Umi Sushi And Seafood Buffet

They Recently changed their name to Asian Bistro They Have a Large Buffet, they are nice people and their Service is good. But their food is just Average. They should improve their food quality.

Unfortunately, another crappy Chinese buffet in the area to avoid!
After years of this location sitting vacant, a new buffet opened with much promise; unfortunately it went from bad to worse very quickly. Originally opening almost a year ago as «Umi», featuring Asian /​Japanese fusion. The food was reasonably fresh and offered different selections not found it your typical buffet. But then they hit a bump in road and closed again for couple more months, reopening again as «Lucky Star», rebranding itself as another typical Chinese buffet!
What makes the Lucky Star buffet horrible is the questionable ingredients and freshness. The food in most trays appear to be prepared several hours to a day or two ago. Everything is incredibly salty and greasy. The look of raw ingredients at their Mongolian /​hibachi grill literally turned my stomach. The buffet section normally for desserts now houses boxes of random, outdated electronic parts for customers to take home, if they wish.
The highlight of my lunch the other day was the pair of replacement foam covers I got for an old pair of headphones I had in my desk drawer!

The first time I came to see me I was very surprised with how good it was the sushi selection was pretty good and included the nigiri and rolls. However, now they have decreased the quantity and quality of the sushi and no longer have nigiri and instead the rolls consist of vegetables and spicy tuna which is more filler than tuna there were not even to tuna or salmon rolls. The sushi chef was very slow at refilling so there was not a lot of sushi eat.

This place closed and was replaced by Lucky Star Sushi. But I agree with the others. for a sushi bar, they were pretty much out of sushi the whole time, but the food otherwise was better than I’ve seen at other Chinese buffets, especially the desserts.

Worst selection I have ever seen for a Chinese buffet. The food was awful and there was only about three different types of sushi to pick from. My boyfriend and I went for lunch and we are never going back. I never usually make a review for places but this was such a terrible experience.

11÷30÷15 — this is no longer Umi Sushi and Seafood Buffet. It is now renamed to an Asian Bistro.
Skip it.
That’s the short version for those thinking about wasting money here.
The extra star is for the service, my server was super friendly and always kept my glass filled and took away empty plates (from my dining companion, I could only get one plate down)
Umi is trying to bank on the success of IchiUmi and places like Minado.
They really miss the mark.
While they have some of the same dishes, the quality is not up to par in the least.
As others have noted, the food seems to have been sitting around for ages.
The sushi is not good quality. The tuna… I have never seen nigiri tuna like this before. Not beautifully ruby colored, laying comfortably over its bed of rice. It was literally stiff and sitting planked out on the rice mound. I was scared to eat it, but I did. (didn’t get sick thankfully) The «hot» food was not hot at all, warm at best and oily.
I say charge more, get quality ingredients, and it might be a hit then.
Until then, I’ll save my money.

Wanted to have something to fill my guts, but there’s nothing in the area and I didn’t feel like driving too far. So I decided to give this place another try.
Sadly it’s still not good enough for me. But I’m giving it an extra star than my previous review because the sushi guy was nice enough to cut me some fresh sashimi salmon and put it directly on my plate. Other than that, there’s really nothing special about this place.

This used to be a Taiwanese-​style buffet, and to be honest, I think this new Japanese-​style one is a huge loss. I came here as part of a large group for dinner on the weekend, and I wasn’t very impressed by the buffet. However, it is a really nice place to eat, a very nice space.
My main complaint about the buffet is the selection – there are very few vegetable dishes, and a lot of what remains is fried. The only vegetables I saw were the bell peppers (pepper steak), three or four salads, and a dish of really dry, tough string beans. Yuck. Oh, and tempura. Which was pretty good, but I was really hoping for some sweet potatoes in there. I found broccoli, carrot, and some kind of squash.
There was a large selection of sushi; what I tried was so-​so. There was also a lot of seafood, most of which was better than other buffets. For example, the salmon was so tender and really delicious. There were other kinds of fish, crab legs, crayfish, oysters, etc. There were also some soups. The miso wasn’t bad and wasn’t too salty. The buffet also has udon noodles.
For dessert, my favorites were some kind of fried red bean dessert and green tea ice cream (soft serve). The ice cream just tastes sweet at first, anf the tea flavor comes through later (though no one else I talked to seemed to taste it). The fried red bean had a really flaky, delicious outer skin.
This buffet isn’t bad, especially if you come for sushi and seafood. But if you’re like me and need your veggies at each meal, this isn’t the best buffet to visit.

Not much to say about this hybrid fusion sushi Chinese BBQ soft serve ice cream Japanese white rice big house buffet, other than it was not very good at lunch last week.
There are several other sushi houses in the area better than Umi.
No reason to go back.

Mediocre sushi at lunch No sashimi
Tempura undercooked
Not very busy on Saturday
Large Asian clientele something I do not eat must be good
Deserts are good

Updated but downgraded my review based on inconsistencies in the food quality of the sushi, sometimes the rice is hard (this is a sign of using leftovers from previous day).

From the outside, this buffet tries to look like IchiUmi in Edison. Don’t be fooled.
Buffet is $ 11.99, which seems like a deal, until you eat the food. The selection is poor. I’m here for lunch at 12 noon and the food already looks like it’s been sitting around for awhile. Food that should have been hot was less than lukewarm. The sushi was absolutely horrible. Not fresh, unappetizing except for when I was lucky enough to catch a new batch of salmon nigiri being plated.
The interior is nice, but that’s about it. Save your 12 bucks and go somewhere else.

I heard from my parents that this place opened recently and we came here for lunch on a weekend visit to see my folks. The nigiri sushi is pretty good and fish is fresh. They have a good selection of sushi. Though mostly the kind I personally don’t like that much. Lots of rolls with creamy sweet mayo sauce applied. The cooked food is mediocre. Overly oily and salty. That said, I still ate a ton of it since I go bokners at buffets. Dessert is a selection of cakes, cookies, fruit, and soft serve ice cream.

Its very rare to find any sushi restaurant in this area so this place is exceptional.
$ 11.99 for a weekday buffet is not bad. Check my pictures posted.
During the day they had salmon sushi and tuna. None of the sashimi. They could only be brought out during dinner.
Place seems newer and clean. I would come back.
I hope they offer discounts for returning customers.
Btw they have green tea and vanilla soft ice cream.

Stay away! Stay away! Stay away! If you are hungry, you are better off going to McDonalds (next door) or Applebee’s (across the street) than this place. You would even be better off going to the RiteAid Drugstore (in the same shopping center) and getting a large Hershey bar and a can of Arizona ice tea. On Sunday, lunch closes at 3 pm and at 2:59 they promptly take everything off the buffet. BTW they do not post the prices. They *do* have a little sign by the entrance listing their hours. But who looks at that? So I went there at 2:45 pm and I had a few pieces of sushi (selection and food quality were nothing to write home about). Then, the waiter comes over and says, in very broken English, we’re closed, and gives me a bill for $ 26. I asked to see the manager. Turns out, no one there speaks English enough to discuss my problem.
Like I said, Stay away!

If the price is not this high, I would give a higher rating. Simply put, it’s not worth it. For the same price， you can find many places that offer more variety and quality. I find it’s hard to believe that they are charging more than twice as much as Hibachi while the food is not noticeably better.

One of the worst Chinese buffets i have been to in a long time. Sign says Japanese buffet but theres nothing Japanese about it at all. Food was old and extremely salty. You can tell the ‘sushi’ wasnt fresh at all. The tuna was turning into beef jerky over the rice. Very misleading 11.99 sign on the front door. (Meant for lunch specials mon-​fri). Great place for the average American that doesnt know a thing about Asian cuisine. This place makes Chinese food look bad.
Oh and the food went right through me. Had the runs all night. So if you enjoy bad food and have your ass turn into a broken expresso machine, this is the place for you.

I had heard that this place was pretty good, and was excited to give it a try. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. Sorry Umi, it’s not me, it’s you…
We got there at about 2:15 on a Sunday for lunch, were seated promptly and as our drink orders were being taken, the servers swapped out, so we had to give our drink orders to 2 different servers right after another because the first one simply stopped listening and walked away when the second guy (who clearly didn’t want to be there) showed up.
Food was only OK. Selection was decent, but the quality wasn’t there. Everything LOOKED good, but when you actually tasted it, it was only average. The sushi had an old, dried out consistency to it, like it had been sitting there for a l-​o-​n-​g time.
Be aware that their lunch service closes at 3pm on weekends, and they do not let you know this when you arrive, even if it’s getting close to closing. The staff gets very pushy and begins to rush you when it gets close to 3:00. We had servers trying to take plates away that we were still eating off of, a drink WAS taken before we were done, and they start to really try to push you out the door.
The nail in the coffin for this place, as far as I was concerned, was when they were cleaning up the sushi bar. I watched one of the sushi «chefs» reach over the bar and pick all of the shrimp off the sushi that had been out on the bar, open the cooler where the «fresh» fish is kept for preparation, and toss it all back in. I was not mistaken, he was not throwing it away, it was very clear that he was putting it back in to be used later. Disgusting.
Grossly overpriced as well. lunch for 3 was over $ 50. At a buffet of this quality, that’s way too much.
Sorry Umi, we won’t be back.

The first time my boyfriend and I went to Umi, it was fantastic. They had a wonderful selection of asian dishes (no american french fries or Mac and cheese like other asian buffets) and the sushi tasted very fresh. They had a nice variety of rolls and a great selection of fish like surf clam. There crab were great too. We went on a Friday around 8pm, although the restaurant wasn’t full most everything was still pretty fresh.
After that great experience, we went back to Umi on a Tuesday night around 8pm and it was a completely different experience. Although the resident had about the same number of customers as the last time we were there, the sushi was not fresh. The first piece of salmon sashimi I bit into had a nice crust on it, and that translated to the rest of the sushi I ate. Our water and tea cups were not refilled the whole time we dined there.
I am disappointed that we did not enjoy our experience as much as the first time we dined there. I hope that Umi can turn it around and make their weeknight dining experience as enjoyable as there weekend experience. At this point I would not go back as I am concerned about the health implications of consuming raw fish that has been sitting out for an unknown amount of time.

EDIT: I received a little ad from them that shows drastically reduced prices: $ 7.95 to $ 8.95 per person for lunch (more expensive on weekends), and $ 11.95 per person for dinner. Two persons per party minimum for these prices to apply. While I’m not really interested in returning because of the quality of the food, these prices are far more appropriate for a buffet and are competitive for the area. If you thought the food was alright but were put off by the price, Umi might be worth another shot.
END OF EDIT
I was excited about this place when I first heard about them, and when I saw them packed on Valentine’s Day I thought it must be good. It seems, though, that I gave Hamiltonians too much credit. These people will eat anything.
It’s a shame because I really want to like this place. I like the idea of a quality sushi buffet, but this place is lacking the quality it seems to promise. There is a sparse selection of sushi, and you can’t order a particular variety you would have wanted, something you can typically do at other buffets. Supposedly the assortment changes every day, perhaps to encourage repeat customers, but the lukewarm, flavorless fish isn’t winning me over. The best rolls are the makizushi slathered in enough sriracha to overpower any other flavor.
The selection of hot dishes is saddening as well. A lot of it is Chinese, and not even good Chinese. Lo mein, rather than yakisoba, fried rice but no white rice. The spiced Chilean sea bass was alright if overwhelmingly fatty and the gyoza warranted return trips. I was looking forward to a crêpe for dessert but what was handed to me felt like an insult to my intelligence. I know what a crêpe is, and a crêpe is not chalky, dry dough with old brown bananas sliced into oversize chunks and dowsed in store brand chocolate syrup. The other desserts were an assortment of soggy, unappealing fruit and hard, dried out cakes.
The woman handling our payment had incredible difficulty understanding that the receipt printer was out of paper, and insisted it was something wrong with my card, even after we tried to explain. We went through multiple cards before she figured it out and we were finally free to leave.
Now I will say this place is fairly new, so maybe they still need to get things in order, this is why I didn’t give the one star. The Chinese dishes are supposedly going to be replaced with Japanese dishes, and hopefully with that the general quality of the food will increase over time. On the other hand, the current prices (about $ 30 per person unless you go for lunch) are really overpriced for a buffet, and these prices are listed as «introductory», meaning they intend to raise the prices! Maybe if they start putting gold leaf in their sushi like Peony Pavillion in Princeton, but I know not to give Hamilton too much credit again.
Unfortunately I can’t really recommend a better buffet in the area. They’re all bad, and China Grill Buffet was shut down for repeated health violations. Buffets are always a crapshoot and appeal to people who prefer quantity over quality. The thing is, sushi is typically something you eat for the quality. You are treating yourself with a delicacy and Umi seems to miss the point. If they can get their sushi on par with a place like Best Choice (which isn’t asking much; Best Choice is good, but they are still takeout), then maybe I could recommend this place, but only if they keep their prices down.