Samurai Japanese Restaurant Review (Solana Beach Restaurants)

Pricing:  
This place is really three restaurants in one.  There are cooking tables in the back room.  Up front, there's a sushi bar and sit down restaurant area.  So the price varies depending on what dining experience you go for.  The cooking tables around going to be around $22-32 per person.  Each roll at the sushi bar is about $7-10 apiece.  The sit down restaurant costs about $10-15 per entree.  The sushi is cheaper if you go during happy hour.


Distance:
A Solana Beach restaurant.  Right off of the Lomas Santa Fe exit.  From Encinitas, it will take 5-15 minutes to get there depending on which part of Encinitas you're driving from.


Thoughts:
This is one of my favorite special event restaurants (birthdays, anniversaries, etc...).  As far as the cooking tables go, they're not as "showy" as Benihana or Miyabi but the food more than makes up for it in quality and taste.  Their steak and scallops are phenomenal.

 Their sushi is good.  Better than most places, I would say.  It's freshly prepared and not too expensive especially if you go at happy hour.  Still, if I'm in the mood for sushi, I would rather go to Love Boat Sushi in San Marcos.  What I'll frequently do at Samurai is order a single roll as an appetizer.  Because it is quite tasty.

Their dine in restaurant is also a nice experience.  It's a good option if you don't want to spend the big bucks on the cooking table.  The only complaint is the lack of choices.  This probably arises from having two other "events" going on in the same restaurant.  But there are enough standard choices (beef, shrimp, chicken) that it's not hard to find something to eat.  It just doesn't have the same pizzazz as the cooking tables.