It’s not going to be the best sushi you ever ate, though it may be the cheapest. I don’t know whether it’s the low prices or the gimmick that draws them, but early in the new year there was no shortage of customers at Kura Revolving Sushi Bar; a plurality were Asian or Asian American.
The revolving bar is the opposite of an omakase experience (literally “I leave it up to you”), where the chef, who’s right in front of you, decides what to serve course after course and, if you’re lucky, shares his insights with you as he hand-prepares each piece. The idea of no-frills, mass production sushi that glides past diners on a conveyor belt was invented by Yoshiaki Shiraishi in 1958 in Osaka. He cut down on servers and slashed prices, and by the year 2000 Japan could claim more than 2,400 mobile-sushi restaurants.
The Troy place (and there’s a second Kura in Novi) is part of a national U.S. chain that’s a subsidiary of a larger Japanese company. Broth, vinegar, and preservative-free wasabi are all sourced from Japan.
First-time Kura customers are initiated by the staff: as the belt winds through the restaurant, you’re seated at a regular booth, where you can see through the belt to fellow diners on the other side. A human asks if you want wasabi and ginger, and if so, a robot brings them, while playing an electronic tune.
If you’re hungry, you can grab the first sushi (or nigiri) that toddles by. Each pair of pieces sits on a green and white plate inside a moving plastic clamshell-type box — be quick! There’s a technique to opening the box with one hand. A sign is next to each dish to tell you what it is, though many clamshells are empty, as the kitchen staff labors to keep up with demand.
Shiraishi’s speed was 3.15 inches per second, which, he found, was slow enough to keep the plates from flying off the belt and the fish from drying out in the wind. At Kura, the lower or main belt’s speed is 3.54 inches per second. Perhaps the speed helps keep turnover brisk.
When you’ve eaten each serving, drop the plate into a table-side slot; they’ll be counted in the back and multiplied by $3.55 for your bill.
If you want your dish to spend less time wending through the restaurant, you can also order through a table-side touch-screen. The kitchen will send the result directly to you through the express belt. We used the touch screen for sushi on our second visit and found the quality somewhat higher, though that could have been due to different days of the week as well.
On our first visit, all the dishes tended to blur together into one flavor, whether it was salmon or tuna, scallop or shrimp, sushi or nigiri. It’s a decent, familiar, sushi flavor but not as fresh as you might hope. Hokkaido scallops, for example, were soft and not noticeably scallopy. I did like an egg yolk that was incorporated into salmon yukhoe along with ginger, green onion, sesame and barbecue sauce. A shrimp avocado roll was dotted with bits of sharp mayo. Crowd-pleasing avocado appears in many, many dishes. There’s also a missable “umami oil seared beef.”
On our second visit we fared better with a spicy tuna crunchy hand roll — a cone of sesame-flecked soy paper filled with tuna and avocado and various crunchy sprinkles. A nigiri of spicy garlic popcorn shrimp delivered plenty of fried crust goodness topped with lots of spicy garlic chips. A caterpillar roll offered more avocado, eel, and eel sauce, plus cucumber for a refreshing contrast. A “real crab” roll was too wet.
Ordering from the soup menu met with fair results, with both soups heavy on the scallions. Prices were a bit high for relatively small servings, at least compared to the bargain sushi. I always love udon, and these fat noodles were eminently slurpable, but the tempura on the shrimp soon lost any crispness in the tangy broth. A tonkotsu ramen soup was not bad and included a cold hard-boiled egg.
A second attempt at ordering from the menu, ten jyu, produced tempura of shrimp, shishito peppers, and unrecognizable chicken in a box, over rice. I wouldn’t order it a second time.
Kura serves both Japanese beer and sake.
There are no reservations; instead you sign up for a waitlist on its app, and are notified how long the wait will be. It doesn’t always function perfectly: I was told the wait would be 135 minutes (which fit my schedule fine) but then received a text saying I needed to show my face immediately or lose my turn — with still an hour to go. No harm done — the friendly server seated me when I got there, though there were others in the waiting area. He had no explanation or advice.
Time Out Tokyo writes, about a revolving belt restaurant there, “The flavours aren’t quite as dazzling as the futuristic presentation, but when you’re paying a rock-bottom ¥110 for each item on the menu, it’s hard to complain.” Makes sense.
Location Details
Location Details
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