C U Sushi

Came here with my roomies right before prime time. We ordered four different rolls and I ordered my usual lion king roll. I thought service was a little slow for the place especially being before dinner, but I can understand since it’s a bit small and can get packed.
Food: I thought my lion king roll was okay. Had high hopes for this place, but I would much prefer Kansai for their rolls and especially during happy hour.
Would come back here because of convenience but for quality, I would go somewhere else.

With lots of competition in Berkeley, I was hoping this place would be up to par, but alas, it’s not. We came on a Friday night, and were able to get the last table inside (they have outside seating but it was too cold to eat al fresco).
Here are the pros:
Large than average size rolls, I barely could eat one piece in one bite.
Lots of variety of rolls
Here are the cons
Sushi is not wrapped tight, sushi was falling apart as we grabbed each piece.
Fish taste average. Nothing special or amazing to remember.
Service is attentive when requested but they honestly don’t go out of their way to be super speedy.
Parking is tough since it’s near campus but there is paid parking garages/​metered parking if you are lucky.
I would say this place is eh. OK. With Ippuku down the street, there is really no reason to come back here. Wouldn’t really recommend.

The food here was pretty average, in my opinion. The quality of the fish was whatever, but I feel like they tried to mask it with excess sauce. For example, we got the spicy tuna & scallop roll and it was drenched in soy mustard. I didn’t need to dip any of the rolls in soy sauce, bc they all pretty much had their own sauces.
The prices are decent — my boyfriend and I split 3 rolls between the two of us, and the bill came out to be around $ 35(?) pre-​tip. However, for the quality and taste of the food, I think I’d rather go elsewhere.

Quick & tasty! First time here last week with my boyfriend. We shared a few rolls and they were fantastic. Unique house creations & everything was fresh. The girls next to us ordered the udon noodle bowls and they smelt terrific. We plan to go back and try that out too.

I love this place. I always come here with my good friend Noah because we can’t get enough of the sushi here! I have tried quite a few different rolls here, and I can’t complain. Never had a sushi roll here I didn’t like! The service here is always great too. The servers are always really sweet and polite. I totally recommend this place if you need some affordable sushi.

Sushi is mediocre here, to say the least. The fish quality is okay, but pretty much all of their rolls contain imitation crab, which I’m not a big fan of.
The Hawaiian roll is pretty good. I tend to order a shrimp tempura roll when I get sushi anywhere, and I must say I’m not impressed with that here. Though it does come with a few pieces of veggie tempura on the side. The one I ordered tonight was all tempura and no shrimp though :(
The prices are a bit on the higher end, but the portion sizes are sufficient. There’s lots of places nearby where you can find mediocre sushi for cheaper though, so we hardly come here.
I’ve had a mixed bag of waitstaff. Sometimes they’re really nice and helpful, and sometimes it’s not fabulous service. I really like the location and the space though. I appreciate the sidewalk tables on center street and big windows inside. Great on a sunny day, or if you’re in the mood to people watch.

–1 star since my past review because of bad service yesterday. Majority of food is still good if you stick with the salmon collar and sushi rolls but their nigiri at times seems unfresh and their noodles are very mediocre and absolutely DO NOT GET THE YAKI UDON — false advertising about «oyster» sauce which is really just ketchup.
The service really turned me off when I went yesterday. We ordered the yaki udon and it came out super ketchup-​y when on the menu it specifically said it was made with oyster sauce. It was nothing like the yaki udon I’ve had elsewhere and my bf and I took a bite and literally weren’t going to eat the rest because it tasted that bad. We called the waitress over who then started to disagree with us saying it’s supposed to taste ketchup-​y and when we asked why it said oyster sauce on the menu, she said it doesn’t, until she saw the menu and it specifically said with oyster sauce. She called a different waiter over who was extremely curt and asked us what our problem was. We explained to him and he said that’s just how it is and we just had to deal with it. We were really upset with that kind of false advertising of «oyster sauce» tasting completely like udon drenched with ketchup and after a good 5 min of telling him that this wasn’t what we had wanted, he finally reluctantly asked if we wanted to switch a dish. We asked for the curry katsu and he said «well, have you tried it before?» basically implying that if we try it and we don’t like it then we’d prob ask him for something else, but to me, the only reason we wanted something else was because we didn’t want yaki udon with ketchup but we wanted the one with oyster sauce, so that’s the only reason we even bothered telling him. I didn’t like that kind of attitude and service and it makes me reluctant to go back.

Oh my goodness– crazy town. I placed a to-​go order but I guess in the meantime my 3-​year-​old started playing with my phone & dialed them by mistake. Then I noticed 6 missed phone calls from their number. When I called back, the guy didn’t even hesitate. He immediately went on this crazy and rude rampage. Clearly, I canceled my order. I don’t even care because the last time I ordered, they forgot my wasabii! Anyway, this guy was going on & on, accusing me of placing a prank call. Prank call? What is this– junior high? He was so rude to me on the phone, not just rude but YELLING at me for no reason! As soon as I hung up, I headed there with my child. I wanted to dare him to talk to me in the same way– face-​to-​face, in front of customers, & in front of my child.
I just can’t believe he would talk to anyone this way, let alone a long-​time customer! Wow.

Never had such pathetic service before… My work is at downtown Berkeley and I wanted to try their food and it was ok but the manager or the guy named Kenny or whatever his name is wanted us to leave early because others were waiting… I was shocked n told him my food just came on the table but he goes and said he said «I DONT CARE WAT U ORDER WE CANT WAIT» it was so rude unethical and disappointing we stopped eating right there and left paid for the food before by KENNY was way he told his name was n he wouldn’t give me the managers info n kept sayin I m the manager where he looked like a very pathetic customer service person there! Lost my business and my entire family’s ! If someone has self respect they won’t go there!

Average sushi restaurant in the area.
I come here because there’s not a lot of Japanese restaurants that open late at night. I usually order tempura udon while my boyfriend has the chirashi bowl. Sometimes we switch things up and share some rolls. It’s a small restaurant so I can picture it being super crowded during peak lunch hours.

Great food! Better than I expected. Try the fried vegetable on the stone plate! Filled with mushroom and other veggies sauced flavorful. Also they have sooo many choices of rolls and you really don’t know which to choose… Based on the picture on the menu we picked the teriyaki chicken roll. The chicken is in the roll and also a small portion on the side.

Such utter disappointment. I felt like I had reasonably low expectations based on the Unilocal reviews but even then, I was just unimpressed from first bite to last. I had been craving sushi for weeks and unfortunately had to cancel trying the buffet at Edoko on University this weekend, so I figured CU looked like the easiest and most promising. I considered going to Sushi Secrets like usual but thought I’d treat myself to a couple of real rolls, but I wish I would have — I would have saved money and gotten some much more satisfying food.
I ordered a 49ers Roll (Crab and avocado inside, fresh salmon and lemon slices on top) which everywhere else is just a lemon roll. It wasn’t bad. The lemon rind was a little think but overall, it was fine. The salmon was good but the avocado inside was browning pretty quick and it didn’t taste as fresh as I would prefer from this kind of roll.
The other roll I got was a Power Roll (Soft shell crab TEMPURA, crab, avocado, and cucumber inside, unagi on top). This roll is obnoxiously large in diameter. I had to take 3 – 4 bites to get through each piece and it just kind of fell apart when I did that, obviously. The eel tasted good, if being a little dry. The menu online doesn’t say the crab inside is tempura and I wouldn’t have ordered it if I could have known that (in the picture on the website it does not look like it’s fried, and the photo is too low resolution to really investigate — plus TELL ME) since I don’t like tempura in my rolls or really at all. Also, the menu online’s organization is atrocious. This roll was in the «Baked Roll» section and isn’t baked, many in that section aren’t. I was looking for a baked roll and wish I would have gone with the Baked Salmon Roll. My mistake for not asking, but don’t put things in categories where they don’t belong!!!
Overall, this meal was filling but just kind of made me sad. I spent $ 20 on mediocre sushi that didn’t satisfy my cravings at all. I just wanted a fresh lemony roll and a good baked roll that was warm and covered in eel sauce — is that so much to ask?!
While this place isn’t aggressively bad, I have no interest in ever eating here again and I’d never recommend it to any of my friends or colleagues. There are plenty of other sushi spots around Berkeley to try, and I know that a sushi burrito from across the street will never disappoint me the way these two rolls did.
Last comment: the soy sauce from their packets (since I did takeout) tasted awful! It was almost sour? It was such a strong and overpowering flavor I almost spit out the bite I put it on. Thank god I had a bottle of soy sauce in my desk at work to use instead.

Dine here with my friends tonight. We ordered Ultimate Salmon roll, power roll and a lion king roll. Dessert with Green Tea Tempura icecreem. Serve fast and gentle… just don’t get why they gwve us an extra plate and spoon X’D
Ultimate salmon roll has quite a huge piece, pretty much like a roll in a roll. they fried the middle part and that’s give me a pretty nice crunchy bites. Lion king roll is kinda small than I imagine but came out warmly.
I like this restaurant, Not bad at all! Will come again.

I wanted some fast sushi so I stopped by this hole-​in-​the-​wall. The seating is uncomfortably cramped. My friend and I were practically rubbing elbows with the guests sitting next to us.
But overall the sushi was fine for the price. They have a pretty great combo deal– $ 12.95 for 3 pieces of nigiri, a bowl of miso soup, and a roll of your choice. I can see why this place is popular among budgeting college students! Not bad, but not the best.

This I probably the fifth time I have eaten here and I was a little disappointed today
We ordered the fried tofu salad, Hawaiian roll and also some sushi off the half price list. We did not want anything with cream cheese or spicy tuna. There have been news reports about spicy tuna being scrapped off tuna bones in India, seasoned there and then shipped to American grocery stores and inexpensive sushi places. The spicy flavor will cover any weaknesses in the tuna flavor and texture. So that limited our roll choices.
I thought the salad would be served first, but it was the last item for some reason. The sushi pieces were really small and the hamachi was too warm and not so flavorful. What do you expect for $ 3.50. The salad was satisfying.
Maybe I’m getting jaded in my old age, but I was not crazy about the sushi here today.

With nearly a dozen check-​ins here, I think I’m pretty qualified to give it a thorough review.
Price: 8 – 10 bucks a roll. Neither cheap nor expensive.
Sushi quality: fish quality is average/​acceptable
Service: polite, prompt
Atmosphere: casual, good for small groups 2 – 4, mainly 2’s
Space: small, but I’ve always been able to get a table
Why I keep coming back: the sushi roll creativity here is addictive. While not cheap (I usually spend $ 30-​$ 40) bucks here, I really like items like the Spicy Salmon Roll, Baked Salmon Roll, basically a lot of rolls.
Come here for your Americanized sushi fix, at a reasonable price point.

CU sushi is more of a convenient quick stop as it’s near Bart and the downtown Berkeley area.
They have a large assortment of rolls, from simple rolls to fancy tempura & baked rolls, sashimi, nigiri etc. There are also rice bowls, udon, and more. The fish is decent, but not of the best quality. I once ordered a Rainbow roll and the fish was mediocre and thinly sliced, and the sushi roll overall wasn’t very big either. One notable dish though is the Japanese Seafood Pasta. I didn’t know what to expect even though there was a picture, but it was basically is sashimi salad with udon noodles and ponzu sauce. Surprisingly, there was a generous portion of sashimi. For $ 11.95, it was really worth it. I’d recommend getting that instead of a roll to get your money’s worth. Service here can also be very lackluster and slow since the restaurant is quite small.
On a normal basis if I crave sushi this would not be my first choice, but rather a place to go just out of convenience.

Met up with a friend here and decided to come here for the first time. The place looked nice and was clean. The staff was nice also.
So, time to order. I ordered the ca roll and another roll, I think the spider roll. Both were really good and decent sized pieces! The waitress had no problem bringing me extra sriracha and soy sauce to dip my pieces in! Overall, I had a great experience.

BEST sushi for quality/​price in Berkeley! It’s also my favorite go-​to sushi place.
Real talk though, their service is very poor. Their waitresses don’t really care about you or your experience (you’ll notice this very quickly).
Regardless, I absolutely love it here because their sushi is so fresh, unlike Tako Sushi and Joshuya.
What to get?
Orange plate special: This comes with your choice of the specialty rolls of calamari, shrimp tempura, vegetable tempura, and a few more + california or spicy tuna roll + fried tempura pieces. It’s a lot of food.
Lobster roll: I just had this the other day and it is DELICIOUS! Definitely worth trying! It comes with the roll and lobster pieces + caramelized vegetables on top.
Other rolls: I’ve had so many other their rolls and have not been disappointed. Pick and choose what you like but it’s nice to order a few and share with a friend.
Other than the poor service, CU Sushi is a great place for lunch/​dinner (or both).

The thrill and the frill is in their FOOD!
Delicious! I ordered the chirashi bowl — fish on a bed of rice — genius. I can never get enough of my raw sea friends. Mmmm.
We also ordered the salmon skin salad and oysters to satisfy our growling tummies. Let’s just say we can from a long weekend of skiing and driving. Well worth it. Words mean nothing. One look at my photos and you’ll be bought.
I will return!