Moshi Moshi

I just found out– from Unilocal– that Moshi Moshi is now closed. I’m going to need a minute.
~Deep breath (and possibly a sniffle)~
Okay. This is (was) my favorite affordable sushi spot in the city. For dinners with friends, Moshi Moshi was always our first and only choice if we wanted sushi. I have many good memories of meals at this restaurant. Things I loved about Moshi Moshi:
1. Very very friendly staff.
2. Really reasonable pricing.
3. Fresh, fresh, delicious sushi.
4. Japanese-​style floor seating. You can take off your shoes. (A restaurant that encourages you to take off your shoes!)
I am deeply saddened to know that Moshi Moshi is no more. It lives on fondly in my memories.

One of the only sushi joints in Philly I have been to and, mainly, because we’ve been there before and know it’s good.
I love Moshi Moshi, it’s a very small restaurant but I think it’s a hidden gem. The food is really good and the servers are attentive. Along with that, it is affordable.
Aside from having good food, nice atmosphere and attentive servers, nothing really spectacular comes to mind about this place and the tea has an odd taste to it, which is what keeps it at a 4. I definitely would recommend this place, but it doesn’t blow my mind.

This is not the best sushi joint in the city, but it is my favorite!
I used to come here several times a week to have dinner at the sushi bar. The waitresses and chefs had my order memorized and i always had the same thing: endamame, small salad, spider roll, sometimes a glass of plum wine. I’ve had plenty of items from the menu, but that was my favorite for a quick, inexpensive meal.
I love the traditional tables on tatami mats for a more intimate evening. Also, there is a large room upstairs that you can reserve for parties. I had a birthday there once.
All the food is tasty and the prices are super reasonable so you can have what feels like a luxurious meal at a steal of a price.

Moshi moshi is a really small japanese restaurant tucked in the rittenhouse area. There were a couple tables for sit down and some tables lined up along the wall for sitting on the floor.
We ordered crunchy spicy tuna roll, love salmon roll (similiar to a philly roll), spider roll, yellowtail with scallion (inside out roll), seaweed salad, and miso soup.
The miso soup and seaweed salad were excellent. Our crunchy spicy tuna roll wasn’t spicy. Another person at our table ordered it too and hers was also not spicy. I wasn’t too impressed with the sushi. I like my sushi cold and the sushi here was definitely a bit warm. The love salmon roll was the best out of them all but even then it was mediocre at best.
I would rate the sushi here comparable to supermarket sushi. haha and thats saying a lot.
The prices were reasonable but I’d rather pay more to get better quality sushi. The service was good at least and the location is great.

I have been trying to like this place for years and I think I just gave up. The atmosphere is really nice though, always seating available and I love the floor booths along the wall by the sushi bar. The staff is always friendly but the sushi just doesn’t hit the spot for me. Pretty mediocre.

Awesome seating! Ok sushi.
I really enjoyed slipping off my shoes and sitting on floor cushions at one of the low tables on the raised platform against one wall. The low lighting added to the relaxed, comfortable atmosphere. Something about sitting on the floor makes a meal way more enjoyable for me. I don’t know.
Service was prompt and friendly, and water glasses were always full. The sushi was on par — not bad, not great. I had the spicy scallop roll and inside-​out spicy eel roll which suspiciously had the same fish on the inside and rice on the outside as the non-​inside-​out roll.
I’d eat here again just for the traditional Japanese seating, but there are better sushi places nearby in the city.

I went here for lunch, right at 12 noon, and the service was quick. The restaurant filled up and got busy closer to 1215pm.
All of the food was great. I had miso soup, the sashimi lunch special, and green tea ice cream. The miso was fresh and flavorful. The fish was great. The green tea ice cream about what you would expect, good.
The portion sizes (and correspondingly the prices) were odd. Compared to lunch specials I have seen in New York at similar establishments, Moshi Moshi’s sashimi lunch special was slightly more expensive and much smaller portion size. The ice cream was pricier also, but a huge portion.

This is a very reasonable place to get sushi in Center City! I was shocked that I only spent $ 10 for a full lunch. I had the roll combo that had three rolls; tuna, salmon and cali with miso soup!
The rolls are not as tasty as my fav. Philly sushi place, Umai Umai, however for the price and location it’s unbeatable! Try their lunch boxes and combos for an added value!

I have not been to moshi moshi in a very long time, and I needed some quick take-​out tonight, so I stopped in and noticed a few things:
1. The menu has changed (smaller)
2. Prices went up a wee bit (but it has been over a year, I think.)
3. My favorite Toro Ginza roll is now gone– but he will still make it, if you ask.
I ordered 2 rolls, — a crunchy tuna and an albacore & avo. Both were fresh and fine. service was prompt.
The dining room was very slow on a Thursday nite. It’s still OK — just a 3 star place. Shiroi Hana is better (IMO).

3.5 stars ,
I wandered in deliriously craving sushi after attempting to try vics, and my umbrella breaking all after a 90 minute class of bikram yoga. Anyway vics was packed so I Unilocaled and found moshi moshi ‚
The food was nothing special, your average sushi good ingredients but nothing special, but the miso soup was yummy!
What makes me sure I’ll come here again is the raised area where you take your shoes off and sit in seats that are grounded. That I like not to mention the waitstaff was amazingly attentive and oh so kind.
Perhaps on my next visit I’ll try something special I did get the 10 $ roll combo lunch special so I’ll venture out and try something more intense to see if they can make some delectable sushi while I sit on the ground on those cute little seats !

Ok I think my daily sushi cravings are over for now, thanks to Moshi. I can’t really tell if the sushi was bad, or if I just wasn’t in the mood for what I ordered.
I usually wouldn’t order what I did, but something propelled me to. I got the spider roll and the shrimp tempura roll. Knowing that it is an insult in Japanese culture to leave food on your place, I ate it all. But I wish I hadn’t. I was stuffed, so full and not it a good way. It made me not want to order anything fried again for a long time.
So I don’t think that the food is bad, I just think it wasn’t what I wanted.

I was in at lunch time on Wednesday and got a lunch special. The food was tolerable, but not worth a second visit. The main dish was served as chicken teriyaki, but the chicken had not been marinated in teriyaki sauce or cooked in teriyaki sauce. It had been boiled or steamed, and then dressed in teriyaki sauce at the last moment. It was bland and uninteresting.
The salad had not been properly dried, and left behind an unpleasant little lake in my bento.
The lunch also included one fried pork dumpling, two pieces of tempura, three small pieces of California roll, and rice. The tempura fry oil was very slightly too old, but I think most people would not have noticed; I am unusually sensitive to rancid oil.
Price for the lunch box was $ 7.99 plus tax and tip. Service was good.
I also got two pieces of yellowtail sushi. This was a grave mistake. To justify obscene prices, sushi must be exquisite. My $ 6 got me two tiny pieces of inexpertly-​prepared sushi. The fish was of poor quality. Perhaps it had been frozen? And the sushi fell apart. Charging $ 6 for this dish required tremendous effrontery.
I see no reason to come back.

Walking past Moshi Moshi on the way back from work one day, I was intrigued by the happy hour sign outside. Cheap booze and sushi attracts me like a moth to a flame.
For $ 3, you can get an Asahi, Sapporo, Kirin or Kirin Light 12 oz. (An extra $ 1 gets you a 16 oz. and an extra $ 2 gets you a $ 22 oz. beer.) $ 4 gets you a glass of very-sweet-but-I’ve-had-far-too-sweet-before-so-okay plum wine. Back down at the $ 3 price point you have a choice of appetizers: vegetable tempura, agedashi tofu, edamame, gyoza or shumai. The tempura is just average but the agedashi tofu is exceptionally light and very delicious.
I also had a salmon roll and an order of inari. The salmon was better quality than I was expecting but the rice and nori left a little to be desired. The inari could have been a little more substantial, too. Overall, perfectly decent sushi. Within the immediate area, if the taste of the sushi is your sole concern in choosing a spot, you are better off at Vic’s.
FOOD BONUS: They have sukiyaki on the menu! I will certainly be returning for this in the near future. I am disappointed by the lack of a vegetarian sukiyaki option but I’m sure that can be arranged.
The interior is a bit cozy but less so than some other sushi spots (e.g. Vic and Shinju) plus they have a 2^nd floor. They keep is dark-​ish inside – it helps that almost no natural light comes in through the front windows. The staff is very attentive and they like to play American jazz.
The sum total of my experience at Moshi Moshi left be impressed. Something about it felt more authentically Japanese than most other sushi places I have been to. It might be the combination of the beer, the jazz music and the general ambiance but it kind of makes me want to come here by myself and read a Murakami novel while half-​attentively dealing with an existential crisis like a character in said novel.

It’s been a tough day people. After last night’s UYE at ZoT, I’ve been struggling with something of a hangover. Based on comments made by some of last night’s party-​goers (Meredith K, Bill M, Zanna H, Limey Sam, Michelle C, Aaron O, Lee M, Dribbler Jim, Blake F, Susan G, Rebecca E… and so many more, but this review is quickly becoming uninteresting), I’m guessing everyone’s feeling top notch today. Not so much the case over here.
In an effort to curtail my headache, I went over to Moshi Moshi for one of their lunch boxes. I ordered the chicken teriyaki and it arrived at my table within 3 minutes of me ordering it. While quickness is appreciated, I’d say they were quick to a fault. How am I supposed to feel good about eating a 3 minute chicken. The miso soup made my belly feel good and so did the sweet potato tempura. Broccoli tempura? Not so much. I’d say it was an underwhelming lunch, BUT my friend and I did share the mochi ice cream. Mmmm mochi.
Plans of getting to NYC today, canceled. Thanks guys, I blame you.

I have never had so many people say «thank you» to me in one 45-​minute period. This is probably because I was the only person in here for Friday lunch other than some official doing paperwork who wasn’t even eating. My sushi (lunch special #1, how uncreative of me) was fine, but not fantastic. The sashimi fell apart every time I touched it, no matter the angle or pressure of my chopsticks. My shrimp tempura and California rolls fared better, though the latter was very forgettable. I finished full, but not entirely satisfied. The miso soup was plentiful with the tofu chunks, which is a plus.
The staff was beyond attentive and courteous, but again I was the only customer. They post that they have a $ 15.00 credit card minimum, but said it was no problem for me since the lunch specials are all about $ 8 or $ 9. I’d go back here again if I was in a rush and wanted quick service and immediate sushi, but the atmosphere and food are really nothing to write home about.

The food here isn’t bad, but you can tell that they don’t spend any extra time on preparing it. I’ve also had fresher, it definitely is not my first choice when it comes to sushi.
The atmosphere depresses me, not sure if it’s the low-​lighted dinginess or that fact that I’m always one the few people there, but I never get a ‘happy’ feeling from the place.
I’ll go for something quick to eat but I’d much rather spend my time somewhere else.

closed

I was squeezed into a table too small for our group with Zanna. I do eat seafood and sushi regularly and this place was not up to par. The maki was not rolled tight and when I pay $ 10 for a non-​specialty roll I expect 8 pieces, not six small ones.
I would give it a higher rating if it was cheaper but it was they same price point as raw without the same quality of fish and the inviting décor. It wasn’t the worst sushi I’ve had and I am not sick this morning but those are not endorsements either.

Moshi Moshi’s relaxed atmosphere is inviting. The first floor is small, with a traditional seating area and a sushi bar, and there’s a second floor for overflow. When our friends invaded this place last night, a server valiantly tried figure out how many were in our party, but even we didn’t know the size. Overall, the staff are helpful and do their best, matching plates to customers.
Their kitchen closes at 9:30pm (at least on weeknights, when we were there), so we had to order quickly. Starting with a soothing miso soup, I went for their «spicy hit» roll ($ 7.50), which had cooked yellow tail, eel, masago, cucumber, and a «spicy sauce» which tasted only slightly tangy. The whole package wasn’t exciting, but I’ve had worse!
Stop in if you’re around and want a sushi fix. I’ll be back to try more rolls, and for a shot of sake (they’ve got liquor baby).

Domo Arigato Moshi Moshi. The spicy shrimp and spicy squid rolls i ordered were hand rolled perfection and our server was consistent and very friendly. While I’ll agree that their are better sushi spots in Philly there are also a heck of a lot worse. and as long as this spot hooks up a good variety of sushi and specials. and with the prices that you pay it’s all fairly reasonable.
What everyone said about the light levels is true. When we stepped outside we definitely had to adjust our eyes to daylight But otherwise the décor was cool and fairly authentic. and the wooden platters that some of the rolls came out on were a good touch. I’ll be back.