I Love Sushi

I have been going to I Love Sushi for 9 years now. I have tried so many other Sushi places around Orange County and nothing can top this place.
Not only is the fish always fresh the sushi chefs and waiters are awesome. I never have a had a bad time coming here. My favorite roll is the M80 and the Tropical. When i hav e a friend that likes oysters on the half shell.
I see review on people saying stuff about to much rice and what now but im sure they are all ordering off the happy hour menu. Yes with happy hour they put a little less fish in there rolls but thats what EVERY SUSHI PLACE DOES. Go to RAW SUSHI they do that on there regular menu.
This place will always be my favorite suhsi place and deserves more than a overall of 2 stars.
–Brittany V.

The sushi here was just ‘ok’. but the friendly atmosphere was excellent. The chef and waiting staff were really friendly and the happy hour menu was cheap but tasty — cheap beer specials and hot sake too.
As people have noted here, they’re closed — a sign on the door indicates a change of ownership for the location to become «Fish En Me Japanese Bistro».

Cheap sushi, Cheap prices.
You really get what you pay for here. If you order anything cooked be ready to wait for about 15 – 20 mins. The people are VERY nice but the food just isn’t good.

the word janky comes to mind.
the food is mediocre. the prices are okay, but it’s one of those places that truly confirms «you get what you pay for.» (but not in a good way).
i believe there is a constant happy hour menu.
beer prices aren’t too bad.
the service is on the better side, and the people are nice.

This place wasn’t perfect, but it had good prices and their quality was good. They also had a wide selection of things they made along with the usual rolls you see. They were good while they were there. Quiet, not too busy, and friendly. Great since I lived close and could walk there.
Unfortunately their business is now closed for good. They closed over the winter holidays. There’s a sign on their window that is proof of closure, and they have a map directing people to Maru sushi on Adams instead. Never been to Maru, but I guess I’ll have to check it out now that my local sushi place is closed.

My wife and I went here for dinner here the other night and they have a happy hour menu with cheap sushi rolls and seasame chicken etc.
When you walk in you get hit with the strong smell of fish. I am not a fan of sushi so I always get a chicken bowl or something like that. But this time I tried the sesame chicken for $ 3.00.
Yikes it took 20 minutes on what looked like a slow night. when I tasted the chicken it tasted like fried chicken I could not even taste the sesame it did not come with sauce or anything like that. So I asked for sauce and it took another 10 minutes to get by that time the food was cold.
My wife got the crunchy roll and she said she loved it and she said that she wants it again because it was that good and at $ 4.00 you can’t beat that.
We got a beer and it was large and cold so you can’t go wrong there.
All in all I had a bad time but the wife was good. So take this for what it is worth.
I would not recommend this place to anyone… but my wife does.

I’ve been here a handful of times and it’s usually not that busy. It’s a good place for basic sushi at a good price.
The service has always been good at the sushi bar and the happy hour all day deals are pretty good. The salmon avocado roll is on the happy hour menu and for under 5 bucks is a steal! Stay away from the happy hour tempura, it was awful! I basically got a big blob of oil and tempura batter, Yuck!
Do try the M80 roll, this isn’t on the happy hour menu, but for the price it’s a pretty good sized roll and filling!

If I could honestly leave a 0 star I would. I dont know how this place stays afloat with all the amazing sushi spots and competition out there in costa mesa and surrounding areas.
I came in hoping that it would be a location that would offer a combination of fresh fish with reasonable prices. NOPE
Baked mussels were NOT fresh at all, and tasted like thousand island dressing on top of frozen mussels. I have had much better, Maru, Joes, Sky, Yamato, Amis Sagami Tei… etc…
The rolls, philadelphia and spicy tuna were some of the worst I have ever had. Only worst rolls I have ever encountered were at Sushi Kingzi in Los Angeles a lounge with a 1 ½ star review. Rolls were fulllll of rice and little fish… Why I do not know, this is not how you attract business.
Salmon sashimi was the only thing that I enjoyed.
Service was mediocre at best, Waiter only had 1 other table and we never saw him more than twice.
Overall, There are so many other spots in the surrounding areas that deserve attention rather than this mediocre location and for better pricing. Examples Maru sushi in HB or Maru sushi in Costa Mesa, Sushi wave, Joes sushi, even full moon sushi down the street on baker st.
AVOID

Baked Oysters and M-​80 Roll – Yum yum yum!!! Gyoza and Sea-​Cal roll-​Yum!
Awesome happy hour menu that goes all day Sun-​Thurs. Chill atmosphere, hard to come by these days.

Oh yeah, I totally love sushi. How’d they know?
After a long work week, it was time to relax and enjoy the weekend. So I joined a friend for some sushi and saki and beer. Yummers! This is a cute little friendly neighborhood sushi joint conveniently located right next door to my friend’s house so it’s also someplace I’ve passed about a hundred times without ever trying. My bad.
Their menu of sushi rolls is rather standard, but they certainly are willing to make little modifications to your specifications. We ordered the beef carpaccio to start, which comes with this amazing garlic all over it. Yummers. To follow that, we had a spider roll and a green salad with that yummy ginger dressing served in heaps on top of it. And we topped it off with a spicy yellowtail roll, which they happily modified for us to include jalapenos. Yum.
Overall, it was a decent spot and a pretty good Friday night dinner with a friend. And it filled us up just enough to hit the bars later.

The following review is based on my happy hour experience. I didn’t try the regular menu items.
FOOD: 2 stars
Negatives:
Small chunks of fish
Fish didn’t taste very fresh
No frills presentation — small chunk of fish wrapped in seaweed surrounded with a bunch of rice. I couldn’t tell one roll from another.
Food was not flavorful. Even if I’m paying $ 4 for a roll, the food isn’t doing anything to entice me to come back and try items from the regular menu.
Tempura plate — I know tempura isn’t healthy, but I’ve never experienced the oily finger experience I had here.
Positives:
Happy hour specials are pretty cheap, but not cheap enough in relation to the amount of fish you’re getting.
SERVICE: 3 stars
The server that helped us was useful; that’s probably not the best way to describe another human being but that’s the only positive thing I can say about her. By customer service standards I can’t say she was very nice or quick, but she was attentive and kept our cups full.
PRICE: 2 stars
This is cheaper than most sushi places in OC, but I’ve been to cheaper places with better quality sushi.
AMBIANCE/​LOCATION/​MISC. 3 stars
The restaurant itself isn’t anything spectacular. It’s a very basic and clean enough.
The location is in a strip mall surrounded by a bunch of used car lots. There’s also a Subway nearby. Parking in most cases should not be hard to find.
CONCLUSION:
I don’t know why anybody would come here with so many sushi restaurants in OC. One plausible explanation is that it is less expensive than most sushi restaurants; however, if you want sushi on a budget, you’d be better off going to Costco and buying the variety pack than buying sushi from here.

You pull in and it’s like a goldfish bowl as you can see the whole place from the parking lot. Thankfully, there’s not a lot of Japanese or fishing themed props nailed to the wall. The is minimal décor, and the walls are an earth tone red. Walk in, and the sushi bar, patrons, the chefs and host are friendly and lively.
Then, I remembered what Emeril once said on TV, «If you can smell the fish, it ain’t fresh.» From the table we were sitting in over ten feet away, I could smell that «it’s not very fresh» smell. Even if I couldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole, the smell wafted our way. Shees. So while my friend had the spicy tuna rolls (about $ 7 for 6) and California roll (about $ 5 for 6), I was glad I had the teriyaki steak and shrimp/​vegetable tempura combination.
We both started with miso soup. It was good, served steaming hot with a pleasant broth, and not too salty. The salad they brought out I really liked, with a ginger citrus dressing over regular pre-​packaged like mix of lettuce, carrots, and red cabbage.
The tuna rolls, with the rice and cucumber slice, wasn’t bad. And neither were the California rolls. Of course, with all stuff mixed in with the imitation krab, it’s easy to make that dish edible. It just wasn’t that fresh, however. My friend and I agreed the sushi was probably a 3.0 out of 5 stars on this visit.
My combination plate ($ 13) was a good value but a mixed bag. The steak was obviously sirloin, cooked medium, and not bad. I liked the two pieces of half shrimp. The combination of deep fried veggie slices were good: two large onion rings, a slice of carrot, a slice of zucchini, and a large slice of kabocha squash. The tempura batter they used was crispy, but greasy. The paper doily that they put it on was soaked with grease. Since my hands were a little dry from working on my garden and washing my hands a lot, the grease from handling the veggies actually worked like a greasy hand cream. LOL!
Service was adequate. The waiter was efficient, but nowhere as chatty as the humorous sushi chefs that were talking about life in general and their preference in food. I was the only Asian guy in the place, but I’m not even a huge sushi fan. Still, it wasn’t a bad or great, and just another night in Costa Mesa.

The outside décor and name kept me away from this place for awhile but I finally decided to give it a try… this is what i found out.
Food — Pretty good and decently priced. They give you a 20%off your total bill.
Décor — the booths makes the place look like it used to be a diner but overall not too shabby but there nothing really special in the design. Basic.
Chinese owned — i believe this is the first Chinese owned Japanese restaurant that served some decent stuff. (a plus)
Service — hit or miss. I can’t really say that i experienced great customer service but they’re around though and The chefs/​waiters are very nice!
Also — if you decide to order some rolls, don’t let the names fool you… get a break down of the roll ingredients! The reason I say this is because I overheard a conversion with the chef and a customer. They have a special roll on their board «Shark Fin roll» or something like that but I found out that there is no shark fin in the roll at all. They use jelly fish to have the same texture as sharkfin… a little deceptive for people who do enjoy/​expect sharkfin.

Ever since having my little hamkey, I’d given up on the idea of sushi that doesn’t come from a supermarket. Too awkward, too adult, too structured to accept a baby’s presence. Luckily, the mister and I discovered this gem on our most recent anniversary.
We had driven by any number of times, always making sure to mock the name in one way or another. I was SURE it was a Japanese Denny’s. Walking in, it pretty much looked like a Japanese Denny’s. There’s the requisite bar, but also plenty of booths for more casual diners, which is what I have to consider myself for the next 18 years or so.
The mister got a tempura combo thing, with soup and salad. The soup was okay and the salad was the standard ginger-​miso-​iceberg, with a nice extra ginger kick. The tempura, sadly, was extremely heavy and greasy. We did not finish even half, and I love me some fried goodies.
The rolls and nigiri, on the other hand, were delicious! We played pretty safe, with tuna roll and crunchy roll, and yellowtail and mackerel nigiri. The tuna was jewel-​like and nicely presented, the best tuna roll I’ve had in years. However, the crunchy roll was bland, and not rolled tightly enough to pick up whole slices, either with chopsticks or fingers. The mackerel was nicely sliced but a tiny bit less fresh than some I’ve had. The yellowtail was so fresh and good that we had two more orders, and could have kept on going if it wasn’t closing time and the hamkey wasn’t getting restless.
The prices seemed reasonable, there’s a lot of non-​sushi options for any less adventurous company, and the service was friendly and accommodating. Definitely on my to-​go list when I need a fresh and tasty pick-​me-​up.

I LOVE sushi!!!
Been eating here since 2000. Even when I moved back to LA, I would still eat here for lunch whenever I was in the area. I always try to sit at the bar cuz the chef is funny and keeps me company when I eat here alone.
I like eating here a lot because of their different flavors of sushi rolls. I ALWAYS order the M-​80 roll, the Jade roll, the Neptune roll, and mix n match assortment of nigiri. For some reason I love the combo of cream cheese and sushi — plus anything fried is always good.

We came here with a group for our close friend Helen’s birthday. We ordered a variety of sushi, rolls, salad, & soup and everything was fresh & tasty. I especially liked their yellowtail. Prices are average Lunch $ 7.55-$ 14.55, Dinner Entrees $ 9.95-$ 22.95, Sushi $ 3.95-$ 13.95.
If you are a beer connoisseur you will also appreciate that they serve 3 of the four types of Chimay here as well as sake and other beverages typical to sushi restaurants. The staff is really good and friendly, they even brought out a plate of ice cream for us to share since it was Helen’s birthday.
We had a really nice time and will be back for sure.

I came here at the urging of one of my friends who has had a good experience.
Upon entering the restaurant, we were seated in this private booth in the back. It was nice because we were secluded from the rest of the restaurant. The only thing about the décor is that it doesn’t scream this is a sushi joint to me.
Now, you might be skeptical about the 20% offering they have at the moment but the prices seem reasonable w/​o the discount so you can bet that with the discount, it seems like a great deal.
I tried a couple of rolls. I was most impressed by the salmon hand roll which was loaded with fresh salmon, and this other salmon dish that has scallops and crab meat. I also ordered the special M80 roll and the Santa Barbara roll (comes with yellowtail and sea urchin) and both failed to leave an impression on me. I think I’ll just stick to their salmon offerings if I make it back here.
For the non-​sushi lovers, they also seem to have a lot of other food choices like chicken, tempura, etc.
I don’t know what to make of this place, I think it would be a viable option if I was in the area, but probably not somewhere I’ll make an effort to go to. The price certainly aligns itself with the quality as well. The service was pretty good that night though it seemed like we were semi forgotten because we were in the corner. All in all, another run of the mill sushi joint.

I lost my sushi virginity at this restaurant and I’m glad I did it here. There isn’t anything really special about I love sushi as far as experience and décor goes but it does harbor the best sushi roll I’ve ever had: The M-​80 roll.
I think I can turn any non-​sushi loving person into one if they had this roll. It contains 3 fishes: Yellowtail, Salmon and Tuna with a smudge of cream cheese fried in tempura batter on the outside.
The last two times I went here the fish was extremely fresh. I had a simple Tuna Nigiri and I was impressed on how the fish tasted.
I would give this place a 3-​star since its nothing real special, but the extra star comes from the quality of the fish and the M-​80 roll.
Another plus: They are currently taking an extra 20% off your bill (which I assume is a limited time). Yay for Sushi!

I decided to give this place another shot because the last time I was here, i definitely wasn’t impressed. However, this time we chose to sat at the bar right in front of chef Tiger who is pretty well known for his mad sushi skills. A really happy and friendly chef indeed, and he definitely whipped up some delicious salmon hand rolls for us. The salmon was freshly diced up and looked great — not like that bright orange color you see at most sushi restaurants, and he definitely wasn’t cheap with it either. The hand roll was stuffed with tons of salmon and the avocado topped it off. MMM MMM.
We also ordered the halibut sashimi with yuzu pepper which initially I was weary of because he warned us that the pepper is quite spicy, however, i really enjoyed the fusion of flavors from the peppers and the fish. The pepper had a lemony kick to it, and it was not nearly as spicy as I thought it would be, however, just a little sprinkle of it on the slice of fish was sufficient enough to leave my mouth wanting more. It was topped off with some green onions and a light ponzu sauce (i think), and I decided to add some lemon juice to make it even tastier!
The only reason I give this place a 4 is because I ordered the M80 roll which was my mistake. I’m not a big fan of fried (I thought the roll was going to be baked) and to me it just tasted like a huge roll of fried cream cheese. It’s definitely a filling roll… it’s huge and packed with stuff, but just not my style. I would mainly stick to raw stuff next time.
Chef Tiger is awesome — he handed us some complimentary leftover salmon during our meal and we totally ate it up. The meal ended with some cut pineapple and to our pleasant surprise, 20% off our entire meal. Total we had two large beers, 2 hand rolls, 1 halibut sashimi plate, and 1 cut roll all for $ 36! SCORE! I’d definitely come back.

First off, let me warn you, I don’t love Sushi. About the only sushi you’ll get me to eat is a piece of raw tuna on rice. That’s it. My favorite sushi is teriyaki chicken or beef and tempura shrimp! lol
Anyway, we live close by to this place and my wife loves sushi, my friends love sushi, so we went to I Love Sushi. As far as my meal of cooked meats went, it was good. Nothing great but it wasn’t overcooked or too salty or anything like that. We had a short wait but I’ve seen much longer waits so be prepared for anything.
As for the sushi, the tables’ opinion was just, ehhh. Nothing great, not terrible. Your run of the mill sushi place. Some of the fish could have been a little fresher and the prices might have been a touch on the high side. Big dining room though and the staff was attentive. So, if you’re looking for teriyaki chicken, give it a try. Sushi, maybe keep on looking.