We all love to go out to sushi together, so Regan & I decided to take Shannon to AKI to celebrate her graduation and her new journey to college. It is right at 12th & Walnut, which is one of my favorite areas of the city. Since it is pretty far from Fairmount, we drove to AKI and paid $12 to park in a lot right across the street. In my book, this isn't bad at all. Definitely as much as a cab and/or public trans would cost for 3 people.
I tyipcally try to sugar coat places I don't like in the beginning of my blog. I talk about the decor and the atmosphere, blah blah blah. But its taken me 4 days to write about this place and I don't feel like going through all of that today.
We decided to go with the "All You Can Eat Sushi" special. $24.99 per person and we could order anything we wanted off of a special menu. I guess we thought we were really hungry and that we would be getting our moneys worth. We started with some appetizers. I got a side mixed greens salad w/ ginger dressing, Shannon got Miso Soup, and the Regan got Vegetable Spring Rolls & Edamame. The edamame, soup and salad were good, pretty basic and what you would expect. The Vegetable Spring Rolls were good, just tiny. I find this to be a trend in sushi restaurants: apps that are impossible to share.
We then put our first and only order of sushi in with the waitress. We ordered California, Shrimp Tempura, Spicy Tuna, and the Golden Dragon rolls. We intended to order more than this, but after you wait 1 hour to get 4 rolls, you are less than enthused to continue ordering. We even had trouble finishing those 4 rolls. I was feeling a bit sick (not going to go on the record and contribute that to the sushi but... ). And there was a a "Rules" section on AKI's All You Can Eat Sushi Menu that specified that you MUST finish all of you're sushi or you will get charged. Okay so there were no capital letters, I am paraphrasing a bit. Anyways, we were feeling really pressured to eat all of the sushi even though we were stuffed. And if you've eaten a lot of sushi before, you know that once your full from sushi, you can't even think about attempting to force another piece down your throat. So this was the state we were in. I felt like my 9 year old self having to finish all of my milk before I was allowed to leave the table. We tried hiding some sushi under other food and under our napkins- if I had to pay even MORE than I already did for this sushi, I was not going to be happy camper. I even had my speech ready if they were going to charge us.
Long story short- they didn't charge us extra, but we still didn't get our money's worth.We ended up paying $85 for the $45 worth of food we ate (I am cringing in this moment). Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and in the end we probably shouldn't have gone with the all you can eat special. Like I've said in past blogs, we're not huge sushi people. My sisters actually only like 3 types of rolls between the two of them. That being said, the sushi we did get was basic. In no way should it have taken 60 minutes to make 4 of the most common rolls. The sushi was fine but I've definitely had better, fresher sushi in the past.
My justistifications for AKI sucking so much:
1. It was Wednesday, they are a participating SIPS restaurant, the sushi chefs could've been backed up. But we went at 8pm. And there were only 4 other tables filled in the place.
2. There was a pretty large table there that arrived at about the same time as we did. But you're a restaurant in the city on a Wednesday night in the summer, have your crap figured out.
I personally would not choose go back to AKI. Maybe I would sit at the cute bar and have a few rolls, but there are much better sushi places in the city. 5 stars for convenience, 1 star for service, 2 stars for sushi. Luckily, we made the best of it and still were able to enjoy ourselves. I'm due for a positive experience at a restaurant on my list- cross your fingers for me people!
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