Tae’s Edo Sushi Bar & Grill

Being disabled & agoraphobic, I’ve never actually been inside the restaurant, but I often have people get take-​out sushi from here & I love it. There’s only one reason for the last star not being there, and it’s because they need more rolls! There aren’t enough to choose from. :) Would really like to see more things on the menu in general, but especially more rolls. However, I’ve heard they do custom rolls, but I’m not sure if it’s true. If it is, that’s really cool.
Very surprising, delicious sushi from the last place you’d expect to see any sushi at all, let alone really great sushi! Boulder Creek certainly doesn’t seem like a place a sushi business would ever thrive. I’m happy as a clam it’s there though, since I’m in Ben Lomond, and since sushi is the greatest food in the world! I hear they’re super nice there, too. My food always rocks, that’s for sure, and that’s the most important thing! Oh and it’s always fairly quick, at least where take-​out is concerned. It’s nice they even do take-​out in the first place, it’s not all that common with sushi places (as far as I know), especially in this county. :)
I think this might be the only good restaurant left in the valley, unfortunately. Cowboy Diner is no longer any good, and Chopstix has gone way down hill. I do hear good things about the Chinese place in Boulder Creek, but I wouldn’t know since I haven’t tried it yet. I guess there’s also that super fancy place in Felton that’s always hard to get into, but no take-​out & really long waiting times. Mama Mia’s used to rock, but the last few times I’ve had their food, it was rather disappointing & the breadsticks were stale. Actually really upset over it because it was a favorite for most of my life!
Anyway, try Tae’s Edo if you’re looking for good food around here, especially if you enjoy sushi. You shouldn’t be disappointed.
As for the comment another reviewer made about a wide variety of fresh fish at places in the bay, that makes no sense since Boulder Creek is like, 20 – 30 minutes tops from the ocean & there’s no real reason any other sushi place in the county should have a bigger variety. It’s possible the place is just a small sushi place & they can’t waste money on a lot of fish that may not be eaten (we all know how expensive fish can be, especially the more fancy ones). I wont speculate, but I do doubt that it has anything to do with being too far away from the fish source… more likely to do with the actual size of the population in the town & neighbor towns, and the type of people living here.

Quite good! Clean and very nice service.
The price is fair and quality is rather nice.
It’s for sure a place you can eat

The sushi is really quite good. The main server, Michelle, tries very hard. That said, the service is horrible. We have had our food given to the wrong table more than once; we have had the wrong food delivered to us, repeatedly; they regularly forget to deliver items; you can end up with food before sake, because they have run out of clean sake service bottles… and so on, and so on. If you go when it is slow, and Tae is there, it can be a very good meal and pleasant experience. Most of the time, however, it is just not worth the headaches.

This is a great little place. We wondered in starving and were seated pretty promptly at the sushi bar. We stuck to sushi and had the Santa Cruz and Red Dragon rolls which were both nicely sauced and tasty. You won’t find the wide variety of fish you may be used to if you live in the bay but if I lived in Boulder Creek this would be my go to place for sure.

When we moved to Boulder Creek, we thought (wrongly) that we would have to venture down the mountain into the South Bay for good sushi. Who knew that the best sushi I’ve ever had would be in my new home town! The rolls are creative and delicious. I find a lot of sushi restaurants have very repetitive rolls, not here! There’s a lot of tasty variety. The sashimi is fresh and done right. The rice is perfectly seasoned. A good test of a sushi restaurant is how they manage scallops… yum! I wish I could eat sushi every day and having this place so close to home is going to be dangerous. Oh, and their edamame is very well seasoned as well! I’ve never had edamame that was given that kind of attention before. Yum! Yum! Yum!

Wonderful! Their specials are fantastic! The rolls were so good and the beef tataki was so yummy. The restaurant and its facilities are spotless! I haven’t seen such a clean restaurant in so long. The restaurant is wheelchair accessible with one disabled parking space. Wonderful restaurant!

This is a general review for Tae Edo restaurant…
This place has surprisingly great food for being in the middle of the sticks! The staff is always friendly. However, I have been there a few times and the food came out rather slow, even when there weren’t many other guests. So I guess they have everything else down but time consistency.
I usually order bento box lunches, tasty tasty!

Very nice staff totally was kind and accommodating about my allergies. And the sushi was the bomb! (that means good)

Updating my review as I am now a regular after experiencing better food. Got passed the sometimes slow and inefficient service, found my favorite rolls, and visit every week!

So sad to report we received the worst customer service ever last week. Waited one hour for our food, came cold, no soup or water served during the wait, a super rude waitress, left embarrassed with our friends for such terrible experience. So sad because it was the only decent restaurant in BC

The first time I came here, we never received our order. After about 45 minutes we left.
This time, so thankful we got our food because it was so good!!’ Beautiful and flavorful and fresh!!! I’ll be back here for sure. 4 stars because we never got a drink refill or offer for one. Overall good service and friendly staff!

After a long week of moving and having purchased too many meals out of windows, our family of four succumbed to exhaustion, hunger and laziness and decided to give Tae’s Edo Sushi Bar and Grill a shot.
Disclaimer: I am not a sushi expert. My sushi roots are buried somewhere underneath a snowbank in America’s Dairyland. I have consumed quirky Green Bay Packer rolls and celebrated many birthdays with sushi boats where fresh tuna, salmon and red snapper were unavailable, so maybe my two cents are only worth a penny here.
Since relocating to California, I have visited two other, nameless, sushi joints in Santa Cruz county and have not been impressed. The few rolls I have had were smothered in rice (who puts that much rice on a roll?). So, hitting up a sushi joint in the redwood mountains has not been anywhere on my bucket list.
We were immediately greeted the moment we walked in, which is always a great sign. The menus didn’t have 4 colorful pages of specialty rolls (another great sign) and the restaurant was extremely clean and welcoming. We all received piping hot miso soup immediately and it was very flavorful. My husband ordered the Poke salad, which he could not finish so my daughter and I gladly split it. This was the best poke salad I’ve ever had! My daughter loved her Caterpillar Roll, my son thought his Golden CA Roll was tops, but my Captain Crunch Roll beat them all. My husband had the Super White (Ono) Sashimi and the fish felt and melted like butter in our mouths.
Speaking of mouths, mine is watering right now and I can’t wait to go back.
Great job!

Sushi in Boulder Creek. Who knew!!! We enjoyed the Calamari and the Shrimp Tempura, and Gyoza appetizers. On several different visits the Sushi Rolls have always been very flavorful and presented beautifully. I love the cherry blossom roll. Today we followed our meal with Mochi. It was delicious and lovely:)

The sushi is amazing!
However, we have had consistent issues with the service.
Twice we ordered items that never came but we were charged for them and we had to have the check amended.
Once we had to wait an hour and a half until we finally got our food to go.
And most recently the server gave our food to another table and then figured it out and brought it to us after they had eaten some of one of the rolls.
No discount in any of these cases.
Should have happened at least when they gave away our food. The waitress also made it clear she didn’t intend on doing anything about it by snidely asking us if we «wanted her to go get our missing pieces back.»

We ordered special Two sushi rolls along with Chefs choice 5 sashimi. The Lion King and the Dragon spider. Both of them were delicious. The fish for the sashimi didn’t quite stand out. They were just okay.
The stuffs were really courteous and helpful. Interior was great. The creek and the trees beside the large window during the daytime really adds to the environment. Very pleasant.

hubby brought me here for my birthday dinner b/​c i said that i wanted to eat sushi, and despite the fact that we were in boulder creek, a town that we’d never visited, we happened to find exactly one japanese, sushi restaurant in town! since we’d just finished a 5 hour hike in nearby big basin state park, we were ready for some serious carbs!
around 7pm, there was no wait for a table for 2, although the restaurant was starting to fill up. there was a proper dining area as well as seating at the sushi bar. we actually were seated at a table for 4, but it was nice to spread out and have a larger table b/​c we needed it for what we were about to order. two bowls of miso soup were brought out to us as soon as we placed our orders, with tofu and seaweed added to the soup base.
hubby ordered the 3-​item bento box ($ 19) and chose california roll, chicken teriyaki, and shrimp tempura. this bento box also came with white rice, green salad with creamy dressing, and tempura sauce. the chicken pieces were breast meat and tasted freshly cut, and the teriyaki sauce wasn’t overpowering. i also enjoyed several pieces of the california roll.
i ordered the dragon roll ($ 13), which was consisted of shrimp tempura, cucumber, and crab meat on the inside, topped with unagi and avocado on the outside, but i requested non-​fried shrimp on the inside, to which they kindly substituted ebi (fresh shrimp). i definitely appreciated the non-​tempura shrimp as it tasted quite fresh, and blended well with the crab meat and unagi. the special eel sauce was also not overly salty.
after finishing our food, we decided that we needed a little more food, so we ordered the captain crunch roll ($ 9) which had shrimp tempura, crab meat, and cucumber inside, covered with tempura flakes on the outside. i don’t normally like rolls with tempura ingredients, so i gave the extra flakes to my hubby, but the shrimp tempura on the inside was actually quite nice, not too fried. this was a nice roll that i’d never had before but will keep in mind for the future.
service was pretty good, as i appreciated our waiter’s ability to change the shrimp tempura to a fresh ebi in the dragon roll. another staff member later checked in on us to see if we needed anything, and also whether we had room for dessert! we unfortunately did not, but appreciated her checking in on us with a smile.
overall, a very nice birthday meal for me, as my tummy was full and feet well rested after an hour or so of sitting. this is a solid japanese restaurant and i’d definitely return for another round of sushi the next time i find myself in boulder creek!

I’m looking at the other reviews and wondering if I went to the same place. Maybe they were just having a bad day?
I feel two stars is generous but it was clean and the waitress was friendly. That’s where the good stops, however.
The place was at about half capacity, maybe less, not busy, but not slow, at around noon on a Sunday.
We waited 20 minutes for the waitress to take our order. She seemed frazzled but it wasn’t busy enough to warrant that behavior. Maybe she was running to the back to do the cooking too?
That would explain the food. We ordered potstickers. They were awful. Not edible. They were somehow burnt on one side and doughy raw on the other and when you bit into them, it was flavorless cool water and bland veggies. Gross! Had we seen our waitress again before we were completely done eating, we would have sent them back.
One of us asked to substitute a lower priced item for something on the bento box because he’s vegan. The waitress hesitated and then said no. She didn’t know, she just didn’t care. We would have gladly paid an upcharge (for a lower priced item), but that wasn’t even an option. It was just a no because she didn’t want to be bothered with it.
One of us had the chicken teriyaki. I tasted it. It was so incredibly dry even the sauce didn’t help. It was flavorless and tasted like it had been precooked and then recooked in a microwave.
I ordered the crab and avocado roll with lobster on top. I was so excited being a huge crab and lobster fan. When my roll came out, I discovered that the «crab» was actually fake crab. Hey, I can do lowbrow no prob but I think they should put that in the description of the roll, imitation crab. It’s false advertising. The lobster, if that’s what it was, was little balls of deep fried something. Again, no mention of that in the description. When I think sushi, I think fresh fish unless otherwise mentioned. Had I known it was deep fried, I never would have gotten it.
The waitress was nice but very inattentive and getting and paying our bill took forever.
I questioned sushi in the mountains and now I know my gut feeling was right. Next time I have a craving, I’ll go to SC or SJ :-(

Pristine location on top of a mountain in a quintessential town. Breathtaking ambiance caught our eye to venture this place. Well honestly my daughter wanted sushi so we said, «What the heck!» and went in. It is in the corner of Haven Lane, right side when you enter Hwy 9 from Boulder Creek. (
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Entering this establishment, you would be elated to see it’s clean and simple yet beautiful setting. They have a rock garden in front too which you wouldn’t really notice until you enter the place and look outside their window. (
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We ordered some bento and two types of sushi; Hwy 9 and Santa Cruz. All of them were awesome! The seafood was indeed fresh and so tasty. My cousin who is a picky eater loved his veggie tempura bento and chicken terriyaki and was happy to finish it all. I enjoyed both the sushi while my hubby was sharing his bento of shrimp tempura and chicken terriyaki with me.(
) The miso soup was, with lack of a better word, divine with its cute bear bowls. (
) It was an amazing dining experience indeed.
The owners are nice and even joked with us a bit. The ambiance was relaxed and enjoyable. The wait of the food is never a bother since we engulfed ourselves with the scenery. (
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Tip: go in the back exit which will lead you to a bridge going to the restroom. under the bridge is a creek and the restrooms are guarded by two wooden bears… very adorable! The restroom have this cutesy chic feel to it too.
Tip: The adorable bears have magic powers to lure your hubbies … pass with caution…(
) LOL!!!
Highly recommended to come visit and dine!

Being my first time here, it was a great experience. It is a little further out, but the area is wonderful. I just wish I would’ve gone for lunch to see the creek right next to the restaurant! You could still hear it at night though so it was relaxing.
We were given Miso soup then we were given Tommy’s Cajun Tuna. The flavor was really good on it and the garlic helped it stand out more. The tuna was followed by the Calamari. It was so crunchy and not as oily as some of the other places I have tried it at. We then had sashimi, half order of White Tuna and half of the Hamachi. The White Tuna had a specular texture and surprisingly good being my first time trying it. The hamachi was alright. We got three rolls, Yami Yami, Kappa Fantasy and Red Dragon roll. All three were pretty tasty. The Yami Yami roll was interesting, it had a tempura roll on the bottom and then I think raw tuna/​salmon on top. The cooked part of the roll was pretty good. The Kappa Fantasy was something I’ve never seen so far in Cali. The quail egg was an interesting texture to put on the roll as well as the cucumber wrapping it. The Red Dragon was pretty good too! Nothing to really complain about here. We ended with mochi ice cream and it was delicious! I will be back!

The Epihany:
Upon returning to Edo I was lucky enough to see a couple sneak into what would become a treat that I haven’t been lucky enough to witness since rolling sushi in Humboldt. After three seconds of deliberation I said «Screw it» and followed out this special backdoor no customer ever walked through (since I’ve eaten here).
To my bewilderment it became obvious that Edo has a hidden eating area on the river.
I came back inside, and within thirty seconds we were headed out back.
Our waiter scored a round of new soup for the trio as we descended along our promenade adjacent to the river where we would be seated.
After recovering from environmental overload– the shock of eating such high caliber food in such a gorgeous location can leave a group in shock.
When we came-​to we decided to get some more of the items we had our previous visit; a Dragon Roll to begin (three people devoured it within two minutes), followed by a dish of seared beef, coated in teriyaki, adorned on a bed of cabbage.
To conclude our bbq bliss we had to twist our palettes back to the delicacy that would reveal albacore, salmon, maguro, hamachi, ebi, and a side goma wakamae.
We loved it.
5 stars.