Kawaii Japanese Restaurant
“Their spicy salmon salad has me dreaming about it every single night!”
“Now, the AYCE menu is extremely expansive.”
“Never actually dined in, but from my experience from take out is that the staff is really friendly.”
Kawaii Japanese Restaurant
Takes Reservations: Yes
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Has TV: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Caters: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
4 reviews
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I went to this restaurant about 2-3 years ago, manly for the hot pots. Disappointingly they no longer offer that. Parking is always easy to find which is a plus. The restaurant itself if very outdated, and slightly underkept.
The AYCE is averaged priced but by far the biggest selection that I've seen which is very nice. They offer a huge variety of sushi (single piece) that I liked, although they did use a little to much rice. One of the dishes that I LOVED was the tuna salad. It was very fresh and richly made, I highly recommend it. The sushi rolls were just okay, not bad but not great. One thing I found odd was that desert wasn't on the AYCE menu. In my personal option they should lose some stuff of the menu and add desert, this is the only place I know that doesn't include ice cream on the buffet menu.
Service was great, mainly because my group and I were the only ones there.
decided to try this restaurant because i've always walked by but never went in. i used to order from omiya a few blocks away but i feel like their quality hasn't been what it used to be. ordered the 3 rolls lunch special and it came with miso soup. the miso soup is a little salty but it's still good. the rolls are good as well. my favorite sushi spot is chikurin on ave m and ocean ave, so if you like it there, you'll like it here as well.
Came in for my mama's birthday dinner on a Thursday at around 7. There was only one other table dining but it actually started to fill up later on.
The good thing about Kawaii is that they have a lot of options on their AYCE menu. There are plenty of dishes to choose from for all of you non-raw fish eaters. The bad thing about Kawaii is that they have a lot of options on their AYCE menu. There is a such thing as too many options! You'll want to order all of these non sushi options because you're starving and everything sounds delicious (keyword: SOUNDS). So my advice to you is to just stick with what you know. Kawaii is not the place to be branching out and trying new things. Because most of the dishes we ordered (that were not something we would normally order), did not end up tasting good.
Here are some of the things we tried:
Mango Kani salad – this was probably the only thing that I really liked. Although I didn't taste a lot of mango, I didn't mind. Everything was perfectly sliced into really fine shreds. They didn't overuse mayonnaise, like many other places tend to do.
Teriyaki – avoid any of the teriyaki options. It's served on top of a bed of spaghetti drowned in teriyaki sauce, so they all taste the same. So sweet that I'm not even sure if it was teriyaki sauce, or if it was just simple syrup with added food coloring.
Chicken katsu – surprisingly not bad. It wasn't too greasy or overcooked. But it definitely needed that sauce that comes with it.
Rock shrimp – pretty big portion, so make sure to just order one first! I liked the sweet/spicy mayo that was drizzled on top.
Shrimp tempura – way too greasy. All you could taste was oil. Oh and mushy mystery seafood meat.
Salmon skin salad – I hate fish skin. But my Mom wanted to try this. So I decided to try it too. The whole thing was overfried, and a lot of it was burnt. It was pretty much inedible so really, you're just eating burnt bits of tempura.
Vegetable gyoza – this was SO BAD. The vegetable filling they used was basically just old veggies they threw into a food processor.
Sushi – you would think that this would be their saving grace. But it's not. It's not that the fish is spoiled but it just doesn't taste like sushi should. It almost didn't taste like anything at all. And for the sushi pieces, it just seemed like they cut rectangular pieces of fish and threw it on top of a ball of rice. None of the rolls we tried were any good either. Let's just leave it at that.
I really wanted to like this place but with each dish I tried, my mental Yelp rating just kept getting lower and lower. But hey, maybe you'll like it! There are other non-sushi items I didn't get a chance to try, so maybe those are awesome??
We were so hungry and walked in to have dinner. We saw the sign announcing "all you can eat".
The way it works is that everyone at the table has to order it and must be done within 2 hours. They charge for leftovers.
We tried a huge variety of rolls, sashimi,salads, and appetizers.
Everything was really delicious.
Can't wait to go back.