Oji Sushi & Sake Bar
In Costa Mesa, a nice spot for all-you-can-eat sushi and Japanese-style kitchen items
From two affordable Eat’s Sushi locations to conveyor sushi den Kaisen and Japanese-Sinaloan fusion spot Sushi el Sinalonense, Costa Mesa has plenty of a la carte sushi options inside and just beyond city limits. Since mid-2021, the dining and entertainment center Triangle Square has been home to a somewhat less common option – all-you-can-eat sushi and Japanese kitchen dishes at Oji Sushi & Sake Bar. Larger and more modern inside than most nearby sushi restaurants, Oji’s neon lights, posters, and wall-mounted TVs underscore its second identity as a sake bar: Unlike most sushi places, Oji offers a $19 all-you-can-drink sake and beer supplement for its AYCE meals, as well as buy-one-get-one beer, sake, and soju specials.
While the Costa Mesa restaurant’s menu is available a la carte – not the case at Oji’s original location in LA County – the prices are structured to make AYCE the more logical choice for most people. Guests can choose from two AYCE levels (“regular,” $30/lunch, $39/dinner; or “premium,” $37/lunch, $46/dinner) with discounted non-premium options for kids aged 10 or younger. Each level includes your choice of around 25 kitchen-prepped “share” dishes, nine salads, and five carpaccio-style sashimis, 22 single-piece nigiri, 14 classic rolls available in hand or cut roll form, and 27 six- to eight-piece “signature” cut rolls. Premium adds 10 additional nigiri and three hot kitchen dishes – soft shell crab, salmon collar (kama), and yellowtail collar (kama) – that collectively struck us as worth the $7 premium.
But if you’re okay skipping toro-class cuts and a few uncommon fish, the regular menu offers good value for the price: 120 minutes of AYCE access to the sushi bar and kitchen, spread across three to five ordering rounds. Oji wasn’t busy when we visited, but service was quick and attentive during our visit, so we’d anticipate that hungry people will have no issue filling up across multiple rounds here.
Most of the sushi items we ordered at Oji were really good – salmon, yellowtail, and bluefin tuna toro were tender, fresh, and nicely garnished; a lemon wedge added citrus tang to the scored salmon, while yuzu kosho gave yellowtail and tuna light doses of salty-sour flavor. Premium king scallop, halibut, black snapper, and sweet shrimp (amaebi) pieces were each spot-on, with uni and salmon roe pieces each at prime flavor and temperature. Oji’s truffled salmon was especially complex, pairing a dollop of black truffle with a lightly seared piece of tender fish, combining mushroom umami, a little maillard char, and salinity together for maximum impact.
On the other hand, some of the items we ordered didn’t live up to their menu photos. Our first two rolls were a spicy albacore hand roll that wasn’t particularly spicy, and a six-piece cut spider roll that had barely any soft shell crab inside and scant smelt eggs outside, unlike Oji’s official imagery. Both tasted fine, but weren’t exactly as expected. Similarly, carpaccios of albacore and seared tuna arrived on a single plate with four thin, mostly underwhelming pieces of fish, and a soft shell crab kitchen item consisted of skinny, heavily deep-fried battered legs that weren’t recognizably soft shell in flavor or texture. Agedashi tofu, however, was as promised and pretty good: two reasonably sized pieces of golden-battered tofu soaked in soy sauce and topped with bonito flakes.
A few other items ranged from impressive to acceptable. The last roll we ordered, “hot night,” combined spicy scallops, spicy tuna, cucumber, and rice with a surprisingly large quantity of crispy onions across eight fully enjoyable pieces – certainly the best of the rolls we tried in texture, flavors, and presentation. Yellowtail collar was out of stock, so we instead tried and enjoyed the salmon collar, served as two nice-sized pieces of grilled fish atop a small salad, with a lemon slice and soy sauce as optional flavors. Black pork sausage, named to imply Japanese origins, arrived as two hot dog-sized, grilled links that were entirely tasty regardless of whether they were actually from kurobuta pigs.
We didn’t feel the need to over-order when we visited Oji, as the price points struck us as reasonable for a quality lunch, and we enjoyed most of what we tried on our first visit. Simply ordering everything from the premium nigiri menu provides a variety and quality similar to entry-level omakase at Orange’s Kaigen or the sushi combination at Tustin’s Usuki, but with flexibility to order anything else you’d like thereafter. Compared with other AYCE places, Oji’s a winner on value compared with central Orange County alternatives such as AYCE Sushi SCM and Sushi Damu, and on par with places such as Botan Sushi, Sake 2 Me, and Tomikawa. Our plan is to return for more in the future, and update this article with additional details and photos.
Stats
Price: $$
Service: Table
Open Since: 2019 (LA), 2021 (OC)
Address
1870 Harbor Blvd. Suite 100
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
949.515.7400
Instagram: @ojisushisake