Gen Sushi

This was my firstime at Gen & my first review on Unilocal.i dont’t usually use Unilocal to write a review but i wanted to let more people know about this AYCE sushi place in Irvine. I was searching for a decent AYCE sushi in irvine since there are not a lot of places that do AYCE in irvine, and I found Gen sushi near my house! I went to Gen sushi on a friday lunch time. There were about 6 tables (About half the store filled with people). Friday lunch AYCE was only 19.95! And they told me dinner is 24.95! I should come here more often! The food was good compared to other AYCE sushi restaurants. Especially the sweet shrimp and salmon, which were my two favorites! The spicy tuna here is the BEST. I don’t know how they make it but they make it SO GOOD. So I ordered like 3 of the spicy tuna handroll! Also, they recently started a new AYCE appetizer called spicy tuna & chips. AHH IM IN LOVE. It’s a MUST TRY. Before I went to Gen, I was scared to try there because I read their review and there were lot of complaints about service. However, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Although they failed to get me back my AYCE paper when I was done eating with Round 1 & 2, so I had to put my hands up each time to get their attention, other services like how fast food comes out and friendly-​ness was good. I would DEFINATELY go back to eat. Oh, I forgot to mention, they have a good taste in music too.

Gen is my go to place for sushi ! 25 $ for ayce and they also sell individually for people who can’t eat as much. The quality of the fish you get for the price itself is such a good deal. I’ve came here both lunch and dinner time and whether they are busy or not the service has always been good whenever I went to eat! I will continue coming here to enjoy some sushi! I highly recommend to others as well ~

I come here pretty often because I live close by. I usually take my orders for take out because i like sitting outside. I decided to write the review today because it was the first time i dined in at this place, and had a pretty good experience. I got a plate of California rolls and gen bowl. The roll was alright, but considering the price, i think it was worth it. gen bowl is one of my favorites from their menu! I really like the sauce that they put in. I think it goes really well with the meat. The service was decent as well. The waitresses were attentive and refilled my water without having me chase them down for it. They also gave me free green tea ice cream: D i never tried their ayce menu, but as i was eating i noticed that they recently added new rolls on their ayce menu. I am definitely interested coming back anytime soon to try them out!

Went looking for an AYCE sushi place near work and ended up trying this place. Worst AYCE sushi place in my opinion…$ 25/​person for dinner. 5% off if you pay in cash during dinner…
What we got:
Edamame: just steamed edamame
Miso Soup: normal miso soup
Hole in One: deep fried spicy tuna and cream cheese. I’d skip this one…
Hong Kong Express: deep fried shrimp tempura, avocado, and cream cheese. This thing was pretty big, but not that memorable. I’d skip.
Baked Green Mussels: this one was okay. No dirt or sand when eating it. Sauce on top wasn’t overpowering either.
Fireball: deep fried spicy crab mix with smelt egg. Couldn’t even taste any of that. It just tasted like a piece of fried dough.
Sweet Shrimp, Albacore, Octopus, Surf Clam, Salmon, Special Snapper, Eel, Smelt Egg, Salmon Roe, & Halibut Nigiri: I don’t know how anyone could eat the fish here… it didn’t taste or look fresh at all. Couldn’t even swallow the sweet shrimp, special snapper (not sure why it was fried??), eel, or halibut sushi. BF ate the albacore, octopus, and surf clam and he’d usually order a 2^nd round, but not this time. Salmon and the smelt egg nigiri is my favorite and I couldn’t even order a 2^nd round either…
Gen Gen Roll: spicy crab mixed wrapped inside salmon sashimi. The Roly Poly roll at Sake 2 Me is soooo much better.
Green Tea Ice Cream: best thing on the menu!
Service: it could have been better. They were there when we were looking for them, but I was surprised by how many people were in there. Well… less than half the restaurant was full, but I’m not sure how this place is still here. Not sure if we just ordered the wrong things or if it was a bad night… Fish didn’t look or taste fresh. Never again…

I usually order pick up from this restaurant since it is a Japanese restaurant so close to my house. I really like the flavor of their gen and sukiyaki bowl which is the only reason I have been coming back. However, the past three times I have been there they have messed up on my simple order. It was either charging us for an extra gen bowl which we didn’t order, not putting any crunchy toppings on our crunch roll, or putting extra noodles that we paid extra for into our gen bowl and giving us half as less meat (when we specifically asked for the noodles on the side). We now always check our order before we leave this restaurant with our to go items because there usually is always a mess up somewhere. Seems like the communication between their employees is lacking as well because when I ask for something in the store and the employee tells another employee to get it for them, I get the wrong stuff that I asked for. My bf and I used to come here quite often, but we’ll probably be coming here less now.

The food here was not good. The salmon sushi had a weird fishy smell upon consumption. I got sick right after eating from here! Service was horrible and so slow. There were 2 tables, 1 that was basically done and another that ordered just beers and some appetizers. It was so hard to get the servers’ attention, and even the sushi chefs seemed frustrated. They rang their bells numerous times to both waitresses either to take food to tables or return the AYCE papers. The first and probably the last time coming here.

This place definitely reminds me why I don’t ever go to AYCE sushi. Don’t get me wrong, I love all you can eat spots, but AYCE sushi is just not for me. The rolls are serve into 4 pieces all cut super thick. By the time you’re on the second plate it starts to get overwhelming. Gen sushi has an extensive menu for their AYCE deal which you will for sure get a bang out of your buck! Based on my experience, most of the rolls taste so similar to each other that I started to loose my appetite. They have a «special sauce» they put on EVERY roll. It’s a thick consistency that really made it hard to swallow. Any rolls that had «tempura» labeled was basically bread crumbs tempura. There was maybe one roll I ordered that had shrimp tempura. I felt like the rolls were getting bigger and bigger!
My boyfriend and I couldn’t finish what we ordered so we were plotting a plan to discreetly diminish the sushi rolls. We had to abort mission because the sushi chefs kept looking at us from a far knowing we were up to no good! Somehow we manage to force a couple more rolls down our throats to the point where we decided that it will be ok if we got charged for the unfinished sushi. We asked for the check and surprisingly did not get charge for the remaining sushi that was on our plates. They threat us for nothing! LOL. Lesson learned. It’s not worth to force yourself to eat. Two days later… still paying for it. No more sushi for awhile. NO MORE…

Having been here recently and about a year ago, service has definitely improved, but the sushi is ok. The fish to rice ratio is excellent, but most rolls are specialty covered in sauce types. Ayce is 24.95 for dinner which seems to be about average.
Not bad if you’re hungry or have a craving, but I would recommend paying a little more not ayce and going to gohan down the street in tustin.

Sat at the table not bar. Got a pretty big variety on the unlimited menu. Everything was pretty good. The Edamame was flovorless had to add salt. Servers were courteous and food came pretty quick. Very family friendly, not too big of a spot. Nothing fancy here. Good food, good service, clean place. I would come back.

Sushi is good and the roll selection is reallyyyyy diverse.
Fave Rolls: Mango Salmon, Snow Cone, Northpark, Baked Spicy Lobster, Mango Tango.
Pros: Rolls and sushi is really good. Compared to Sake2Me, the Nigiri was of the same quality, similar rice/​fish ratio, but the main difference in nigiri is that Gen sushi has more options — I mean who else has Halibut on their AYCE? Also Sake2Me rolls are just crabmeat with stuff on the outside … not good at all. Gen Rolls have so much variety, different sauces, and different fish meats and vegetables on the inside and outside. For the price of $ 25, the dinner menu is so good.
Cons: The service fluctuates. I came in on a Wednesday night and the service was pretty good — they were attentive, refilling water, but not pushy. But on Friday, the waiters were kinda understaffed. They were running all over the place and I was kept waiting for my check. I kinda felt bad for them LOL.

The sushi is decent quality. Service is horrible. Been sitting at the bar for 15 minutes now waiting for someone to either bring me my tab or refill my drink. Sushi chef argued with me that he couldn’t turn an ayce roll into a hand roll. Thankfully another chef stepped in and said he could do it. Been here a few times. Always just ok. And now, was just offered someone else’s credit card to sign my check. Pretty bad.
Posted at first with 2 stars. Just dropped to one since its been 10 more minutes and I couldn’t get anyone’s attention. The guys next to me got charged wrong. Charged ayce for one roll. They wouldn’t refund him. And just got ignored again. Won’t be back for sure.
Oh. Good to know. Once I got my tab. The server informed me there is a 5% discount if you pay cash. Get your stuff together people. That’s just tacky.

So my old review for this place was very… salty if I must. I firmly retract my review in a sense that I was being a little unreasonable. I have since gone back to Gen Sushi and tired to make a better impression upon myself so that I may change my review. This restaurant has its moments. I do enjoy the food here, but the service is ok. Looking back at how I rated this restaurant, I feel like I rated out of malice for the negative experience that I had; however, I believe that every restaurant needs a second or even a third chance before you can trash it down, and this place partially redeemed itself. While it didn’t bring itself to a 5 star review, it definitely brought it back into my zone of restaruants.

A slight update. Much better then my previous experiences with gen but still needs a lot of improvement.
My mom and I are regulars here — we’ve been coming here for 5 years. Initially, the food was amazing then it eventually went down-​hill rapidly. This experience wasn’t bad. Let’s start off with the positives:
The food was great — unlike my last experience where the sushi was grainy and assembled with poor technique. We ordered from their combo menu. I had the number 3 combo meal — 5 pcs assorted chefs choice ngiri sushi and 2 rolls (4 pieces each roll).
For my two rolls I chose the caterpillar and aloha. You can choose any 2 from the 25 rolls available. The ngiri sushi was delicious in terms of flavor and I really enjoyed it. My one criticism would be that I felt they should have used wasabi to hold the rice and fish together because the sushi kind of fell apart if I gripped it incorrectly with the chopsticks.
The aloha roll was definitely interesting. I also enjoyed it. It was topped with this delicious tangy, citrus-​Y ponzu sauce that really the roll a sharp bite. Also, the cucumber and jalapeño elevated the roll through providing an awesome crunchy texture full of freshness. It was great.
The caterpillar roll was good too. Not mind-​blowing but it was definitely above average. It was creamy due to the avocado and the eel was buttery and didn’t have too much of a fishy flavor — which most eels on sushi do. It was also topped with a sweet-​ish teriyaki glaze sauce. Yum. I enjoyed it as well.
WHY THE 3 STARS YOU ASK?!
Service needs a lot of improvement. Firstly, the language barrier between the waiters/​waitresses is mammoth — meaning large. I usually never complain about these things but it has become a problem. Also, there is definitely some rudeness. In the middle of me ordering, I was trying to decide what roll to get and our impatient waiter kept looking around as if he had somewhere better to be and not giving us attention. He eventually left in the middle of me ordering to fill up a jug of water. Are you kidding me? I waited till he finished filling his jug so I can finish my order and tell him what roll I wanted on my combo. Totally rude.

Sushi… Good.
For AYCE, $ 25pp is worth the money. Gen is one of the very few AYCE sushi places in Irvine, at least that I’ve been to, and it holds its own.
They have lots of rolls, and if you liked baked or cooked rolls, they have plenty to choose from. When it comes to nigiri, Gen offers a respectable menu; you won’t find uni, but they do have unagi! It’s limited order, so I usually take my friend’s who stays away from it. It’s perfectly fatty and the pieces are generous in portion.
All the fish I’ve had here are great AYCE quality: salmon, yellowtail, tuna, albacore, etc. The pieces are big and the rice is not overwhelming — perfect for protein loading! I usually go for rolls that are topped with raw fish, so it’s nice to know I’m getting consistently good stuff. All rolls are STUFFED inside with either crab or spicy tuna, so it might just blindside you if you aren’t careful.
Personal favorites here:
Gen gen roll — spicy crab wrapped with salmon. No carbs, perfect ratio and size to just pop in yo mouf.
Spicy rainbow roll — its a rainbow roll, with a peppery spicy sauce, stuffed with spicy tuna. If ya like it hot, it’s not that hot, but lends a nice twist.
Salmon skin handroll — yes, it is very OILY, but there’s so much salmon skin and very little rice. It’s always the closer to my AYCE sushi game here.
Any roll with yellowtail is my kinda roll.
There’s a lot of fried appetizers here that I would suggest staying away from… They’re usually balls of carbs stuffed with cheap imitation crab and deep fried, topped with a bunch of creamy sauces. If you’re the type to indulge, gopher it. But if you’re trying to get what’s worth, stay away. However, those wings are money — so crispy and juicy, you know they’re using that good good (MSG), and I’m all about it.
I came in on Saturday evening at 745pm, with no wait. Service here is rather slow and the restaurant is small, so it’s counter-​intuitive. But they do they’re best to accommodate larger parties! On top of that, they advertise happy hour all day and discounted rolls… Not a bad place to go if you’re trying to save a few $$ with a lot of buddies.
Overall, 3.5 stars, but an extra .5 star is for being the only AYCE sushi near me that’s half decent.

Good sushi cheap price and good ratio of fish to rice the service just is very sub par even though I come here at least once a week it’s hard because they often fail to refill water and place orders
*update i saw cockroach crawling on the floor i told the staff and they didn’t do anything about it

Wish I could say I liked this place better, but it just did not impress me at all. Went in for lunch, the place was pretty much empty. I went with the AYCE lunch special. The fish was not really that fresh, and none of the specialty rolls I tried really impressed, not even classics like baked salmon. The sauces over the specialty rolls didn’t really have a good flavor. The portions of fish to rice were good on the sushi, but didn’t matter much because it wasn’t very fresh.
Surprisingly, my favorite things here were the two appetizers I ordered, the jalapeño poppers and the fried chicken wings. My friend and i went through 2 baskets of these chicken wings. The jalapeño popper came with cream cheese and crab meat inside, really good.
The service was ok. The thing that bummed me out the most about this place were that they only served the snow cone roll in the evenings, which is the roll that I read about on Unilocal that I really wanted to try.
This place has pretty decent reviews, so I may be back one evening. Hoping I just came on an off day.

Alrighty, so I came here on a Sunday night for dinner with my sister. Initial impression 4 STARS: clean, small, not too busy.
Food 3 STARS: We ordered the edmame, chicken wings, baked green mussels, and jalapeño bombs as appetizers. (Keep in mind it was our first time here so we haven’t tried anything). Edmame and chicken wings were delicious. Each was perfectly good, I could have had them all night. Green mussels were not my favorite here, they had an odd flavor to me. The jalapeño bombs were spicy which I liked but mushy in texture, and I can’t do mushy.
For our rolls, we got smoked salmon nigiri (YUMM), albacore (ehh didn’t taste fresh), mackerel (still had a good amount of skin on it and so I didn’t like that), spicy scallop roll (pretty good, but again their spicy scallop mixture on top had a mushy consistency), and dynamite roll (too much eel sauce on top but decent flavor).
Service 2.5 STARS: our waitress didn’t understand some of the questions we asked. She was nice but couldn’t answer questions we had about the fish. Only got our water filled up twice even though they were empty most of the time.
I personally don’t think we will be coming back here but it was worth the try. All the food looked great visually but the taste was not. meant for my pallete.

This place rocks! My fav sushi place ever!!! Whenever i feel like to have sushi, here is my No.1 place to go.
Pretty good deal of all u can eatsushi and every orders of food amazing! Check it out!!!

For an ayce sushi restaurant, 25 dollars seems to be an average price. Getting at least 2 rolls and a couple appetizers per person will make it worth your money! The appetizers are perfectly small sizes, so try a few different ones.
Some rolls come in 8 pieces, some 6, and some 4, so order accordingly.
The food here is average. I like that the menu has a huge variety of different rolls to accommodate different people! I didn’t enjoy the overuse of rice.
The ladies working here are very nice. There was one young lady working and another older lady as well. You really do have to flag them down if you need anything though.
Complimentary green tea ice cream at the end of your meal. Yum!

2^nd time here and I’ll say this sushi joint has REEEEAAALLY good chicken wings.
Yeah, that’s right. Chicken wings.
The sushi is pretty much what you’d expect from an AYCE place. $ 25 for dinner but it includes salad, soup, chicken/​beef teriyaki, gyoza, edamame, and some other stuff on the AYCE menu.
My first time here was so-​so, but I ordered a lot of the American style rolls (crunchy, saucy, heavy, etc.). Sushi/​Nigiri was fishy.
My second time here was bleh. Saucy rolls turned into heavily sauced and almost inedible rolls with so much seasoning that you couldn’t even identify what you were eating during or after. Nigiri was extra fishy and nauseating.
— Salmon, Halibut, Shrimp, Albacore nigiri all looked depressing and murky.
— Rainbow roll was bland but definitely better than what was the follow.
— Who’s Your Daddy (yeah I know, my fault for ordering something purely based on the ridiculousness of the name) was challenging and I needed a lot of water to rinse my mouth out after every sauce laden bite.
— Albacore Delight (or something like that) was also heavily sauced and it was impossible to clearly identify any single ingredient.
— Salad was fresh and the sesame dressing was nice.
— Miso soup was miso soup.
— Fried gyoza were very oily.
BUT…
Man on man were the chicken wings good. I ordered a large Kirin draft ($ 3.50) and enjoyed my little tender fried poultry. Crispy and light on the outside. Very juicy and tender on the inside. Seasoning was good but not so strong that you couldn’t taste the chicken-​ness of the animal.
Service was FAST, which was worrying, but no matter.
I can easily see myself coming back and ordering a beer with maybe a dozen or so wings IF friends wanted to come for sushi.
Otherwise, go to Wing Stop.
(Sushi review turned chicken wing review. Yes, I know. Please don’t flag. I really didn’t like the sushi.)