Tsunami Thai & Sushi Bar

After driving thirteen minutes out of my way for lunch here at 1pm on a Thursday, door locked, sign in window says «Sorry. .closed for lunch temporarily «. Here’s a crazy concept: if you own a business and want to go on vacation, hire someone else to run it in your absence! Totally unprofessional and rude. Will not come back… recommend calling first before planning on dining here. Which is ridiculous! !!! BTW: I’m a small business owner. SMH.

This place is the best in my eyes, Vin is amazing and very helpful when you want to try something different or even weird the more you go he gets to know you and suggest things or sometimes even changes rolls on he menu to fit your special request. And the staff I cannot say enough about the ladies Jane and Lilly. again the more you go they remember not only you but you drink and what you usually order. Just a Great place, I cannot say enough about the staff and the food, I CRAVE this sushi. the quality is top and the price is low, PERFECT! I would rent an apartment upstairs if they had one and eat every meal (except Monday cause they are closed). I have never had anything I didn’t like other than Mackerel but that is a person preference thing not the restaurant or fish’s fault. Everything on menu is great but if I could pick a few favorites i would suggest he Dirty Old Man Roll, Sashimi Octopus w/​super thin lemon slices, the Baked Scallops and Seafood Thai Basil– medium spiciness!

Had chicken pad thai, red curry, pan fired dumplings. Amazing. Dumplings were perfectly fried– not greasy or wet. Wife had pad thai– it looked and smelled deep and robust. She had it mild spice and wish she had gotten more. I had the red curry. Could’ve used more bell peppers. Basil flavor was intoxicating and beautiful. Creamy. Delicious. Got in medium spicy– should’ve gotten hotter. No biggie as it was wonderful.
Both meals came with spot on white rice. Also salads which, while small, were nice (the dressing is tasty).
Had it to go but will be going back to dine in soon.
Sushi being rolled while I was waiting made me salivate. Place was set up for nice sitting.

Excellent place to eat, great food, very friendly, great prices, very nice inside :-) :-) :-) :-)

I frequent may places for Sushi from around the world I can tell you that Vinny would take excellent care of you and provide only the freshest a Sushi and Portion sizes that rival that of new restaurants. I highly recommend this restaurant to anyone. As you can see by my other postings I am not as nice to most restaurants.

We spent the day at the beach and were starving. So hungry we forgot to take a picture of our sushi rolls. I ordered the Buccaneer roll, it was delicious. It was fresh with just enough rice. I had the house salad, a side salad, with ginger. Green tea was so good, I really enjoyed everything about the meal. The other two rolls were the Mexican and Spicy Tuna roll. They were equally as good. I can’t wait to return and will definitely bring our friends.

Amazing fresh sushi and a friendly, accommodating staff! We ordered the sashimi appetizer and a few rolls, as well as some salad and soup. The regular sashimi platter has tuna and escolar, but we ordered a toro sashimi as well. This week they only had bluefin toro and it was incredible. Watched the chef filet the fish when we ordered. Rolls are top notch and there is a great selection on the menu. We didn’t try any thai options, but sushi menu is great!

Love this place. Sushi is divine! I loved the service and atmosphere. Great saki too. I can walk there or ride my bike.

All I did was get take-​out sushi, and despite the fact that the atmosphere is lovely and the server very nice, the kappa maki was so inferior that I can only give them 2 stars.
The roll was tiny, dry and flavorless with a stingy quantity of cucumber. It was also so poorly made that the roll started separating within minutes.
Maybe I’m spoiled because I’m from Seattle where there is a large Japanese population and fantastic sushi, but I’ve gotten better sushi in grocery stores than I did at this place. Not going back.

Pretty good sushi. I used to live very close so I would come here often for convenience. I’m downtown now though and it’s not worth the drive to ever come here anymore.

True sushi chef, flavors and ingredients fresh and well prepared. If you like saki this is your place. We love the owner and the staff. Makes us feel like we are part of the family.

Have been here twice. The miso soup is good with smooth flavor. The Thai iced coffee was very harsh and I could not drink it. The atmosphere is cozy and the staff members are very kind.

Egg Rolls were huge, for $ 3 not a bad deal. If you prefer the Thai style ones, you won’t like these… Much more Chinese styled.
Tea was good and fresh brewed.
Chairs are uncomfortable as sin!
Took over 10 minutes to get a water. :(
I heard this place was slow. But damn…
Sushi was great, but we had to wait so long that maybe it was just my intense hunger instead?

Tsunami is pretty fantastic. I love several Thai and sushi places in Sarasota, but I consistently find myself coming back to Tsunami. I have yet to have a bad experience. Service ranges from decent to excellent, and the food is consistently good. I’m a fan of the sushi, but the pad thai rivals anywhere else in town.
Also, all the other reviewers talking about sushi have no idea how sushi works. Sushi grade fish, like basically all fish you’ll get in the U.S., is required by law to be deep frozen to kill parasites. It does not affect the quality of the fish, and there are Michelin Star restaurants that serve frozen sushi.

I love this place. It’s one of my go-​to restaurants. Great sushi and they have a wonderful staff! Yummy!!!

Garbage this place is gross and disgusting. Sushi is horrible. Most of the fish is frozen, including the Toro! If you can find a roll without cream cheese or fake krab, I would be surprised.
The spicy rolls (using spicy mayo) have zero kick to them.
Edamame was microwaved
The single sushi chef they had working was too busy drinking to make our food!
Unisex bathroom is nasty. Piss-​poor drink menu. Tables and chairs are uncomfortable too.
They also do not accept American Express
Update: the sashimi I brought home for my dogs gave them diareah

It’s sushi. Not impressive sushi, but not terrible either. Pretty attentive service and the place looks pretty clean. I love unagi (eel) so I was disappointed when I didn’t see a lot of items on the menu with it. Also, I noticed that a LOT of rolls have fried components or cream cheese in them. I almost walked out just based on this fact, but stayed because if was starving.
If you are a sushi lover that is drawn to the traditional, non-​Americanized version of sushi, I wouldn’t recommend this place. If you are new to sushi, don’t like raw fish, or just have a hankering for fried shrimp or fried rolls in general, then this place might work for you.
The unagi sashimi that I did order wasn’t cooked throughly and was topped with a teriyaki sauce, not eel sauce. Pretty disappointing. I won’t be back.

I have been slacking on my reviews as of late so I’m doing a little catching up.
Since my slacking began we have eaten at Tsunami probably a dozen times. Either in house with friends or ordering take out. It is in a shopping center with a Walmart, Crunch Gym and a bunch of other little dinky stores. I still am not a fan of the shopping center restaurant but it is what it is. Florida.
The people that work there are super nice and very helpful with the menu and the same (3) people have been there 99% of the time. Our favorite thing on the menu is the Panang Curry, both with chicken and tofu. We get this a lot. It is magical in a unicorn kind of way. The signature rolls are very good as well. The ones with tempura are my favorite. There are quite a few. Just look for tempura in the description. I can’t do all the work for you.
Our last trip there was maybe a month ago and there was a good crowd in place. A 35yo and younger crowd drinking Sapporo and laughing about Pintrest. Sometimes you forget there are young people in Sarasota.
Ride the unicorn.

We’ve been coming to Sarasota for decades, but we’ve never attempted to eat sushi — we have a favorite sushi place at home and it just seemed to be asking for trouble to wander around looking for a new place. I’m a sashimi fan, and that means it’s impossible to hide bad fish under sauces or rice or seaweed.
After reading the reviews on Unilocal,we decided to chance Tsunami at University and Lockwood Ridge. What a great choice — thank you fellow Unilocalers! You came through again.
First of all, the place is SPOTLESS. My wife even remarked on how clean the bathrooms are. Anyone who knows my wife knows THAT is a high mark to set for her. My wife’s Red Curry (medium) was delicious. And my sashimi dinner was outstanding. If there was any fault, I’d say it was that the pieces of fish were cut too big and thick (some complaint, eh?). The red snapper was cut with a more delicate touch, and it showed. Everything was spot on fresh.
My wife found the miso soup a little sweet for her taste (I didn’t notice), and the ginger dressing on the salad wasn’t creamy like my wife likes it – but I thought the lighter dressing was a great compliment to the light taste of the fish.
Overall, a tremendous experience and one we hope to repeat soon.
TIP” They had a smaller portion sashimi appetizer for about half the price of the dinner — minus soup and salad.

The entire song catalog as well as the food, caused me to have a very emotional meal.
While dining at Tsunami, we were blessing with an entire collection of 1980’s love ballads on the hifi. They were mostly glam rock, so it was very pleasing to eat sushi while hearing Scorpions, Whitesnake, Warrant, and White Lion.
However, there was one song that totally encompassed my entire feeling about my meal…
The song was «Could Have Been,» by Debbie Gibson:
«Could have been so beautiful,
Could have been so right…»
Well, enough of that, you get the point.
I love that there are so many restaurants serving sushi these days, and that this specific restaurants is so conveniently located. However, I don’t necessarily «hate”— just dislike the quality of the raw food being served.
Whenever I try a new sushi restaurant, I enter the meal with an innocent, child-​like sense of awe and wonder while opening the menu. (Just hoping that something new and amazing will come along.) Sometimes the description does cause the entire drama to play out a little longer— at Tsunami that was the Tuna Martini.
Afterwards, once the food was brought to the table and tasted, I shed a single tear of sadness. You know, the opposite of joy. Everything from there was just downhill.
I should have known that the romance would be short-​lived by the «Thai and Sushi» options. You never know. I may come back for one more night that may be even less fulfilling. It must have been the romantic in me, to think that the relationship could have lasted…