Piranha Killer Sushi

Piranha was absolutely fantastic in terms of both its food and its service.
I came in with a large party and had booked my table through
. To my horror I had booked it for the Flower Mound location. So there I was with ten other people, I had no backup plan, and I was absolutely mortified. The team at Piranha came through in the most clutch way by quickly figuring out how to accommodate all 11 of us. The food that followed was phenomenal. Thank you very much for helping me save face!
Tl;dr Overall best sushi I have ever for price to quality along with the best service. Highly recommend and will go again

Service:
Horrible.
I visited the restaurant on a very slow Tuesday around 2pm and stayed for about an hour and a half. There were 2 servers and only 3 parties of two.
As soon as I walked in, I quickly realized what the other reviewers meant by «service gone down hill».
I waited for minutes by the entrance podium thing for a server to come and seat me. Neither server came and a man who was eating at the sushi bar who said he owned the restaurant told me to just take a seat anywhere I want. (I talked to the district manager of the restaurant chain, and it turns out that this guy actually isn’t the owner. Weird…)
The service did not get any better after I sat myself at a table.
Two parties left and there were only us and one more table who were almost done eating, by the time I wanted to order appetizers.
So they still weren’t busy at all, but when I wanted to make my order, I had to waive my arm numb until the sushi chef had to tell the servers – who were making drinks for themselves and hanging out by the bar – to go to my table.
Food:
Marry Me Rolls were very good but everything else was pretty bland and not really worth the price imo.
Won’t be visiting here again in the future unless the quality of service improves.

This place is better than I’d expect given its name and look. It’s definitely not the best sushi I’ve had in Austin. A solid choice for a business lunch mid week. The service, however, can be spotty sometimes. You never know what the lunch rush will be. Sometimes we get our food in 15 minutes, other times it takes 30. Know what you wanna order immediately if time is an issue. Lunch bento boxes are a great value. Sushi/​sashimi bentos are my personal go-​to for a mid week lunch. Two small salads, a few pieces of sushi and a cut role.

The sushi was ok. The beer cold, the hot sake hot. The atmosphere was not fun at all and the bartender not very friendly (this is important to me because when I travel on business I always eat at the bar). Granted I am a sushi snob but next time I go to Austin I’ll go to RA — even though the music was too loud for me at RA the sushi was great, the atmosphere fun and the bartenders very friendly.

Oh damn, ok so here’s how it went:
We were finally done with Xmas holiday family visits and I needed some day after sushi. Nothing was open. Seriously, grrrr. Ok, fine, spend time with your families. I’m done with mine.
We were starved and I had to pee since we left San Antonio, so it became a bit of an emergency to just find somewhere to chow down and get some sake.
Piranha came to our rescue. Thank goodness. So, that’s why it’s a bit hurumph for me to give only 3 blings. Why, you ask?
Here it is:
Rolls, yes. These were good. The Ebi and the Bullet. Yep. I don’t even like rolls and these were yummy. Love the cilantro sauce on the one. Seriously good. Thank goodness as that’s what their sign says.
I’m a sashimi snob and can’t even handle anything slightly questionable, so kept out of that so I could just enjoy the meal.
Now the parts that weren’t so awesome:
Anything from the kitchen. We got 2 apps: shrimp and veggie tempura and the chicken egg rolls. Tempura was pathetic. Barely any batter on the veggies and none of was fried very well, so everything was limp. Veggies were also really small, thinly sliced and sparse.
The chicken rolls: ok, if you like something that’s familiar from chuy’s. Yes, not horrible, but the contents were questionable and the sauce really gross. They slather crappy sweet and sour on the plate under the rolls. Can’t escape that flavor. Yuck.
Blue crab fried rice. This was a complete joke. If there was bluecrab, btw, the ONLY thing I found on the menu that wasn’t K-​crab (krab), it was minimal and only in the cheese on top. It was super hot, so I flipped it over on the plate so I could mix it and get it to cool down. It was white rice, not fried at all, no egg in it, and it just tasted like oily rice, with some veg. The cheese was thick, very weird and didn’t go with it. Then a few pieces of large shrimp in the rice. It didn’t make sense and was utterly frustrating. It was looking up with the rolls, then crashed and burned with the rice, the main meal. The waitress quickly took it off, no issue, but still when I’m hungry I don’t need these kinds of tricks. (Not worth $ 18)
Thanks goodness some good ‘ol hot sake and Kirin came to my rescue and I didn’t care anymore. I’d peed, eaten something and drunk my worries anyway by that time. So, while it was ok, it wasn’t ok enough.
Staff was friendly and nice. Sushi chefs were nice, although we couldn’t see very well what they were doing, but still.
If it went back, I’d only do rolls and drinks. Maybe now that my expectations have been tempered and have realized a few things, I can perhaps try and enjoy next time, if I’m up for it.

Its gone downhill. We used to love coming here, getting free crab salad, rolls were all fresh and tasty, great sauces.
Now its bland, weve tried three times! No free salad, service blows and our favorite rolls-​marry me, volcano, forgetabout it, all tasted the same.
Onward we go. Sorry to see it change as it was a fave.

Three tuna bombs was great. The closest plate I have had to this is Cheesecake Factory avocado rolls but this way BETTER. Less fried taste and of course it had tuna in it. I would def order this one again.

If you ever find yourself craving some sushi when in Austin, this place is great. Atmosphere was nice. I started out with The Bullet Roll, and some Tuna/​Salmon Sushi. The Bullet had a cilantro panzo sauce that was phenomenal. The Salmon was on par, but the Tuna was the freshest and best I’ve ever had (and I’ve quaffed some sushi in some of Seattle’s best sushi restaurants). I didn’t intend on getting more, but then Carlos, the Sushi Chef, started chatting with me and hooked me up with one of his custom creations based on my likes. Best roll I’ve ever had! Guy has skills and was super friendly. Ended up shooting the breeze with him for a ½ hour. Carlos, how can I be the man when YOU DA’ MAN?! lol. Very friendly staff all around. Great sushi spot. I see why others like it, and I’ll be back.

We are always on the search for good and affordable sushi places (although Uchi has our heart, they will soon have our bank accounts if we aren’t careful). We tried this place on a Sunday after church and here are my thoughts:
Food (3.5 stars):
The rolls were good! BUT their yaki udon was horrendous. The sauce was atypical of what is used in a yaki udon dish.
Ambiance (4 stars):
We really loved the open space, style & décor, and the feel of the restaurant.
Service (2 stars):
Don’t get me wrong, our server was a really nice guy! We liked him a lot and ended up feeling really sorry for him! It was a Sunday during peak lunch time and the restaurant was so under staffed! We saw the guy running from table to table trying to remember water, remember extra requests (he forgot ours too and had to remind him another time), get the checks, etc. We can’t blame the server on this one. It’s poor management.
By the way, the hostess seemed really inexperienced and was doing her trigonometry homework when we walked in.
The BIG QUESTION: Will we return?
Probably not. We will never say never, but our experience was, «ehhhhhhhhhhhh».

1) You want good sushi, but you also want to retire someday: Piranha is just as good and you’ll have enough left over for a car service.
2) People you care about want good sushi but you didn’t climb to the top of the food chain to eat raw fish: Piranha has lots of cooked options like chicken, shrimp, or beef fried rice and even cooked fish.
3) You’re downtown and you want good sushi but thar be monsters south o’ the river: Piranha is walking distance from everything that matters downtown.

Good service and the food had a nice presentation. However, some of the sushi rolls had a funky aftertaste. Just odd.
Wanted to like the place but it’s not for me.

I don’t know what happened. Piranha used to be one of my favorite sushi places in Austin. Sadly, they have fallen far, far down in quality.
I took a colleague to lunch there this week, bragging on how great it was. I was dreaming of my two favorite rolls, Marry Me, and Sexy Roll, both of which have tempura shrimp as a key ingredient. Unfortunately, the shrimp tasted like it had been cooked the day before, and I’m certain that one still even had the shell on.
It was so sad. I was embarrassed.
I also ran into two other associates who ate there the next day, and their experience was poor.

Went for happy hour after work — they have lots of apps and a few rolls on their happy hour menu prices very reasonably. I enjoyed their gyoza — they serve it with a orange marmalade and no standard soy sauce is needed to dip. I had the wasabi tempura roll and it was a warm roll — I asked them to add a cut of jalepeno for spice but I could have gone for more spice
Great service, clean casual atmosphere, they kept my water glass full which is automatic brownie points. I’ll definitely go back!

Yum!
Overall great dinner. The two of us sat a the sushi bar on Sunday at 7 and it wasn’t busy.
there is indoor seating.
I ordered the salmon chievech after seeing all the pictures on here, it was so fresh the fish was perfect would definitely recommend this dish or the tuna tower.
we also ordered the rainbow roll, which was just like any other rainbow roll but was 10 pieces scoreeee. My friend ordered a noodle dish which was huge and the «love at first sight roll» which was also really good!
Will definitely go back.

Food was pretty good with good portions. My wife was not a fan of the service, but I thought the waiter did a good job accommodating us and our 5 month old.
They have unique house rolls not smothered in mayo. I had the Latino and the Lobster roll were really good. The house Sake is far better then what you get at Mako. We had the fried banana spring roll for dessert which will likely make us come back

Love the ambiance of this restaurant. Staff is friendly, food is perfect and reasonably priced. We always sit at the sushi bar, since it’s entertaining to watch your food being made. Highly recommend this place for date night if your into sushi.

I favor this place far too often when I’m hungover or just feeling anti social. It’s delicious. Probably the best rolls for the price in austin. Their menu is inventive and dishes are high quality. My favorite roll is the marry me, it’s just too good. My favorite dish overall is the salmon ceviche… its basically a plate of salmon sashimi. So good!
As an aside, If they start allowing you to favor wine in Austin I’m going to be in big trouble.

Terrible service. Nice waitstaff, but never around. We waited forever to be seated, waited a while for our order to be taken, waited for the bill, waited for everything. Nothing was done in a timely fashion and it pretty much ruined my entire first time visit there.
I wanted to like this place a lot more than I did. The sushi rolls were average. Go to HEB and you’ll probably find better there. Lack of flavor and again, just average. The appetizers seemed good, but I still can’t help but think you could find the same, if not better, at the grocery store in the frozen aisle.
We went during happy hour and while it was exponentially cheaper, it’s still just not worth it and I really am in no rush to go back.

I’m addicted…
Fresh sashimi and sushi. Phenomenal wine selections (Phenomenal doesn’t always mean expensive).
Great service, I’ve dined here three times now. Very quick even at peak dinner hours. Great cocktails and beer pairings. I’m starting to explore some more of the menu but the Philadelphia Roll is my new favorite followed by the Latino Roll and the Volcano Roll (topped with crawfish tails — peeled of course).
Any traditional roll is complemented beautifully with an Octopus Sushi or sashimi, great either way.
I’ve sat in the dining room and at the actual Sushi bar, I prefer the higher seating at the sushi bar. This location is in a great spot too, perfect to take an evening walk after dinner.

A friend and I popped in here for lunch while on break from our nearby conference and were quite pleased with both the food and service. My friend asked if they had squid salad for an appetizer and our server Chip suggested something similar but slightly more exotic with octopus as well. He later came to the table with a squid salad saying that the original salad was on the house because he could tell she wasn’t a big fan of his suggestion. That was stellar service on his part.
In addition to the 2 salads, we also split the Love at first Sight roll which had a pan fried whitefish over a California roll as well as the Crunchy Tuna Roll which was absolutely fabulous!
I did find the pricing a little bit higher than I would typically pay for lunch, but if if back in Austin anytime soon, I would definitely come back for dinner and recommend it to others looking for great sushi in the downtown area.