Umai Japanese Cuisine

Me and my office friends went to eat there at lunch and we were literally the only ones for lunch and they took forever to come to us our sushi was AWFUL and nasty !!! Yikes not good at all!!! I love sushi and this was not fresh at all not a good experience.

From the outside, you would never know how much yummy is inside. In an older strip mall in Dunedin, by the causeway… Sushi is excellent. Fresh, flavorful, beautiful presentation, reasonably priced, huge selection, delicious combo rolls, friendly attentive staff. The Monster Roll & Hawaii Roll are must haves! This will be our new sushi home! If it’s not on the menu… just ask, they will make it for you. Very pleasantly surprised with our new sushi find!

You could not get me to come back here even promising free food. The manager our supposed server felt it was ok to «hope» she would be with us soon. Service was so lacking and rude we went elsewhere.

Food was very good. Would have been nice to sit through the meal without bay news 9 on. Volume was up. I had a sushi roll. Very fresh.

Rude rude rude. (And slow)
After waiting 15 minutes for someone to wait on us — (and watching one waiter wipe a counter down on the other side of the restaurant while chatting with the sushi chef) …
Some lady comes out of the kitchen and yells across the restaurant «be with you in a minute».
A little shocked she would just yell across the whole place I replied «I hope so».
Then she yells back «I hope so too!». Wow really?!
So we ask for the manager and she says «I am»
Needless to say we left.
If I was the owner of this place I would fire her so fast. Completely unacceptable.
Do not go here. A place that treats customers so poorly deserves to not be in business.

Our high expectations were met, then surpassed. Atmosphere, food, service — there is no room for improvement!

Sat at table. Started off with seaweed salad was excellent. Than got caterpillar roll was excellent as well. Had a main dish the House Special dinner meal and was good as it gets. Needless to say it was a fantastic meal.

My new favorite sushi spot in Pinellas County! The place is huge, very nice, and really clean. Our server greeted us promptly and was very attentive our entire meal. We started with the Monster Roll & the Tampa Bay Roll. Both were delicious and tasted fresh. I had the chicken & steak hibachi dinner while my husband had the chicken & shrimp hibachi dinner. Both were delicious & more than enough food, it came with fried rice, noodles and veggies (it also comes with a ginger salad & soup but we passed on those since we had the sushi apps). Our bill for all of that food was only $ 50! You cannot beat that! We will def be back again and again.

If you judged food on taste alone, Umai is hands down the best hibachi restaurant in Tampa Bay. If you can forgo the pomp and circumstance of the table grill presentation you may find yourself pleasantly surprised how good hibachi food can be when your chef is focused on only preparing your food and not spinning eggs, catching shrimp in the hat, or making onions into volcanoes.

Umai just knocked my socks off!
Y’all need to get up on those Lighthouse Clipper Coupon books because we just ate here with a BOGO dinner deal, and it was a steal!
I ordered the house special hibachi dinner meal which comes with beef, chicken, shrimps and choice of either fried rice or noodles; I opted for noodles. The meal also includes soup and salad. I also ordered a steamed gyoza appetizer because I didn’t know how big the meal portion would be. Well just for future knowledge, the portion was more than I could eat in one sitting. No appetizer needed.
Everything exceed my expectations, even the rolls and sashimi I stole from La Chica’s plate. It all tasted very fresh. What I really liked was that the hibachi dishes are made in the kitchen, so anyone wanting that type of dinner doesn’t have to sit at one of those ridiculous hibachi grill tables watching some guy showbiating and flipping shrimp tales in the air.
The restaurant is massive. Over 100 people could eat in here simultaneously between all the booths and spots at the bars. In fact, there was a huge party of 20 in there tonight, plus 4 other couples and it still felt empty. Spacious. Very spacious.
I will go back soon, and I’m reserving my 5^th star for the volcano roll. With Pisces opening up on Main Street soon, there can only be one place for my volcano roll cravings. Will it be Umai? Only time will tell.

Been here twice now and have had both their hibachi and their sushi.
Both are great. I got the steak and it was really good. It is on par, with Kobé Japanese Steakhouse or any of those Japanese steakhouses where they cook in front of you. You get all the same thing (rice, soup, noodles, etc.) and the same amount for more than half the price. The only thing you don’t get is the onion volcano.
The sushi is also really good. I’ll probably get some to go on nights I don’t want to cook.

This place is a gem. The food is phenomenal and service was wonderful. Everything is super fresh and very clean. Music is traditional Japanese music, very quiet and relaxing. Staff was great. No complaints. I’ll be back for sure!

I was expecting much better based on reviews here. So much disappointment. Service on a slow Monday night was good to begin with and then disappeared once we were done eating — took forever to get another drink and the check.
The food was all over the place. The shrimp tempura wasn’t good. The tempura batter wasn’t good and the shrimp tasted like they were severely overcooked or had freezer burn. The special sushi roll (spicy tuna with salmon on top) was a reasonable size (I really don’t like oversized rolls so I like the smaller size rolls here) but nothing special in taste. The steak and vegetable small plate my friend ordered, though, was really tasty!
I doubt I’ll be back as there are many other sushi restaurants in the area that are better tasting.

Sushi very good. Very nice staff as well. The only negative is the décor. The place is massive. They need to utilize the space better and redecorate. The wall color is not appealing. Cheap furnishings. It needs to be a little intimate and modern, in my and my husband’s opinion.

Clean place, friendly staff … Helpful and accommodating .
We had the tempura, soft shell crab and shrimp dragon roll. All good.
The miso was just a bit saltier than you would expect but not a big deal.
I would go back.

You probably won’t believe me if I told you that I waited tables at a Japanese steakhouse when I was in college, but I promise it’s true. That’s just a fun fact for you, now on to my review.
As they are a new business, I really, really, really want to give them a four star, but alas, I cannot. I went in today for lunch, and the place is ginormous. Plenty of seating, a large bar area, and a sushi bar area. They don’t actually have hibachi grills that you sit around with a chef cooking in front of you, and I think that’s why the food prices appear cheaper than other places. I ordered the Monster Roll, and the Hibachi Scallop & Steak Combination.
The Miso Soup and salad with ginger dressing arrived first, both were good. The Monster Roll arrived next, and although good, it wasn’t great. Next came the Hibachi Scallop & Steak Combination. The scallops were a bit dry, the steak lacked seasoning. The vegetables were ok, but the fried rice was not great. I like the idea of the restaurant, the food came out quickly, the service was fast and friendly, and the prices are good. I would personally rather pay a bit more though for the full experience and better food.
I hope to stop by again in the future and give them another chance, but for now, it’s just A-​Ok.

Wow! A brand new treasure at the foot of the Dunedin Causeway. Fresh and delicious sushi with a huge variety.
The Monster and Dynamite rolls are both crazy good and the sushimi is excellent.
Bring a big group. There’s plenty of room and everyone will go home large and happy.

Great service and great food! I wish te portions were a little bigger but very fresh and the presentation was awesome! We only had the sushi, we ordered a red rose, yellowtail and jalapeño, Tampa, and butterfly, all were great!

So happy to have great sushi and hibachi in Dunedin! We went in on a rainy Saturday night so it was quiet. The atmosphere was nice and the restaurant is huge inside! We grabbed a booth, a couple of drinks and I decided to go with sushi while my husband went with hibachi.
First of all, the wine pours are huge! There is a good beer selection and the bottles are ice-​cold.
We both had the miso soup to start and it was delicious. My husband had a salad with ginger dressing next (included with the hibachi dinner) and loved it.
The sushi was great! The perfect temperature, pleasantly arranged and delicious. I had a ‘bagel roll’ and ‘cold roll’, and both were very good. I’m looking forward to working through the sushi list.
Husband’s steak and shrimp hibachi was also delicious. The steak was cooked perfectly and the shrimp was perfect. The veggies were good as were the noodles. While the flavor of the fried rice was good, there was no fried egg and that’s one of his favorites. Not a deal breaker, but worth mentioning in case that is your thing.
All in all, a fabulous and reasonably priced dinner right down the street. This may be our new go to date night dinner spot.

Just the place we needed in Dunedin! There arnt really any great Asian restaurants around here so it was a nice addition to the area. We had the monster roll and chicken and salmon hibachi. Everything was extremely delicious! :)