Isobune Sushi

Wow, it is 2016 and I just paid $ 50 for sushi at a floating boat sushi spot. Either I live in an expensive city or I am just getting old. Likely both are true. Not sure if $ 5-​$ 6 per order of nigiri is a good value here. I am too unimpressed with the novelty of self serve nigiri on small wooden boats floating on water. Definitely been there, done that way too many times. I will need to think twice before dropping $ 50 on sushi here again. The quality of fish is good but not excellent. And the self service aspect lacks the sushi chef interaction that has enhance my many years of sushi dining experiences. I was sticker shocked today. I was expecting to walk away with a little more in my wallet.
I can likely drop $ 50 at a number of nearby neighborhood sushi restaurants and enjoy higher quality food, atmosphere, and value.
JYW warns, «Buyers beware. »

I was very excited to try this restaurant because I’ve never seen floating sushie boat before. I’ve only just seen it on TV and didn’t think places like this existed here in America and only in Japan. I came across this place while I was walking around the West Mall here in Japan town. I thought the sushie was good. It wasn’t the best I’ve had. I think they could’ve had more selection but overall I was impressed. The restaurant was clean and there’s a restroom right outside the restaurant and they might have their own rest room too. The service was fast and good. I didn’t have to wait for my hot tea to be refilled. Note if you want water make sure you request for it because if you don’t you will get hot tea. The price of each plate are assigned by the color of the plate. I wasn’t price conscious when I was there because I wanted to spoil myself but just be careful. Make sure to look at the color of the plate and know the price before your plates keep stacking up and before you know it your bill is 50 dollars already. Trust me mine with tip was a little over 40 bucks and that’s pretty pricey for me.

It’s been years since I’ve been to this place. I remember it used to be long waits and the sushi was fairly decent. Unfortunately, the quality of the food has gone down and each dish is pretty pricy.

I have been coming here for years and more so during my college years. This place have changed owners several times that I have know of and I still like coming back here. Their fish are decent but since the last time I was here, the price seems to jump a lot, dishes that I remember costing $ 2.95 are now at least $ 3.95 which is their cheapest blue dish.
Yesterday, I came here for lunch and was craving for soft shell crabs. What amazed me was that it tasted a lot better then I remember the last time I had it here. There wasn’t any ammonia, like before.

Every visit to Japantown, I do stop in, mostly because my daughter loves the atmosphere.
The little boats float around, you pick your sushi and you’re charged by your plate color. The idea is fun, and great but the restaurant is extremely small, they pack you in as tight as can be and they really aren’t friendly at all. No personality. No happy faces, no real interaction.
The fish is just okay, nothing super, and you really have to look at what you are choosing because once you touch the plate, it’s yours!
Unilocal has a check in special where you can get a free Edamame or Green Tea Ice Cream, but it never fails, every time I’ve tried to redeem it, I have been there on the wrong day. Darn.

Pretty OK sushi. I was staying at the Kabuki Hotel on a recent trip to SF, and was very excited about finally experiencing sushi boats.
It turned out to be a bit of a bummer — the atmosphere was good, the concept fun, but the actual quality of the food wasn’t that great. Maybe I went too late in the evening, but the sushi pieces were not as tasty as we’d hope, had little variety, and tasted old/​dried out as if they had been rotating around and around on their little boat for a few too many rotations.
It was still a fun thing to try out, but I’d highly recommend going at a peak time when the restaurant is full, to ensure quick turnover of the offerings and maybe even more variety.

I love this place! The wasabi Tako, spicy Tako or whatever is amaaaaazing! The caramel idea cat fish is yummy too. We had to ask the waiter for sake 3 times as well as the bills 3 times… Seems like the staff is really unorganized and doesn’t wash sake glasses often enough? Anyways if you don’t mind repeating yourself, the choices here are a bit more unique that most places and definitely worth your time.

5 stars for the personal experience, 2 stars for the negative atmosphere.
I’ve always stared in the door of this place when I visited Japantown, but never had the nerve to go in. But watching a bunch of food float by you and catching plates on boats is so worth it! It’s a little cramped, but that wasn’t really an issue.
Nobody here smiles. Literally nobody. The chefs are especially frowny. I didn’t feel particularly welcome, but I didn’t care since I was with good friends. If I’d been alone or with someone I didn’t know well, it would have been a bummer. The service got the job done, but that was it.
I played it safe and only picked sushi I knew I’d love. My friends were a little more adventurous and everything seemed fresh, though a little too saucy sometimes. Had fun, would go again.

Don’t forget to check in to get free ice cream)
Today with ice pieces
Friday is not good day for late lunch-​early dinner here.
No variety. Just basic sashimi.
Lazy chefs.
Not happy with today’s visit.

Once every two decades, one must return to one’s first sushi boat place. On a lazy Sunday afternoon, we needed some light snack to tie us over before supper, so we came to Japantown. The place we wanted to go had a line out of the door at 4 PM, and just then I saw this restaurant. I took a deep breath and said, «I don’t believe this.» He said, «What?» I said, «This. This was where I came every Friday in the mid 90s for cheap lunch.» He asked, «When was the last time you were here?» I answered, «mid 90s.» When you worked for a large consulting firm earning way too much money, and had too little living expenses, in your early 20s, what would you do on Fridays when you are finally back in town from work travels? To me, I wanted to eat cheap sushi.
Isobune, one of the first sushi boat places in the bay area, is now also very popular among parents with young children. It’s super inexpensive, it’s quite fresh for what it is, and if you sit at the right spot, you can see when the chef puts out new fish onto the plate, at which point you can grab the freshest one off the boat before it gets to others.
Sushi boat in Japan is fancier, I think. For instance, one I had been into was not a boat, it was a speed train. You tap the touch screen, which is placed in front of you to order, and your food is then magically delivered to you via train, and you don’t have to grab the food off the boat, and be worried about how long the food has been riding on the boat.
It’s obviously very expeditious to eat here. You can be in and out in a few minutes, very similar to the financial district sushi boat on Bush and market, which had been my go to place when I worked in downtown a few years ago. Still to someone who really isn’t looking for a high end sushi meal, but rather efficiency, this was very on point.
In the 90s, on those Fridays when I returned from my travels, I just wanted to be alone and eat sushi in peace. Japantown, especially this restaurant always made me feel at ease. I would always carry a book, eat, and read, and then leave. About a year later, I met a boy, who liked to take me to fancier sushi joints around town, and my Friday lunch alone at this restaurant finally ended.
Ironically, I had no idea that this restaurant still existed, until that said boy, now a good friend, told me recently that he liked to take his young son to this joint for sushi. As it turned out, he also liked to come here, back in the 90s, before he and I started going out to eat at fancier sushi places. I was tempted to tell him my story with this restaurant but I never did.
I suppose for any San Francisco institution like this, it’s often not about the food, it’s the memories and experiences of the past that mattered more. While this was one such place, it also remains to be a decent restaurant, with good service and reasonable price to boot.

Mediocre food at not too cheaply matching prices.
The reason I bothered to write the review though is they like to tack on extra money on your credit card. Just 50 cents here and there — happened twice.

It is hard to pass on cute little boats ferrying your sushi to you, especially when it is right in the middle of Japantown. Apparently they have a trademark on The Original Sushi Boat ® — impressive, but that must come with some added price on the menu.
While I prefer their fish and rolls to some of the other conveyor belt spots in town, both times I’ve visited I felt like I was overspending for what I was getting.
I decided to live a little on this last trip and got the «Spicy Lover,» which was mysteriously listed without description on the menu.
The reveal, a sort of Japanese rendition of a jalapeño popper — pepper tempura fried and filled with some sort of fish. I just tried looking up what it actually consists of, and the Orderahead site just describes it as «spicy lover.» The truth is out there.
Atmosphere: This is mostly what you’re paying for, such sweet little boats shuttling around a skinny ring of seats
Crowd: Can get a little touristy given the location
Try: Spicy Lover, it’s so weird
Skip: The fake crab isn’t so good, I thought about not eating the tempura and crab hand roll because of it

Floating boats with sushi… need I say more? I absolutely have to eat at Isobune Sushi each time I make a trip to Japantown. Reason? The sushi is very very good.
This time around I noticed that they had, «check in,» here with Unilocal,which won me a free edamame dish (green beans). We were seated immediately, and given a hot white towel to wipe our hands and green tea very quickly. The waitress, though cold, was at least polite.
I ate a round of eel, some sea urchin, two white fish pieces that were very tasty, and a salmon. I will have to say that when I was waiting for the salmon to float around, I only saw one for about fifteen minutes. That one I put back on the boat because it had one hair just sitting on it. I had to wait for a while for salmon pieces to show up again.
The prices keep going up here, which is a con. You can order on a menu, but most people grab plates off of the floating boats to eat. The plates have different colored rims which indicate what price that dish is. They have pictures on a sign distributed throughout the seating area so you can see what the price is of each color. There are also little guides to what type of pieces are offered with pictures on it and a label.

I didn’t come to this place intentionally.
We were just browsing through the Japan town and the little floating boats seemed fun and sushi for dinner sounded not bad.
1. Service: we were seated quite fast, provided with nice hot towel and delicious green tea swiftly.
2. Sushi: okay the boats were fun and dizzying to keep looking at. Unfortunately, the choice of
Sushi was pretty bad. Basically they have versions of California rolls and a few others.
They charge by the plate and plates are color coded. Even though we sat there for over an hour,
We never saw the most expensive and gold colored plate sushi.
They don’t sell anything other than sushi, so when you don’t find the limited variations of sushi rolls attractive to your desire, it’s dead end. But it was fun to cover this place, so that I can now say that I’ve eaten at every place inside the Japan town mall.
It’s an okay place with nothing special, not bad and not great.

I always looked forward to coming here at least a little, if not for the large portions of salmon sashimi the whole boat thing is novel. Not anymore. This last experience was horrible. No nice greeting, no warm towel. No attention what so ever from a server for drinks. I must have upset someone somehow, that’s the only way I could imagine being treated poorly and so differently than other costumers. In fact I must have pissed off everyone all at once the moment I walked in the door. Strange, not sure how that could have happend. Or, perhaps something else was going on, no idea.
Don’t think I’m going to look forward to coming back anytime soon. The foods not very good anyway, this place is more of a novelty. The same oysters were circling in the boats around the bar the whole time I was here, at least 45 min. Last time I checked you keep those things on ice at all times, at least I do. That being said I generally watch what they put down after I sit down. Even if something looks good you just never know how long it’s really been out on the bar. Some of the rolls are good but it’s not worth the risk.

Isobune is centered smackdab in the heart of Japantown so it’s hard to resist the lure of sushi boats, especially if you are showing people around the area for the first time. The color coding of the sushi plates are what counts towards your bill at the end– prices range anywhere from ~$ 2-​$ 10 per plate (I never did see a gold plate personally though, lol). You can order hand rolls with your waitress, but I was plenty amused by the selection of sushi passing before me. Fish was not the freshest, but it was decent. The previously frozen eclairs were a little sad looking, but the eel was pretty good. I believe there can be better value found elsewhere, but I suppose that at a sushi boat place you are also paying for the novelty.

Been back here several times this year and while I really love the concept of sushi riding on the boat, and love the fact that it is in the heart of Japantown, there’s been a change to the quality of sushi here. I’d say it’s not bad, but it’s not great either. It is convenient especially if you are here for lunch and you want a quick bite to get you in and out! Otherwise, there are other places within the area that can give you a better bang for your buck! Service however can sometimes be a hit or miss, but overall, good. I do like that they give you a nice hot towel to clean your hands or face.
PS — they are no longer validating parking tickets at the Japan Town Garage.
Until then, Cheers! ~ :p

Best sushi EVER! Always a special treat to eat here. A favorite? It is all fresh and delish. We arrived at 5:45 because by 6 it was packed.
Our fav sushi spot in the SF Bay Area

Came here on a Tuesday evening.
How it works: Sit down, and pick any plate you want, at the end, they will charge you based on how many plates you have. Different plates have different prices that are color-​coded and range from $ 2 – 10 (but don’t quote me on this).
Ambience: Place is small and simple. When we first got there, there weren’t many people but by the time we left it was almost packed.
Service: Besides telling you were to sit and bringing you drinks if you order anything, you don’t have much interaction with the staff. This is fine since you’re concentrating on picking up a plate you like!
Food: I cannot remember the names of everything I had but most of the stuff was delish! If you’re an open-​minded eater, this is the place for you. I had sushi rolls and tempura I’ve never had. They also had a few traditional sushi and rolls dishes. I don’t suggest this for picky eaters.
If you check in on Unilocal you get a coupon for ice cream or edamame. Unfortunately I didn’t check in till after we paid the bill cuz I had no reception (damn you Sprint!). Guess I’ll have to return to SF!

Come here if you like seeing the same four types of fish carrying the same grayish sheen merry-​go-​round forever on the conveyor belt and then throw a stupid amount of cash money in the trash for a chance at a night of food poisoning.
Don’t be a silly ho, go to Tenroku on the same bridge instead.