Sushi Nobu

Horrible!
My boyfriend and I came for the all you can eat sushi and what we got was STINGY workers! We asked for more salmon sashimi and they give us 4 SUPER THIN pieces… After finish that plate in 5 seconds, we asked for more. But the time, we asked for a large like 10 pieces. He took literally 20 minutes to give us another small plate with 7 pieces of THIN sashimi…
Even asking for rolls, it took them FOREVER.
No one was in the restaurant and I can see why… Rude workers and CHEAP SUSHI. What a waste of money. I would stick to the bigger sushi places for all you can eat like fuji or Davis.

Out of the 4 AYCE sushi places in Davis I come here the least and I’m not sure if I plan on coming back anytime soon.
The service has always been alright but to be honest I was a bit scared by the reviews. The 2 times my friends and I have been here the place was deserted (usually lunch on a weekday).
Out of all the sushi buffets I prefer the ones here the most. They have the most variety and the freshest fish which isn’t saying much. They are also quite heavy on the rice but they’re no worse than the other places. I’ve always been too scared to waste rice here so I haven’t. Like I read, the sashimi was extremely tiny. The price is fairly cheap here though which is a big plus and the donuts were great (they taste like the ones you’d get at Raku Sushi or Azukar Sushi in Sacramento).
My experiences here weren’t awful but between the awkward silence of the restaurant, my fear of the workers, and the inconvenient location, I don’t know if I’ll ever be a regular here but I do plan on giving this place at least one more try.

This place is alright, but I am not sure I am a huge fan. It’s a hole in the wall so it’s a tad dirty, service is not great. It’s also right next to a German bar. When you need to go to the bathroom, you go out the door that is labeled for the bathroom and you are instantly transported into a seedy bar. It’s kinda crazy. The nexus of the universe, if you will.
We had a party of 5 and we all got the all you can eat. One of us didn’t really eat uncooked stuff, so she stuck to the cooked items. There wasn’t a super huge selection of cooked items, but there really wasn’t a super huge selection of rolls either. You also can only have one order of sashimi for the one all you can eat you order, so basically we got 5 orders of sashimi. If you want more, you would have to pay an extra 50 cents per order. Since we were already paying quite a bit for the AYCE, it didn’t make much sense to try to pay more for it.
Nothing stood out, it was all very mediocre.

Less than average sushi. I would not drive hours to get here. If you don’t live nearby, it’s not worth the drive. Sushi rolls are super small so order a lot of rolls to get your money’s worth. I went with a large group so they include their gratuity. So for each person it ended up being $ 16+. The only item I liked from this establishment are their doughnuts. They were freshly made. Nice and hot. I ate multiple to get full because I was not getting full from the sushi.

The only reason Sushi Nobu is getting 2 stars is because of the comic relief it gave us after eating there.
For I brought my born and raised Japanese father to sushi nobu, and upon receiving his first sashimi platter, looked at me and just busted up laughing.
Oh to make this review even better, the whole reason we decided to go out for sushi is because we just finished «Jiro Dreams of Sushi» on netflix. Talk about high expectations!
Here are some Protips on eating here:
–Think paper thin sliced sashimi, stuck flat on a little tea cup plate. My dad said it looked like a tapeworm.
– They get mad at you if you come any later than 8pm. So plan accordingly
– The older lady will talk shit about you in Cantonese while you order
– edamame and other eating utensils are right next to the bathroom
–You will probably receive an order of something you didnt ask for. It doesn’t matter, every roll uses pretty much the same ingredients
++ Order the fried donuts! Sushi Nobu should just quit trying to do sushi and focus on selling different varieties of these bad boys. They are bomb.

Sushi Nobu is my go-​to-​spot in Davis for sushi buffets. True, Fuji’s was the original and Davis Sushi has a lot of variety, but Sushi Nobu has the freshest fish. And I usually go to buffets for their salmon sashimi. Sushi Nobu is also the cheapest, I believe. You pay $ 15 (after tip and tax), while the other places start at $ 15.
When I used to live in Davis, I used to tell people that at Sushi Nobu, you get the freshest fish, but the worst service. So if you could get over the pissed off face of that one lady, you’ll be fine. However, the last time I visited Davis and ate here, they seem to have skimped on their fish! The pieces of salmon sashimi were thinly sliced! And their rolls were made with more rice than before. I guess it’s the bad economy…
Although this is/​was my favorite sushi buffet in Davis, the other two restaurants are coming close!

The rolls are comparable to Oshio’s, lots of rice and little stuffing. I wasnt a huge fan of any of the rolls and Id actually prefer Oshio’s rolls. This place is a BUFFET but the size of the dishes has got to be a joke. There is only 4 pieces of sushi that comes with any roll you order. Additionally, the sashimi is cut paper thin with only 4 pieces per plate whereas, in other places, those 4 pieces would be one piece of sashimi.
Yeah I get that this place is a buffet, but I felt bad for continuously bugging the chef every 2 minutes for more orders since my friend and I would finish our plates within seconds after getting it since the portions were so tiny. Im not sure if thats what their «scheme» is here, to make people feel bad about constantly ordering more and more and thinking they ate so much since they leave with a huge stack of empty plates and a half empty stomach.
Like other reviewers have said, I do have to agree that their sashimi is probably the freshest sashimi I’ve had in Davis. The salmon sashimi instantly melted in my mouth, just the way it should. Whereas, at fujis, half the time, the sashimi would be icy and not fully thawed but I just felt really bad for wanting to order more and more sashimi every 10 seconds after I finished my current plate of sashimi. And from what past reviewers have said, the chef yelled at a customer for only ordering sashimi so my friend and I didn’t want to encounter a situation like that.
The only thing I enjoyed the most about this place was the DONUTS. SOO FREAKING GOOOOOOOOD. Way better than the ones they serve at Davis sushi! Its super fluffy, crispy, and airy. Ive never had donuts as good as this… Despite that, its not good enough to keep me coming back here JUST for the donuts.
Id rather go to Fujis, its the same price anyway.

Dirty sushi, rude service. But if you’re a typical broke college student with a mad hankering for sushi, this is the place to be.
There’s this Asian lady who can’t let you speak 5 words of your order without abruptly asking, «Anything else?!» And given the molasses-​drip speed of service, it’s best to order everything you want at once so you have a constant stream of food coming. Most of the time they bring you random stuff you’ve never ordered anyway. But hey, it’s all you can eat, so just take it.

There is something about this place that always drags me back here, and not in a good way. I think that something are my friends.
I gave Sushi Nobu a few tries but I was disappointed every time. The sashimi is alright but their roles are just bad. They often have too much rice and thing fried tastes like bananas. Every sushi place has fried bananas, but they don’t let that taste carry over to their other dishes. The most awkward taste was when I ordered their teriyaki salmon. I expected just a normally piece of fish with some sauce on top. Instead it was fried in batter and the only difference between this and the fried bananas was the teriyaki sauce on top of the salmon.
Their other hot food is pretty good like their gyoza and their donuts. The donuts are always heavenly.
Unlike the other sushi places in Davis, you sit down and order your buffet items from your waitress. Unfortunately the service here is not top notch. The waitress who takes your order is either indifferent or cold to you and will occasionally forget some things that you order.
Their only saving grace here is their decent sashimi and fresh donuts. I would have maybe gave it 3 stars, but I like my fried sushi rolls and fish banana flavorless.

The first time my friends brought me here, I raved about it to everyone I knew. In fact, I went back the next day, the day after that, and the weekend following that!
The service is extremely friendly. Now, I haven’t been there when it was exceptionally busy, so perhaps that’s the reason the service was so quick with our order, but our rolls came out exceptionally fast.
Although there is only 4 pieces of roll/​sashimi/​etc. per plate, you can order as many plates as you want. Everything tastes amazing at a pretty nice price!
I can’t even say how much I love this place! I even started talking about it while I was typing this and my friends decided that we should go tomorrow (even though we live an hour away)!

This place is off the edge of Davis and they lack specialty on their food.
It’s another sushi buffet and the price is not competitive.
Why would college kids go all the way here when there are two really good ones (and another one not so good) in central downtown Davis?
They are very slow in taking orders, making the rolls and serving it.

Okay my bestfriend SWEARS by this place and we finally got to try it. I would give this place 1.5 stars because their sushi isn’t that good. The fact that they PACK their sushi with so much rice to try and fill you, doesn’t appease me too much. I also had their katsu chicken which was basically all fried batter and no chicken at all. It was disgusting. Also, the miso soup was very watery and if you know me, i LOVE soup and hardly ever complain about soup but it just didn’t taste right.
However, if you sit at the bar, the sushi people are there to make your rolls but they aren’t very friendly and it comes with 4 sushis everytime you order so you have to keep ordering but it feels as though you are bothering them.
I read other reviews and maybe the management changed? but i dont think I would come back unless my bestfriend wanted to come for her birthday or special occasion.

I like how the sushi buffet is made when you order it and that it’s pretty cheap, but the service sucks! The waitress always forgets some of our orders and she never ever smiles.
Also, I don’t like how they just leave the oranges and edamame out on a table in the corner. It doesn’t seem all that sanitary.

Service really sucks here. The waitress didn’t even write down any of our orders and pretended she heard everything we ordered. She obviously didn’t remember our orders correctly because everything was wrong when she brought out our food.
Sushi was pretty bad itself. Way too much rice and wasn’t fresh.
Fuji would probably have been a better choice.

This place is pretty much a joke of a sushi restaurant. Even at $ 15 for all you can eat… it is really bad. Everything about it is lame from the food down to the service. Also a word of warning… THE SUSHI DOES NOT MATCH THE Unilocal PICTURES! I went here based on those pictures… Portions and quality were completely different.
The sushi quality is worse than a supermarket sushi. The nigiri sushi were small clumps of rice with really poorly cut pieces of fish on top. It’s pretty obvious that the person who cut the fish had no training or knowledge on how to cut it. So… at least at the supermarket, it’ll look all nice and taste better… Sushi rolls were also poorly made. Most of the roll is rice with really little ingredients on the inside. Pieces toward the end was made up of almost entirely rice. They did not even place the ingredients into the roll before cutting it up.
Sashimi listed about 6 or 7 different fish. When it came out, there was only 4 of them and they ran out of the others. Funny… we came at like 5pm… ran out of certain fish before even opening. The tuna was chopped up into small square cubes while the other fish were cut in sashimi pieces. All the sashimi pieces were thinly sliced and half the size of what you would normally get at a sushi restaurant.
Chicken Katsu was more like small strips of chicken you would find at KFC. Miso soup tasted like it was made from a package filled with MSG. House donut was probably the best thing out of this restaurant… seriously… a donut was the best item.
Service here is really bad. It’s worst than the service you would get in a bad dim sum restaurant. The waitress gives you attitude right from the beginning. She doesn’t go around see how guests are doing. The worst thing is she doesn’t write down the orders so she happens to forget orders sometimes.
The sushi here is terrible and they have terrible service. This is one of those restaurants you should never go to.

Note: This review is based on the countless visits I made while I was a student at UC Davis between 2005 – 2009.
Sushi Nobu was an absolute mixed bag. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t have some pretty good dining experiences here. Unfortunately, there are equal amounts of bad memories.
Sushi Nobu use to be a less expensive sushi buffet option, but the lower price also reflected a very limited menu. To get things out of the way, the sushi rolls were (this might be a good thing if you’re doing the buffet) PRETTY SMALL (so you can try lots of different things) and COMPLETELY UNINSPIRED; most of the rolls were California rolls with 1 thing on top or simply shrimp tempura inside with something on top. All their rolls were variations of that description. There was nothing TOO exciting, just look at the pictures and see for yourself.
They did some hand rolls, I remember ordering A LOT of spicy salmon hand rolls. The salmon nigiri was always hit or miss (which could make or break an entire meal), but their mackerel, yellow tail, and albacore were generally good. That being said, nothing distinctively stands out in my memory that simply blew me away or made this place unique.
Now the bad news: The service was PURE ASS UNLESS you were seated at the bar. The waitresses tend to be curt, often forget orders, and look COMPLETELY DISINTERESTED in being there and doing THEIR JOB. The staff fluctuated between people my age who were upbeat and helpful to older women who really ruined my dining experiences.
The donuts were good, but who gives a shit?
I heard that this place has really gone down hill from my old housemate who still lives in the area. I’m not sure if the original owners sold this place and bounced or what. I read some reviews that said the pictures don’t even reflect their menu anymore and I couldn’t fathom how it could be worse.
They say change is the only constant thing in our lives. Looks like their terrible service is too.
If I were visiting Davis and could go to one restaurant to relive old times it definitely would NOT be Sushi Nobu.

Sashimi is fresh.
Service is poor Last time I went, waited 20 minutes for a roll, when I was sitting at the bar. That’s ridiculous.
I enjoy the donuts.

I haven’t been back here for ages because I’ve been trying to find a happy medium for the sushi addiction i once had. But it’s been spiraling out of control these past couple of days. and I ended up having a relapse. *lowers head
They changed their prices back to the way it use to be: lunch: $ 11.99, dinner: $ 15.99.
I guess meshing both lunch and dinner prices into one ($ 15.99) didn’t fly so well with their customers.
We must have walked into the middle of an important conversation or what not, because it took them a cool minute to seat us even though there were no other customers present. But the attitude did not stop there. Throughout the whole meal, not once did our waitress approach us to ask if we needed anything. I had to raise my hand like I was in 2^nd grade just to get her attention. Once she finally acknowledge our presence, we ordered:
Salmon sashimi– 4 pieces of thinly cut salmon. C’mon guys it’s a buffet. Give a little! We’ll just keep ordering more anyways.
Hawaii roll– super tiny compared to how it use to be. Popped that sucker into my mouth with ease and it tasted of disappointment.
Lion king roll– was definitely not fried to a crisp. The inside was still chewy and it made me feel like I was eating something slimy.
Surf clam– decent.
Jelly fish– only thing that was outstanding. The crunchiness was perfect.
Fried oysters– pretty good. Again, another thing on the menu that was smaller than it use to be. But at least the taste stayed the same.
Sorry Nobu, i really do not want to take back the stars I’ve given out, but you leave me no other choice. But wait a minute. Why should I be sorry? You are the ones that served us mediocre food when I know you can do better. You are the ones that became stingy with us when we’ve been loyal customers. Not only that, you added a side of attitude we did not order. How could you have let a good sushi restaurant become so sloppy? This restaurant has the potential to be great. Yet instead of moving forward, it took a step back and settled for being average.

People here are so mean!
1) You don’t get what you order, and they think you don’t now. They give you tilapia rather than snapper, which I’m not surprised about because snapper is expensive. But please don’t lie to customers. Then, I asked for hamachi, the sushi chef gives me white tuna. I asked for white tuna, the chef gives me white tuna. I asked for both white tuna and hamachi, then he tells me they’re out of hamachi.
2) We weren’t even done eating, but there were other people waiting for the sushi bar, so the waitress started rushing us by taking our plates. I got up to pay, and when I came back, they took away all my stuff so we decided to just leave, whatever.
3) When I got home, I realized they threw away my retainer. I called them and they were so rude. Its one thing that your English isn’t great, but even when I switched to Chinese, they were still mean. She started blaming me for leaving things on the table. Wtf!
This was definitely the worst customer service I have ever experienced. The food was honestly not bad, but i would never go back, and I tell everyone not to go here.

Best sushi buffet in Davis! The best part is everything is made FRESH right after you order!!!
You wont see any of the sushi floating around on boats that has been left there for hours so bacteria can accumulate. Did you know that we always have fecal contamination in our food? Yes, we consume a very small amount of feces everyday (learned that from my Gastrointestinal tract class).
I have tried every roll before and majority of them are really good! My favorite is the Alaskan salmon roll! I just tried their fried California roll. not bad at all! Mace roll could be my next favorite! Lion King roll and 69 roll… good! Crazy Monkey was alright.
place is small! servers are pretty nice. be sure to say your «thank yous». the servers and chefs have really good memory!
bottom line is.
you order and BAM! The food is out and ready to be consumed!
Enjoy! :)