MIZU Sushi Bar

Mizu is my go to sushi place in center city. The service is great and the rolls are delicious. Compared to Vic’s? Hands down, Mizo wins. Mizu is cleaner, service is better, and rolls are bigger and better. The prices are pretty much similar.

My official FAVORITE sushi place in Philly! We’ve been looking for that perfect little sushi spot and… drum roll please… its Mizu!!!
Ok, the last lunch specials are amazing. You can choose two rolls plus soup or salad for only $ 8.95, or 3 rolls fro $ 11.95! The miso soup is the best I’ve ever had, hands down!
My favorite roll is the chicken tempura, even over the shrimp tempura which is my usual favorite. I highly recommend the chicken and shrimp tempura and the spicy yellowtail! Amazing.
Oh, and you have to grab an order of the shrimp tempura appetizer. They roll it instead of the typical tempura flakes and coupled with the dipping sauce, it’s simply heaven!
The prices are awesome. So much so that we can afford to go here everyday (which is hard not to do!)
They staff is so sweet and the place has never been slammed when we went during lunch hours. This is the best because I hate crowds!
They have free delivery over $ 15 I believe. I highly recommend!!!
Ps, make sure to say hi to Y.J. He’s Always working and he’s the sweetest guy! Superior service at its best!

This place was a refreshing delight we found in our neighborhood! Service is top notch– very friendly and attentive! Fish was fresh and delicious! We ordered the Sunshine roll and the Downtown roll (cooked– didn’t realize when I ordered– but the flavor was perfect), both rolls hit every taste bud the right way! Had the green tea mochi– this was revelation by far the best I’ve ever had! Definitely will be going back soon!

There are so many sushi places in Philly, and the choices around Rittenhouse are plentiful. For me, it’s tough to decide based on taste alone at times.
If you’re only interested in reading about Mizu’s food, I can safely say that their Volcano roll is superbly textured as well as super flavorful. Their mochi ball ice cream dessert is the best in town. I also loved their seaweed salad.
But it’s the people who run this establishment that touched my heart.
My wife and I went into the restaurant on a random weeknight when most of the area seemed desolate and restaurants looked empty. When we walked into Mizu, I noticed an older lady talking to herself. After sitting down and placing our order, I was overcome with pity for a woman who was struggling with some mental illness — schizophrenia or dementia, maybe. Unfortunately, this woman was not kind to the employees at Mizu. Often using crass language and demanding that they accept a check as payment for her bill (one that’s sure to bounce), the staff was patient and respectful of this poor old lady who honestly had just lost her marbles.
My wife and I were truly touched by their kindness towards her. They didn’t call the cops, kick her out, or talk back. They even accepted the check knowing full well that it wasn’t likely to go through…
Anyway, we introduced ourselves to Jin (one of the chefs) and YJ (the host and server) and expressed how touched we were with the respect they gave a trying customer.
Thanks for a great meal and a great example of what empathy should look like.

Very good sushi at a great price! Super friendly staff. Boyfriend forgot his hat and our waiter came running after us with it!

I’ve been a regular at Mizu since around November 2014, when the new owners started to run the restaurant. The sushi is delicious and reasonably priced ($ 8.95 for 2 rolls + miso soup before 2 p.m.). I like the fact that they don’t put too much rice in the sushi – too much rice can overwhelm the fish or other ingredients and make the sushi too big to eat easily. The miso soup is thicker than some other miso soup I had elsewhere and actually has chunks of mushroom, which I like. I often come here alone and don’t feel awkward. The staff is so friendly… it’s almost like eating at a neighbor’s. They also have curry – red, green, and masama. I tried 2 of those and are very good. They also are thinking about introducing don-​gatsu, which is like pork wienerschnitzel, but with tempura batter, if there’s enough interest. I hope more people request it, so it’ll get on the menu. Don’t forget to BYOB. Overall, friendly atmosphere, delicious food, great value.

Really great service. Our waiter was SO nice and so attentive. Sushi was fine and well priced for lunch (your standard 2 rolls and miso soup for $ 8.95).

After trying to hit up our favorite sushi place Vic’s and finding it (as usual) packed, my boyfriend and I decided to try Mizu. Despite being fairly familiar with that part of Philly, we had never even noticed this place before so didn’t have a baseline of how it used to be like other Unilocalers.
The entire time we were there, there were only two tables including us. For a Friday night, I was pretty surprised but assumed they must do a lot of take out/​delivery business. The server was incredibly nice, knowledgeable, and checked in on how we were doing throughout the meal.
We ordered edamame, a soup, and some rolls. The edamame was good, although how can you really mess that up, and the soup was ok. The veggies in the soup seemed like they came from a frozen mix rather than freshly chopped. The rolls were just ok. Very small for the price and nothing to write home about. The spicy salmon had the spicy sauce on the top of the roll instead of incorporated into it which was a bit weird to me.
Overall, it was just a little too expensive and underwhelming. I’d rather just wait the 20 – 30 minutes for a seat at Vic’s next time.

This tiny restaurant features delicious specials and the typical $ 11/​3roll specials similar to the rest of the Rittenhouse Square sushi bars. The service is excellent and they allow byob and no additional charge. Sushi is fresh and very creatively presented. Not all of the dishes are low cal, but all of them are delicious!

Waitress was extremely nice and made sure we never had an empty tea pot. Miso soup was good, the sushi itself was excellent. Small but very accommodating. BYOB so there was no sake, but we can at least bring our own, which we will sometime soon.

They offer somewhat tolerable sushi rolls (it’s West Philadelphia, so I’ll eat what I can get), but extra charges for brown rice and hefty delivery fees won’t bring me back as a customer.

:(so sad to say it but they’re under new management and what used to be my wife and I’s favorite sushi spot is no longer on our list. Nothing tasted fresh, we haven’t been here in a while and had no idea of the change, we should have just gone to shake shack. Mizu is no longer the same :/

Mizu lost it’s mojo! I asked if they were under new management and the waitress said yes. It’s completely changed and shouldn’t even be using the name as it’s like walking into a different restaurant.
The ginger salad dressing tasted like it had too much onion. The sushi rolls were dry and lacked flavor. So it must be a new chef too.
The waitress was nice and attentive though we were the only people there.
The issue that bothered us the most was the loud commercial top 40s radio that was playing. It seemed like commercials were playing the entire time. I don’t even remember exactly what was playing at the old Mizu — probably a good thing, but it was certainly something commercial free.
Pros — the bill was cheaper but we’d rather pay more for better food.
Sorry Mizu, we will be looking for a new favorite sushi place.

Good eel sushi. Very basic ambiance. They have newspapers to read in case you are eating alone.

I don’t want to give this a low star rating because it kills me — but I have to :(
Mizu has completely changed — they were my go-​to and I rarely went anywhere else — but now I’ve found myself after 5 years of Mizu-​loyalty trying to find a new place. There just wasn’t any flavor to my last order — and all I ordered was your basic California roll: the rice was extremely sticky making it impossible to eat the rolls without tearing them apart from each other — I found myself scraping at the scraps they became with my chopsticks — and there was too much rice with too little filling. I couldn’t even finish my roll :(
The only improvement was getting rid of the rude and very odd delivery man.
This breaks my heart to write this — but I’m moving on. Please bring back the old recipes and cooking staff — I miss u Mizu!

This place just changed management, they are great!
The menu is simple but has all what we want, with some delicious specialties.
The sushi chef and the waitress are awesome, we had a really good time sitting at the bar.
Highly recommended!

It’s time to update one of my favorite sushi places in the city.
While it seems as if there’s been an influx of take-​out sushi in Philly, I still make time to go to my original favorite, Mizu. They’re not the cheapest or the most expensive, but I’d say they’re juuuuuust right.
Case-​in-​point: The other day I stopped in for some take-​out lunch. I ordered 2 rolls because my eyes are bigger than my backpack. The very nice employee who was working the register did everything he could to help me squeeze my sushi goodness into my bike bag. We rearranged things and made it work. I think most staff at other places would watch, perhaps have a laugh at a tiny gal trying to cram way too much sushi into her very small bag, but this fine fellow decided to help me out and I was able to ride home without any mishaps.
Customer service is great, sushi is great, just go here already!

If you are looking for a quaint sushi place near Penn’s campus, this is the place to go. With regards to the sushi, the cuts of fish are fresh and sit atop a nice crispy ball of rice that’s not too large. Now only if it came with ponzu sauce…
The udon was pretty large and filling, but the small miso soup was really small. It looked like what you get when you order a bento box that comes with a complimentary miso soup.

As a big sushi eater, I personally recommend try sushi at city next to ocean.
Food preservation is a huge element affects sushi’s taste. For example, Morimoto put special leaf under raw fish. They carefully reduced the transportation time to keep their fish not freeze for too long.
So it’s hard to find decent sushi place at Philadelphia. Qualitywise $ 10 and $ 23 almost taste the same.
In this case, Mizu did a good job on menu selection. Their lunch sushi or Salmon Lover combination are pretty good deal in terms of it’s price and taste.
I actually highly recommend their Veggie Bimbimbob. It’s taste very refresh and clean, it’s pretty hard to find Asain food less oil and msg near Penn.
I also need to question their Udon noodle soup. The same $ 8 Udon can have varies vegetable or meat at other restaurant. But the Udon they serve is kind of way off.

I had not been back here in years once I discovered Vic’s and other places.
A good friend really wanted to come here for lunch and we both split an order of 8 steamed frozen) gyoza (They offer chicken, pork, veggie, shrimp or beef — wow!) and we each got the $ 8.95 lunch special.
It includes miso soup (good — but tastes like a kikkoman restaurant-​mix) and your choice of 4 half-​makis (4 pieces). I got spicy yellowtail (OK), yellowtail scallion (very good), albacore cucumber (real Albacore — not Escolar — yay extra star for that), and Tempura Salmon.
Very inexpensive for lunch and quite filling due to all the rice.
The owner/​manager from years ago seemed to remember me, too — which was nice but also made me feel bad that I had not been coming for a long time.
So my faith has been restored in Mizu — and although Vic is still better quality sushi, it is much more pleasant to dine here — at a table and not elbow to elbow with the other 7 seats at Vic.
I’ll be back — and sooner than I had planned.