Shawn’s Sushi

I really didn’t want to write this review, because I don’t want everyone knowing about this little hidden oasis that’s a must for me every time I’m in OKC. I’ve eaten at some really high end sushi restaurants in VEGAS, NYC, and LA, but none compare to Shawn’s Sushi. Hands down the BEST! Food is amazing, Staff is more than amazing, along with the quality and quantity of food, Oh! did I forget to mention the price… Nobody can touch this place. So, if you’re ever in or around OKC, be sure to check out this hidden gem. I won’t go anywhere else.

I visit Shawn’s at least two times a month. Hands down best sushi I have had! Highly recommend the spicy tuna hand roll. Shawn not only is the most highly skilled sushi chef I have come across but also is the friendliest and all around great guy! The staff is also unparalleled, food is underpriced in my opinion.

Excellent sushi! Excellent prices as well.

Overall not very impressed, sushi just ok and rolled very sloppy. Prices are OK, the only thing I cared for was the Red Canyon Roll.

I would like to start out by saying I’ve been here before, yet this feels like a completely different sushi place now.
The seating is better, the service is better, and it seems like the menu was better too.
I got the Spicy Cowboy and was more than impressed with it. I tried their house salad which was also impressive. Their house ginger dressing was really good. The salad was also big enough to share. My only complaint was that their edamame was less salty than I like it to be. I’m an American, after all.
I’ll definitely be back soon!

Surprisingly good sushi. We stopped in on a whim, and really enjoyed it. We’ll be back.

Got the dragon roll. 8 pieces. Miso soup leaves a little to be desired. Otherwise the sushi chef did a great job and seems nice.

What a great little sushi place! We had an assortment of sushi rolls, edamame, gyosha, and a hand roll. It was all top-​notch and inexpensive. We were treated very well by the waiter and we could see Shawn making the rolls in the background.

I knew it was too good to be true. Great location, great prices, bad sushi.
Keep in mind this was to-​go at 2pm on a Tuesday…
I ordered the chicken teriyaki rice bowl for my toddler. It was mostly onions, some peppers, very little chicken and hardly any teriyaki sauce. The chicken was so dry it was inedible. The rice was ok, but I trashed the rest.
I got 4 rolls to try for myself: California, Philadelphia, spicy yellowtail and lifesaver. This may sound strange, but the Cali roll was coated in old/​stale sesame seeds. That’s what it tasted like. The rolls all fell apart, they were large. The philly had fresh salmon, not smoked, and was just not good. The spicy yellowtail the same, I like that it had good sized pieces of fish in it, but the flavor was really lacking. The Lifesaver… I thought it was pretty strange that this was on the menu considering its popularity at Neko. There is no comparison for Neko’s lifesaver roll. They tried, but missed the mark. The tempura fried bacon tasted like toast. Toast inside sushi. It’s just not right!!!
I’ve wanted to try it for a long time. I tried it. I will not be going back. At least it was cheap so I didn’t feel too badly about throwing more than half of my order away.

Visiting from out of town I’ve been to sake house too so compares to their sushi;
Sake house is better I had the Baja California roll it was ok and I got what was called a hand rolled type of sushi, I’ll never do that again

Going middle of the road here. I ordered sushi take out one night and it was pretty good! The red canyon was comparable to the red canyon at a much more expensive restaurant in midtown. Tonight I ordered teriyaki chicken and it was nothing I expected. The sauce WASN’T teriyaki AT ALL. The place at Penn Square mall has the teriyaki chicken bowl for me! Just wish I could find it away from the mall. Sushi is a go here though.

I really, REALLY wanted some sushi today. Normally, I would just ignore my craving for raw fish, because there really aren’t that many options within a 10 minute drive from home/​work, but I was going to be in the area anyways.
Well, I spent way too long looking for the place. They are tucked away in a small strip of businesses. Neither their sign above their door nor their sign next to the road are very visible. I circled around 3 times looking for them. I started to think they went out of business because I tried their phone number and it just beeped and cancelled out the call.
The gyoza I ordered was yummy (though a tad cool); I felt rushed because they brought out my roll before I was even halfway through my appetizer.
Finally, the main reason I’m marking the rating so low is because I had to ask how old the fish was. I know what fresh fish looks like. The color was off, and there were brown spots on the fish. He showed me the slab of meat he cut from and said that every fish is different and it’s normal for it to have brown spots. That bad fish will smell bad. Nope… I’ve bought fish many times. Yes, it will start to smell, but you can also tell from color.
Honestly, I didn’t feel like fighting (I could sense I wouldn’t win), so I just ate the rainbow roll that had semi-​stiff shrimp, brown spotted tuna, brownish yellow tail, and brown spotted salmon. Another indication that the fish wasn’t fresh — it didn’t taste fresh.
I won’t be back until I see a change in their signage or hear something good from someone else.

Ugh! I’m so sad to write this because I’ve gotten take out several times and it’s been good. However, today’s was just awful! I called in my order of a rainbow roll and a spicy cowboy and was told 15 minutes. Well, it took at least an extra 10 minutes and there was one table when I walked in. The avocado in both rolls was very hard, for the first time ever the sashimi smelled and tasted like fish instead of sashimi, the spicy mayo wasn’t spicy at all, the cucumber was soft, the rice wasn’t holding together so the rolls fell apart. The worst part, he uses a crab salad mix instead of just a crab stick; it must have been old or something because it basically disintegrated in my mouth. It was so bad I couldn’t even eat it. Even the pickled ginger tasted bad for some reason. I feel so bad writing this review, but beware, there may have been a major dip in the quality. Maybe one day I’ll be able to eat there again and write a good review. But until then, it’s just a wasted $ 28 bucks! If I hadn’t been on a time limited lunch break, I would have taken it back!

First sushi I try in Oklahoma City. Here’s my take.
Service: A — asked what ingredients I liked and offered rolls that had them in it, or recommended other rolls I might like.
Food: A — everything tasted fresh.
Atmosphere: C — I thought the area could be a little bit cooler during the summer, and some music for background noise.

Pretty good sushi. The price isn’t bad. No frills. Rolls aren’t super fancy. Restaurant isn’t fancy at all. Overall pretty good for casual sushi but may be overpriced for the type of restaurant it is.

Shawn’s always has good food and fast service! Pretty good prices, too. I would definitely recommend this place to others.

I’ve been to most of the sushi joints in Oklahoma City and this place probably has the best overall value. Have I had better Japanese food with better ambience? Definitely, but I paid a lot more for it.
The atmosphere could be better, but it’s clearly a very casual sushi joint, so I am not going to hold that against them. In the past few months since my first visit, they have upgraded some of the tables to booths, which is clearly a step in the right direction.
The premium rolls are good, but so are the cheap rolls. Some of their stuff is ridiculously cheap like their huge house salad with a great ginger dressing for $ 3.50 or avocado rolls for $ 3.00. And they don’t charge extra for sides of spicy mayo/​eel sauce, which actually happens at some places.
Another humongous strength of Shawn’s is that every time I’ve been there, 100% of the sushi is made by Shawn. Consistency is HUGE as far as sushi goes and one guy making all the sushi is a pretty significant factor as far as I’m concerned.
That being said, if I were single, I’d probably take a first date to almost any other sushi place in OKC (Saii Asian Bistro or Neko probably), but for a convenient and affordable sushi fix with the girlfriend or my best buds, you can’t really beat Shawn’s.
Don’t go in expecting anything more than solid sushi at solid prices.
For what it is though, I’d probably give them ⁵⁄₅ if they added some cheap sake to the menu.

Had the teriyaki chicken lunch special, mostly celery with very little chicken and hardy any teriyaki flavor. Came with big ball of white rice on side and a 2 pot sticker. Not a big fan of celery so I must give this lunch special two thumbs down. Also order a few rolls of sushi (spicy cowboy and California rolls), yes this is not Nobu but you’re not paying Nobu prices either. The rolls were good for the price and maybe worth coming back for only. Posted pics of our lunch special.

There are a few sushi places within 5 miles of where I live, and I’ve passed Shawn’s over and over and over. Now, I’m a gal who loves her sushi, and reviewing is my jam. Sushi+something I haven’t reviewed? Yes, please.
I called in to order take-​out since the boyfriend and I were hitting multiple places to feed everyone. The young lady who answered the phone was very nice and answered any question I had with efficiency and kindness. I ordered Pink rolls (6 for $ 6.95) and seaweed salad (OF COURSE).
The inside was clean, so maybe it was an off day when a couple of others mentioned it not being so neat inside. Though, I’d have been disgruntled too if it was dirty when I went. It was quiet with only two patrons at the time.
AN ASIDE:
I think the girl of the pair was new to sushi. She was apprehensive and eating it with a fork. I kind of giggled. A fork?! Heee. Anyway.
The same woman who took my order was working the register and politely retrieved my order and gave it to me. She was very nice and smiled the whole time. It’s not always easy to smile when you’re working, especially in service, so I appreciate that simple gesture.
FOODZ:
Seaweed salad ⁵⁄₅: I haven’t had a seaweed salad I didn’t like, but it does seem like something difficult to mess up.
Pink rolls ³⁄₅: Tempura shrimp, avocado, cucumber, Japanese mayo, crab meat, and masago. It tasted fine, nothing amazing or mind BLASTING. But it was incredibly flimsy. I picked it up and it would collapse almost each time, or parts would fall out. I judge sushi heavily on integrity, and that’s not a good sign. I understand that it has quite a lot inside of it, but I’ve had similar sushi that was nice and tight.
All that being said, I can see myself coming here once in a while.

Well, Nobu it ain’t. We almost didn’t even stay: it was lit up like a Subway and every available table needed to be bussed or cleaned. A TV blared a kids’ Christmas special, while one waitress and two sushi/​kitchen people toiled away. But the Now Hiring sign in the window and glowing reviews coaxed us to cut a little slack and sit down. Shawn may wish we had kept looking.
This is the kind of place I want to go all Gordon Ramsay on, or the Julie P version of GR. Here’s the deal: the food is good. The Captain Crunch roll was as good as any we’ve had in the city, and the mermaid roll and the tempura roll were also very good. The miso was clearly made in house same day and was wonderful. But that’s where the praise stops. Maybe if you just got take out, that’s all you’d need to know. But atmosphere is important to me. Our dishes were spotted, or worse, caked with dried miso. The bottom of my miso saucer was visibly dirty. The service stressed us out because we felt her stress. Dirty tables all around us, bright lights, loud TVs, and receipt paper from the day’s take spilling down onto the floor.
I don’t even mind the strip mall locale. One of my favorite sushi places in LA was in a strip mall in Studio City. But once you’re inside a sushi place, you need to feel good about it. Because sushi at a strip mall in Oklahoma sounds oxy-​moronic enough, you need to instill some confidence in the cleanliness and freshness of the food. Let’s go top to bottom on this deal, from someone who started her restaurant life at a small sushi bar in Norman Oklahoma. You can either go luxurious (Neko), which is often cost-​prohibitive, or spartan (Tokyo ala Ozu), but you can’t go Subway on a sushi store.
Here’s my unsolicited advice to Shawn, who makes excellent sushi but needs an image overhaul. I don’t mean this to be condescending. I know it’s hard to open a restaurant. I know it’s hard to find time and money. But this is worth the extra effort because the food is good and it fills a sushi sized void in this part of OKC. So here goes:
–Get rid of the fluorescent lights. You’ve hung some cool pendant lights, can you make that work for dining room lighting?
–Hang some drapes to drown on the din of Northwest Expressway and parking lot lights. Some could be light and noise blockers and some decorative.
–Get some new plates. We ate our sushi off saucers. The molded plastic ones are perfectly fine, but a sushi place needs like a 25 rectangle plates per four top.
–Kill your TV and lose the boom box. A small stereo would look better and could play some quiet music. Even a good ipod doc would be better than this.
–The bathroom was gross. No toilet paper, a dirty sink, etc. Does not instill confidence.
–Set up a protocol for each table. The waitress seemed so stressed. Probably because at every turn we were asking for something. Can we have napkins? Can we have plates? Can we have soy sauce? That’s stressful, but also unnecessary. If the tables had been properly bussed and set back up, they would have plates, soy dishes, a napkin with chopsticks and both kinds of soy. That way, if someone needed to ask for a fork or a straw, the server wouldn’t be so frustrated.
That’s just round one. Round two, I’d encourage black cloth napkins with chopsticks inside, little bonsai trees, real tea pitchers with real green tea instead of tea bags. Linen service for the cloth napkins would solve the clean apron problem.
I say this with love. We loved the sushi. I want this to do well. I don’t think any of this is much more than cosmetic, but I think it would add so much if customers were able to really get comfortable and relax.