Restaurant Review: Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya

Details: Located at 187 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002. Official site is http://www.blueribbonrestaurants.com/restaurants/blue-ribbon-sushi-izakaya/

Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya is a Japanese restaurant on Orchard St., near Houston. We came here for dinner.

The space is immense. I think it’s the entire second floor of a hotel, but I could be wrong. It’s a great space and there are many tables in two main rooms. There are also those stools set along those long tables (as shown in the picture above), but I don’t think they’re as comfortable as the booths.

The staff was friendly and very helpful.

Music wasn’t too loud.

The food was really good. We ordered the Sea Scallops with Miso butter (two scallops on a skewer, the Uni sushi (comes with two pieces), the Sushi Deluxe, the Sauteed Bok Choi (Chinese broccoli), the Oxtail and Bone Marrow fried rice, the skirt steak (Tsukiji style), and the Squid, Squid Ink and Uni fried rice.

The sea scallops were amazing. I could have eaten twenty of those. The uni sushi was great quality. The sushi deluxe was the same predictable sushi deluxe you’d get anywhere else. The Chinese broccoli was too salty. The steak was good and came with some delicious mushrooms.

The Oxtail fried rice… man the oxtail fried rice was good. That was by far the best thing we had that night. It was buttery and fatty and so good that it was probably terrible for your health. The squid ink fried rice was okay. It had a surprisingly large amount of squid in it and came topped with uni. Can’t complain about more uni.

Overall, dinner came out to around $150, including tax and tip. The sea scallops on a skewer came out to around $6 per scallop. Keep in mind you can order half orders of many things, so you can try out more things on the menu without ordering gorilla sized portions for each.

Score: 7.5/10 There are a few really tasty, unique things on this menu and the quality of sushi was pretty good. Space was comfortable. Worth a visit, especially for a half-sized order of the oxtail and bone marrow fried rice.