Anaya Sushi

Their sushi is amazing. Their sashimi was in huge blocks and soooo worth the money! However, their service was a little slow, but the waitresses were very kind. I definitely will come back and recommend this place to friends!

We thought this restaurant was a true FIND! Don’t be put off by the empty first floor. The upper floor is full of happy diners as we learned last week. My husband got the Dream Box and I chose two rolls plus miso soup & ginger salad. Everything was fresh, delicious and beautifully presented. Hats off! My new fave local restaurant.

Got the order wrong. Slow service. Can’t speak English.
What else is there to say? Unilocal wants me to keep typing. Alright fine, the miso soup is too salty, and the service is not up to or with the competition.
Stay away from this place until they fix the problems I pointed out above.
Fundamental problem is that this place is UNDERSTAFFED. Hire more people!
It is NOT acceptable for a person to wait OVER AN HOUR for their food to come out.

Went here for the first time tonight and actually writing this review as I finally eat my sushi after almost 40 minutes. Selection of sushi rolls is nice – different and unique sounding rolls. Service time kind of detracts from the taste of the roll though… Too long of a wait. We waited almost 10 minutes to just get a menu and then the sushi was almost another 30+. Post eating to get someone to come over, well, still waiting 10 minutes later. Service in general was pretty bad. No one came to check on us at all. 2stars only because the sushi was good but honestly I won’t be coming back.

Anaya: I really like your food. You have a MAJOR service problem and need more people to be able to prepare and serve that food in a timely manner.
I’ve now been to Anaya three times, and each time the service has gotten worse. After last night, I can’t think of a reason to go back, unless the service is changed drastically.
We were a party of four and arrived at 7:45 on a Monday night. The place looked unusually busy for a Monday. We were seated after waiting a few minutes for someone to come greet us, and were promptly given water and an all-​you-​can-​eat menu. Then came the waiting…
We filled out our order form pretty quickly: 3 miso soups, 12 pieces of assorted sushi & sashimi, and 11 special rolls. While waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for our order to be picked up, I noticed a certain tension in the room. We weren’t alone in the waiting. It looked like there were two waitresses serving the entire place. We rarely even saw them in the room we were in. We watched people from several different tables get up and go fetch their own checks. Empty water glasses were everywhere, and you could see the frustration in the faces of other patrons around the room.
We finally decided to get up and hand in our order after waiting 15 minutes. Our soups came out in a reasonable amount of time, but then, nothing. Just more waiting — a LOT more waiting. When food finally did arrive at our table, it was just a plate with the 12 pieces of sushi and sashimi — no rolls. Starving, we quickly devoured the plate, and then had to wait longer for the next plate to come out. When it did, it was only four out of the eleven rolls we ordered. Again, we went through it quickly. A waitress actually came over when the plate was empty and asked how it was, and seemed surprised when we told her we were still waiting on *seven* more rolls!
We’d actually asked for our check at this point — not because we were done, but we did have somewhere to be and had no idea how long it would take to actually get it. One waitress was very apologetic and took 50% off of our bill — which was nice, but it really shouldn’t have to come to this. That check was brought out to us after a while, and was followed by another waitress bringing us a check for the full amount. Oy!
Eventually, another plate came, with another four rolls. Great, but we’re still waiting for three more. One member of our party had to leave at this point because it was taking so long. Our last plate of food with the remaining rolls finally arrived at 9:30 — an hour and 45 minutes after we got there — on a Monday. Completely unacceptable.
So the actual «busyness» of the place was pretty deceiving. Sure there were a lot of people there, but it seemed mainly due to the face that they’re unable to turn tables at a reasonable rate.
Long story short: Good food but not good enough to deal with what comes with a severely understaffed establishment. There are far better options for AYCE sushi in the area.

This establishment has the slowest service known to man. I have gone three times, and each time I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt until my next visit. The third time is the charm. I can now confidently assert that this isn’t a fluke. Their tardiness is simply a state of being.
The service would be bearable if the sushi was incredible. The sushi is decent, but not amazing, and certainly not worth an hour wait. Or perhaps the sushi ~is~ incredible, but I’m so hungry by the end of the hour I end up vacuuming it into my system with little regard for flavor.
This is definitely one of the more affordable sushi restaurants in New Haven. And for this very reason I find myself returning.

As rude as advertised. I sat down to a nearly empty resturant and they have me the wrong menu and could not get a correct one. I walked out I felt badly for the behind the sushi bar who could offer no assistance
Maybe it’s a full moon

Pleasantly surprised by this place. Was going to give it a pass after reading other’s reviews, but an unexpected thunderstorm made the decision for me. Inside, the décor is good. The sushi (New Haven roll) was well made and tasty, but the accompanying miso soup and salad was a little on the weak side. Service too was spotty — friendly, but slow. Good value for money though. Would try again — maybe takeout.

Their sushi is fresh and delicious but the service is atrocious and ruined both visits.
Our first visit had confusion around our order and we chalked it up to a bad day. Our next visit solidified poor service. We waited 40 minutes after our miso soup was delivered to ask about our order. We decided to leave when the server’s response was that the sushi bar was busy.
There was 1 person at the bar and the tables were half empty. We only ordered 4 rolls from the menu. Nothing special.
If they improve their service– we would go regularly and tell everyone.

Their usual all you can eat sushi is very mediocre. You can feel that their fish isn’t very fresh and there isn’t much variety in the menu. It also takes way too long for each order to come out, so make sure to order a lot on your first order.
They recently added late night ramen for Fridays and Saturdays, which I noticed is getting very popular! The only place that does ramen in New Haven as far as I know. Ramen and buns are all pretty good, but the wait time is way too long. Be ready to wait for about 40 minutes.

I’ve heard a bit about Anaya from living in New Haven with friends who have been there before. I went around 5:45PM with my friend, and when we arrived there was nobody present to greet us. We actually thought a customer who was on the phone was a hostess who was leading us to a table. It wasn’t until we got to the back of the restaurant when she sat down did we turn around and, eventually on our way to the front, run into a staff member who pointed us to a potential table.
Once we sat down, we were offered menus, but nobody came to check on us for approximately ten to fifteen minutes – not even to give us water. My friend went up to the sushi bar to try to order at which point a staffer waved her away with a finger, indicating that he was not going to take her order. At some point, we were able to flag down a staffer, but it was almost what we had expected based on previous experiences of acquaintances.
After we ordered, the food came out relatively quickly. We had both ordered the spicy miso soup with chicken, which was pretty good albeit a bit too salty. Throughout our time eating, we did not have a staffer check on us, and we had to flag down an individual to get us our check. Normally, I’ve had checks turn around relatively quickly, plus it wasn’t that crowded, but it took five or ten minutes for our check to come back. It was a time span that made me relatively uncomfortable about what had happened to my credit card, to be honest.
The atmosphere was pretty quiet, which we both enjoyed. The food was reasonably priced, too, and our miso was OK. I found that the lack of interest in the customer was overwhelmingly clear, and it seems to be a trend considering the experiences that my acquaintances have had.

Downgrading after my last visit (s).
I had only gotten take out from here until last week when I decided to meet a friend here. My hands down favorite sushi in New Haven is Sushi on Chapel, but their lunch boxes are a lot of food and usually I just want a couple of sushi rolls. Anaya does have lunch specials with two or three rolls, which is what I usually prefer to the larger bento-​box meals. it’s around $ 8 for two rolls (whereas you would have to get them separately at Sushi on Chapel and it ends up costing at least $ 12 and doesn’t come with soup or salad).
The music in the dining area was unreasonably loud. We could barely have a conversation over the constant stream of Bieber playing at a billion decibels. Also, the server did not seem to remember our order and had to come back a couple times to ask us if we had ordered already (???).
When we did get the food it was mostly okay, but was supposed to come with soup or salad and did not even after asking (I think the server just forgot…). I had a spicy salmon roll and an avocado roll. The avocado roll was fine, but the salmon was just slightly too fishy. Sushi grade fish should actually not taste fishy — on the contrary, it should taste clean and mild. I also noticed a similar flavor the last time I took out food prior to this visit. My fear is that they are not getting the level of traffic needed for their current level of supplies — the sushi bar is filled to the brim with various raw fish, but you kind of have to wonder how long it’s been sitting there when there’s only a table or two in the restaurant at peak lunch time on a Friday. Additionally, it took a really long time to get our check — even after asking for it and having to go up to the cash register.
The service and atmosphere needs serious work (can we at least get rid of the Biebz?), and I feel increasingly iffy about the quality of ingredients. I’m sad to say that I probably will not be coming back here.

I had ordered delivery through Foodler. When I got my order, the Miso Ramen had a spoiled egg in it that ruined the whole dish and the rest of my order smelled funky.
I was told to check this place out, but I was extremely disappointed and disgusted.

Just an absolute terrible sushi Restauraunt. The service was not even there, we were given slips of paper to fill out what we wanted, and I had to walk over and hand then to the server. Also all the food we ordered did not arrive and was dissatisfied with it. Do not get sushi in this town, Choose another food choice

I visited Anaya with a coworker on my last trip up to the office. He was in the mood for sushi and had visited here before and I was excited to try someplace new. Stepping into the restaurant I had high hopes. I hadn’t been to the spot since it was a Thai restaurant and they’ve done a great job redecorating. The fireplace was a really nice touch on a cold winter day and the restaurant was bright and inviting. Between the gold glitter canvas art and chalkboard quote art around the room and the Yale themed sushi rolls, it’s clearly a restaurant geared toward college girls and guys who want to take said college girls out on dates. (Totally not a dig, by the way. I quite like gold glitter and trying to pretend I’m still in college.)
But things started to go downhill when we wanted to order food. We had to flag down what I believe was dishwasher to find someone to take our order. Half an hour later when our food started coming out, it came in a really strange order. First my coworker’s entrée (chicken and rice) came out. This was awkward because I hadn’t ordered an entrée and was sticking with just sushi. He tried being polite and waiting for me, but five minutes later it became clear that more food wasn’t going to come for awhile. Ten minutes later, soup came out. And another ten minutes after that, we got our three sushi rolls. The food was okay, but nothing great.
Once we were finished with our meal, we were tasked with a fun game of «try to find someone to give us a check.» There was literally not a single person on the floor of the restaurant and my coworker ended up popping his head in the kitchen to get someone. And then more time passed… We won’t even get into how long it took to get someone to pick up our check once we put down our credit cards.
There’s really no reason to ever go back here. With so many great sushi restaurants in New Haven, Anaya will have to really step up their game in order to stay in business.

First time coming here, hopefully not representative of the restaurant. Took 40 minutes to get our order taken, even after asking them to come take our order. Waited an hour and a half for the food to start coming, even after reminding them we were here twice. Did not get everything I ordered. Severely understaffed establishment with two waitresses. The entire meal lasted two and a half hours and I will not be coming back. Do not come here!!! Worse restaurant experience in new haven after being here 4 years.

Ordered delivery and service was good. Food was great but I wish that the vegetarian options were a little more creative. Overall, solid!

My boyfriend and I had dinner here when it first opened up and had a good experience. As a result, we decided to go here again despite the poor reviews recently. Unfortunately, things seem to have been going downhill.
Spotty service, slow and disorganized. Incompletely cooked tempura, soggy. Udon is barely redeeming, but soup spoon was dirty. Sashimi is okay, but the saba is too sour.
It is sad to see that both the food and the service are worse than before.

Not fresh or great quality sushi. Mediocre. Reminds me of sushi from the buffet. Even the miso soup was a little off.
Water straight from the faucet if that matters to you. Doesn’t matter to me but this water in particular, has a strange taste.
Service is slooooooooooow. So slow. Slow. Slow. Slow. Lack of customer service really. sigh. It’s been 20 minutes since I finished my sushi, and no one has come to check in with me at all. It’s not even busy. Came in for AYCE ($ 20) but don’t have the patience or time to wait for another hour just to get a second order in. Waste of money.
Probably able to survive as a business with all the students in the area.
Unfortunate experience. Maybe it’s an off day. Will try again in the future.

Food: ⁴⁄₅ | Ambiance ³⁄₅ | Service ²⁄₅ | Return Likelihood: High
One-​liner: Great fish, horrendous e-​fish-​ency, but will give it another try.
Multi-​liner: I understand that Friday was their first high-​volume night but even my patience was frayed. They were simply ill prepared for the number of students and the sheer quantity of sushi that needed to be prepared and I feel bad for the servers who had to repeatedly apologize. We were there from 6:30 to 11PM and only survived because it is BYOB… we finished 3 bottles of wine and most of a 30 rack before the sushi came. Ultimately, I had one piece of salmon sashimi (which was honestly one of the creamiest and freshest pieces of salmon I’ve had at an AYCE sushi place) even though the only thing I had wanted – and waited 4 hours for – was salmon sashimi.
Food: Objectively speaking, very good. The food from the kitchen came in decent time (less than 30 minutes) and was solid. The shrimp tempura took the kitchen medal – very crispy and flavorful.
I avoided ordering any sushi with scallions so cannot speak to that (though I don’t understand why you would have scallions in sushi. it would seemingly overpower the fish) but the rest of the rolls were yummy. There weren’t as many specialty rolls as the other sushi buffets in the area but the ones we got had good fish: rice ratio. They also have multiple specialty rolls with eel, which was awesome. The few sashimi pieces we got were all cut well and sizable. They obviously have a good chef, but may need to cut down on quality if they’re to keep up with a sushi-buffet’s quantity.
Service: To say slow is an understatement. Dinner took almost 5 hours… which would be okay if our sole sustenance wasn’t the alcohol we had brought ourselves for 4 of those 5 hours. However, our servers were all very nice and ended up bringing us multiple servings of complimentary dumplings because of our hangriness (which would have better meaning to it if this wasn’t a buffet in the first place).
Ambiance: It’s quite nice. Plentiful space and a *lot* of inspirational phrases on the walls… which was probably there to remind us that we should be civilized people and not be quick to anger that our food wasn’t coming.