Umi Japanese Cuisine

Update: the owner called me just a few hours after I left this review to apologize and assure me that delivery person would not be assigned to my order again. I aprecicate that she took the time to call.
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I left this review on seamless but wanted to make sure as many people as possible saw it. They have the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Interacting with the main delivery man puts me in a horrible mood every time and makes me genuinely uncomfortable to the point of not feeling comfortable having him know where I live. Pick anywhere else to order from, you’ll be better off.

I’m a vegetarian, so sushi is often underwhelming for me. Not here, though! I had the mushroom and cream cheese roll, which I absolutely loved. I also had the Inari (sweet tofu) and avocado roll. Also a hit. I liked but didn’t love the seaweed salad. But our service was good and I left full and content! Try that mushroom roll…

Food is great. I love the avocado dragon roll. But the delivery takes FOREVER. Ive been waiting an hour and a half for my order. Every other time i have ordered it has taken over an hour.

Sushi is hard. Sushi in DC is epic.
Umi us the freshest fish in DC. Do I need to write more?
Oh horror, they put cream cheese In some things. Eeeeeee!
Seriously. They make delicious. Rolls. Their shashimi is amazing
them. They deserve it.

Why would a website have you place an order just for the restaurant to call and say that they won’t deliver to you because you are 0.1 miles past how far they’d like to deliver? Poor management.
I am 2.1 miles away and their website states a 2.5 perimeter for delivery, so I’m not sure what the problem is. I guess they don’t want my $ 65 order, fine.

I was first time try the Fantastic roll. It’s inconceivable!!! I love the special sauce very much!!!

The food is average. The service is okay when you’re there.
Ordering for delivery is probably the worst. Literally, the absolute worst. I had an awful experience a driver who demanded tip from me (when I had added it post-​order through Eat24) and basically blew me off. I called the restaurant to speak with someone.
Here’s why I think this speaks volumes about the actual restaurant — the manager comes on the phone and basically tells me it’s my fault and tells me to understand the driver’s POV. But I tipped him — so this conversation shouldn’t have mattered. It wasn’t about a few bucks — it was about the treatment of the customer.
Will 100% never go here or order from here again.

Ordered for delivery an hour ago, I called in and was told it will be delivered within 15 mins. Another 25 mins later, the delivered person called in and asked me to go downstairs to pick the delivered food up. My apartment has concierge and other restaurants have always delivered to my unit. The food is cold and portion is really small. Do not recommend at all.

Really gross.
We ordered dinner last night using Seamless delivery.
The food was cold and greasy. I got a Bento Box A and the tempura was comical. It was a mountain of this cold, caked breeding that was raw dough in the center near the meat and a cold dry mass on the outside.
We also got yakitori, which is like a chicken kebab appetizer. The container had about half an inch of oil in the bottom. It was inedible.

I should disclaim that I’ve only ordered delivery from Umi. I find the food very good, yet the prices are unusually high for what they deliver. If they could match the quantity of food, with the prices, they would five stars in my eyes.

Awesome food, merciless staff. Let me explain. The food is amazing, so if you can manage to go and avoid the experience that I did, do it. I made it to this place as it began to rain, going to grab a quick bite before a meeting. I was making good time when the rain – now a t-​storm – knocked out the power in some places, including for the restaurant’s credit card reader.
I didn’t have cash, so I was stuck there. They refused to let me leave, and even when I offered to go down to the cvs down the street to get cash, they assured me the machine would be up again. They did this several times. Finally I went to get cash because I was late for my meeting and this was clearly getting ridiculous. I asked if I for a discount for my trouble and they refused. So much for that. I was way late for my meeting now that I was held hostage by this place.
Again, great food, just hope the staff doesn’t have to deal with any sort of crisis. I’ve been burned so afraid I won’t return.

Three and a quarter stars. Some street parking in the area. Service was polite and checked in with us once. Fair quality sushi at mid-​range DC prices. I was lukewarm about the pepper tuna tataki and the overdressed salad greens were generic, but the crispy duck was tender and the sashimi was fresh. Skip the tempura ice cream, the batter is super bland. Future hit list: chirashi, miso ramen, hamachi kama, white tuna appetizer, tako su, kar-​age fried chicken, spider roll, spider web roll, Morgan roll, Megan roll, dynamite roll, scallop or red snapper teriyaki bentos.

Overall: Umi isn’t a sushi bar. It’s a restaurant serving up solid Japanese dishes, with little to no faults at a more than decent price. I HIGHLY recommend this restaurant. What makes Umi stand out is its attention to little details.
Food: 5
The fish seemed a little smaller, and the flavors of the rice weren’t as well-​rounded BUT it was still pretty damn good.
The thinly sliced beef tongue seasoned with a pinch of sea salt and pepper. They bring out a little charcoal grill, and you do it yourself. It can only grill 2 or 3 pieces at a time, but it cooks pretty fast. Dress the beef tongue with some radish and a drizzle of lemon juice and then dip it in the lemon sesame oil sauce they provide. It’s the perfect bite of food and, surprisingly, not too heavy for meat.
The Udon is a play on Spaghetti alle Vongole. Udon noodles, clams, and an assortment of mushrooms sit in a sauce of garlic, butter, sake, and soy sauce. The sauce has the delicacy of the Italian dish, but it’s full of umaminess from the added Japanese ingredients. I also prefer the chewiness of the udon noodles over spaghetti. The clams and mushrooms are cooked well, and the cloves of garlic in the dish is more than palatable (in fact I kind of like their crispness and flavor). I honestly don’t think I can ever enjoy Spaghetti alle Vongole as much ever again.
Chocolate Mousse comes with a strawberry sliced into four pieces. It’s rich but not too sweet, and the strawberries go well with it by adding some tartness and a little bit of sweetness. I definitely don’t recommend it to anyone who doesn’t love chocolate though because I can imagine a bowl of chocolate quickly becoming boring to someone who isn’t a chocolate lover.
Service: 5
The staff is as impeccable as ever. They’re attentive, polite, and professional.
We will be back.

Ordered Umi delivery at the office and was impressed! I got the Spicy Tuna salad, which is basically a ball of spicy tuna, some seaweed salad on the side, some crunchy flakes and a delicious sauce. I also ordered the spicy scallop roll with avocado, and that was awesome as well! I had never heard of Umi before this, and I will definitely start ordering from here more often!

We stopped in here for dinner on a Sunday in June.
I ordered the sashimi (it was a selection or 4 or 5 different fish) and my wife tried a couple of sushi rolls. We both liked our food very much.
Service was okay. They were mostly attentive, but not particular friendly. Very abrupt despite not being particularly busy.
Restaurant has very little seating and cannot accommodate large parties. However, our party of 3 didn’t have a problem getting a table at 6:30 on a Sunday.
Restaurant is very clean and well maintained.

I’d go 3.5 if I could! Good sushi, reasonable prices, great service. The White tuna is something you don’t see everyday. Great selection of cold Sake, nice… The Uni was a tad off, everything else was fresh and delicious.

Never been much of a fan of Japanese cuisine, but I figured I’d give this place a try. It’s kind of hidden, on a level above the street. They weren’t shy on portion size though; the tofu teriyaki I got included a respectable amount of tofu, rice (not pictured), sauce, and a salad with some kind of ginger-​y dressing. The sauce meant for dipping didn’t taste like much and, paradoxically, was a tad off for some reason I couldn’t place, so I dispensed with it quickly. The good news is my order included a dizzying array of other sauces, including the salad dressing, a soy-​based one with the sushi I also got, and a sweeter one for the veggie rolls. So it worked out.
The inari avocado sushi was really the highlight; and it’s clear sushi is more their thing. That was at least an interesting and robust mix of flavors, albeit not enough to sway me to eat Japanese more often as I much prefer the spicier cuisines of mainland Asian countries. But for decent portions of some novel food close to the Metro, I’m rating this place as average.

The sushi is very good here. Fresh and excellent combinations. I think it’s not as well-​known nor frequented bc of poor street marketing (the signage and posters need an overhaul). But it is a really great place and my favorite sushi in the Woodley Park/​Adams Morgan neighborhoods. I’ve never had anything other than sushi and shashimi here.
MY FAVORITES (other than the classics):
–BMW Roll (Salmon, crunch inside, avocado, black pepper tuna and white tuna on top) — DELISH!!!
–Happy Roll (Spicy crunch white tuna inside avocado on top with chef’s special sauce)
–Umi Roll (Tuna, salmon, crabmeat, masago avocado & chef’s special sauce)
Runner-​ups:
–Godzilla Roll (Spicy tuna and avocado lightly fried with special sauce)
–Morgan Roll (Spicy crunchy snow crab and lobster meat inside with tuna and white tuna on the top)
The following were okay, but not good enough to reorder:
–Fantastic Roll (Fresh salmon, tuna, yellowtail, cucumber avocado and masago inside; wrapped w. special seaweed and chef’s special sauce) — the special pink seaweed has a strange texture: chewy and mushy, it totally detracts from the other flavors.
–Naruto Roll (Tuna, yellowtail, salmon, avocado & tobiko wrap in paper thin cucumber) — cucumber made it hard to eat, the roll is also very big and falls apart easily.

Before I begin, I would like to congratulate Umi on being the first business to mail a flyer to my house and actually have me patronize their business. There are literally thousands of law offices, Chinese carryouts, and check printing companies who would kill to be in their shoes right now.
Anyway, my quest to eat sushi from some place other than the $ 8 Chinese buffet led me here this Saturday afternoon. Apparently, I was the only person on this quest, because no one else was there. The place was empty when I got there at 2 and all of the employees were sitting at various tables with their heads down. I was tempted to turn around and leave (maybe people know something I don’t know about this place), but they all sprang to attention as soon as they saw me. I felt important. I’ve been to some places where they act like they’re doing me a favor by letting me eat there. They seriously jumped up like I was the difference between them going bankrupt and opening up new locations.
I still don’t know what the [bleep] I’m doing when it comes to sushi, so I ordered two shrimp tempura rolls. They were very good. I’m starting to become a sushi (roll) expert. Today I learned that the weird yellow looking things on the plate are ginger, and that you’re NOT supposed to mix that in with the soy sauce. It’s a palate cleanser. Who knew? I felt almost as enlightened as I did the time that I found out that the green stuff (wasabi) wasn’t something to pick up and eat whole. My knowledge knows no bounds these days.

Umi is a small second floor Sushi restaurant. Handful of tables with a Sushi Bar dominating most of the restaurants space. I ordered the lunch special with Eel Avocado and Spicy Salmon rolls, and a Godzilla Special roll. Umi serves canned soda. The lunch special was served with Miso Soup I found average, it needed more flavor.
The Eel Avocado was average and Spicy Salmon lacked flavor, very bland. Godzilla roll was underwhelming at best, I am not sure what its goal was. The roll had a beautiful presentation but was flavorless. Service was nothing special and with Tono Sushi being so close, there are better options just doors down.