I’ll start this post by saying I was really excited to eat here.

Sushi Sasabune has fairly good ratings and was even featured in a youtube video I watched called “best sushi in L.A”, giving us some high expectations.

We arrived at Sasabune, hopeful that it would be as good as our favorite place ever: Sushi Sasa in Denver, Colorado. That feeling was like hoping you’re going to love someone just because they have the same name as your best friend — unrealistic.

After we were seated, the first impressions we got were not so bad.

They had house ground wasabi (it wasn’t very good, but we appreciated their creative efforts). They also gave us a warm hand towel to clean our hands with. At this point, we thought “what’s not to like?”.

We told them we wanted to do omakase, which, if you were reading my posts here a month ago, you’ll remember that omakase means “I leave it up to you” in Japanese. The chef chooses what you eat. When Ash and I did our first omakase together at Forged it was a very special and intimate experience where we were able to speak with the chef and learn about what we were eating.

The first red flag for us was when they started dumping plates in front of us, barely telling us what it even was at all.

I asked one of the women working there what a particular cut of fish was called and she scoffed “it’s a fish” and proceeded to laugh at me and then walk away.

The food was alright, but it was nothing special.

They brought us a dish (pictured below) that consisted of an oyster, a mussel, and a scallop.

I don’t like mussels in the first place because they’re chewy and rubbery (they are the lowest tier of shell fish if you ask me, aside from clams). They coated it in fried cheese and garlic which only made the mussel even less edible. They put so much sauce, garlic, and other unnecessary crap all over the oyster which made it so you couldn’t even taste the delicious salty goodness of this west coast oyster, while last (and least) they gave us a scallop in a sea shell coated with shiitake mushrooms that were equally as tough as the scallop.

The best thing we had there was the toro nigiri they brought us (pictured below).

I was incredibly disappointed that they didn’t give us any uni. The last thing I’ll say about this experience is that they didn’t give us a dessert, which is often included in the omakase experience.

If you want to learn about what you’re eating and have a more personal omakase, Sushi Sasabune is NOT the place to go. However, if you want to have a few moderately good pieces of sushi and spend a lot of money, then this might be the place for you.