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.

Love Boat Sushi Review (San Marcos Restaurants)

Pricing:

Each of the Sushi rolls cost about $8-15.  You can get Japanese entrees that are in the $15 range.  But, let's face it, you go to a joint like this for the Sushi.  And the sake.  Sake is good.

Distance:

There are three Love Boat Sushi restaurants in San Diego.  I'm biased, but the San Marcos restaurant is the best.  From Encinitas, it takes about 20 minutes to drive to this branch.

Thoughts:

For a city that prides itself on being surf-town cool and, well, not land-locked, good sushi can be surprisingly hard to find in San Diego much less North County.  As I see it, sushi generally falls into one of two categories in this neck of America’s finest city:

1)  Really cheap pre-made stuff that has been kept in a fridge for lord knows how many days.

2)  Really expensive pre-made stuff served in smaller portions that has been kept in a fridge for lord knows how many days.

The silver lining to this sad tale is that there are exceptions to this rule and Love Boat Sushi is most definitely one of them.  Love Boat serves fantastic, FRESH sushi for a very reasonable price.  The food is actually filling which, for me, is a major plus.  All too often have I had a friend invite me “for sushi” and I inwardly cringe and decide if I want to eat fast food before or after my sushi snack.

The only downside to this restaurant is that it's really chaotic.  Expect a 45 minute wait on Fri/Sat evening.  With strobe light happy birthday songs and the chefs constantly calling out for sake bombs, it's a wonder that anything gets done or that more fingers haven't been lost.  However, all the servers are so entertaining that you find yourself happily issuing out a large tip by the end of your night.