushi fan in general. When I indulge on great sushi, my standards will soar; but if I choose to be a glutton and go to an AYCE, my standards are very forgiving. With this in mind… Sushi Wave is on a low tier for AYCE sushi.
The fish was mediocre quality for AYCE, however, yellowtail and salmon weren’t half bad. Limited menu for nigiri and rolls. Rolls that were offered weren’t very unique and most are topped with a lot of sauce and mayo, something I’m not a fan of.
Nigiri is made with way too much rice. Handrolls were made with so much mayo, it made me almost nauseous… So I ended up not even eating them. Food — wasted and I’m sorry :(It didn’t make sense to add that much mayo or even mayo at all into a handroll for yellowtail! Why would you do that… it was oozing out both ends of the roll.
Slow service all around. No atmosphere and the place has very dim lighting. Overall, underwhelming experience. However, many people seem to have had a great time here so I would definitely give it another shot before blacklisting.
At $ 25/​person, I expected my experience to be in the higher AYCE ranks. There are many other amazing AYCE sushi restaurants in Orange County, and Sushi Wave, so far, is not one of them for me. I won’t be taking another chance on them for a while.

I love coming here. It’s laid back, sushi chefs are great, as well as the waitresses. You get a pretty nice cut for the nigiri, right amount of rice, and everything is fresh. There’s all you can eat for lunch and dinner… but there’s 3 rounds that you can do. I always try to make it to round 3. which I’ve made all but one time. Great for groups or even if you want to go by yourself. I love it here.

Lobster, crunchy, and eel rolls were super tasty. I’m marking this place down two stars, though, because it takes a VERY long time for food to come out. It takes LONGER with each additional course. By the time we got to our third I feel like we waited 20 minutes before just cancelling it because we were all comatose and ready to go. That’s kind of a crappy way for the restaurant to try to cut back on how much food they give you. Also, the place could really use some rehab. My chair was sticking to the floor and I damn-​near broke my toes trying to push back and inadvertently kicking my foot on the table leg!
On another note, I didn’t have a hand roll but the chick at the table next to me seemed to have MAJOR struggle tearing through the seaweed to eat it. Not sure if that’s normal or not, but it was entertaining.

Salmon nigiri on point!
Tuna nigiri is pretty good.
They don’t have white tuna nigiri any more. It’s crossed out on the menu
Scallop roll was delish!
Worth it for the price!
I’m definitely coming back!

There is nothing really special about this place. Only came here for the $ 17.95 lunch AYCE sushi but the sushi is mediocre. Very limited choices of raw speciality sushi. And there seems to be more options for baked or deep fried sushi. The salmon cheek appetizer is too dry for my liking. And the calamari isn’t the kind that comes in a previously frozen bag but it has no taste.
Overall my experience here is unsatisfactory, and I would never come back here again. Only giving one extra star because 1) the service is still good and 2) they didn’t try to make it look like they have a ton of speciality rolls when they are really just variations of a California rolls — nothing annoys me more than when at least 50% of a menu consist of some kind of variation of a California roll.

Great sushi spot to come for all you can eat.
Been here twice now and both experiences were positive. The sushi is fresh and tasty. The service can be a bit slow, but who’s in a rush when you’re gorging yourself with sushi? Solid 4 stars.

Should’ve trusted the reviews… while this place isn’t Necessarily as bad as some of the lowest reviews here say it to be, this place is Definately not worth coming to even if it’s relatively cheap w/​the $ 18 per person ayce lunch price tag. I must say there are many regrets. I mean most of the time I leave an ayce sushi place w/​regrets bc I overestimated my eating capabilities but this time… the regrets lie in having chosen a place w/​such poor sushi quality.
THE SUSHI ITSELF: Never thought sushi could taste so Bad… while on that thought, never thought Rice could taste so bad. In all my times at a sushi place, I have never been to a place where the rice-​fish ratio was so disportionate. Literally 90% Giant chunk of rice w/​a tiny sliver of –you can tell it ain’t fresh– fish on top. It’s like I came here to eat Rice rather than fish. The cut rolls are ok at best. Still hard rice filled. My friend tried a hand roll bc we were too afraid to get another cut roll (standard 8 pieces) and it was just the saddest thing…
Service was ok and fast… then again there were hardly any customers so yeah… 12pm on a Friday… so many regrets.