Hanabishi Japanese Cuisine

Great Teriyaki. Great Sushi. Great Hot Tea. Great Neighbors. Great Soup. Great Service.

I gave 3-star because the waitress is very professional and I appreciate her service. But the Chirashi bowl is probably the worst I ever had. I drove almost 40 min and hoped to have a great dinner. But it let me down.

Hanabishi Japanese restaurant is a small mom and pop Japanese eatery. The ambiance is simple, basic with curvy cut mirrors on the large side of the wall. When we visited Hanabishi, the scheduled evening servers did not show up for work. So one of the owner/chef relative filled in. She did very well for being the first time she served at Hanabishi restaurant. It got very busy from the time we arrived and ordered our food. The owner/chef was the only one preparing and cooking on the back too. TUNA SASHIMI - 2/5The tuna was definitely frozen, then defrosted. I know fresh ahi tuna since I grew up eating it all the time in Hawaii. You can see for yourself in the pic of the Tuna Sashimi that the color is lighter pink, not the deep dark red color seen in fresh ahi. In addition, the meat was soft, and too watery for my liking. But take note... red Tuna steaks that you see at the fish store or at your local Sushi restaurant are artificially colored. The fish has been pumped with carbon monoxide to turn it and keep it red. You can tell freshness by the firmness of the sashimi. Not totally by the color.DRAGON ROLL - 4.5/5The Dragon Roll was prepared and made very good. The dragon roll is an inside-out sushi, which is filled with nori sheet wrapping around the ingredients on the inside and the sushi rice is on the outside. Here, shrimp tempura and cucumber are tucked inside the nori, and thinly sliced avocado is layered on top of the roll, and when it's sliced, the artistically arranged sushi resembles the scales of a dragon. This Dragon Roll was very delicious. The only issue was the size of the Dragon Roll was smaller than other sushi restaurants that we visit. Maybe that is the trend now. Sushi rolls are getting smaller, and the price keeps increasing.CALIFORNIA ROLL - 5/5The avocado roll was very good. The avocado was perfectly ripe, buttery and tasty. I was pleased that the avocado used was not over ripe, which can spoil the taste of the sushi. I would order this again.MISOYAKI COD - 2.5/5The misoyaki sauce was excellent. But I expected the cod to be marinated in the miso before being broiled. This was not the case. Again, the cod was frozen, and thawed. You can see the water on the bottom of the foil. The cod was not broiled completely. It appeared to be maybe microwaved and briefly broiled for a light char, then topped with the misoyaki sauce. So the char on the fish is missing except for the large piece (see pic). The cod meat was a little watery.Overall, I understand that when we visited, the owner/chef was very short handed staffing wise. We'll revisit Hanabishi's again in the near future and update our review.

My family and I would frequent this restaurant very often because of the good price, quality, and service. However the last time we went we were very disappointed. The main issue was how much smaller the sushi rolls were. We had never seen such tiny sushi rolls. They used to be normal size! Plus the prices have gone up. I understand if you need to increase revenue, but do not cut back on the standard you have had previously. It does not look good to regulars. The second issue was that the food didn't seem as fresh as previous times. Hopefully IF we come back things will change.

I live close by and am kicking myself for not having come in sooner! Great ambiance, very friendly staff, and quite frankly some of the best sushi I have ever had. Look no further and go try them out!

My favorite Japanese restaurant in town! Owned by actual Japanese people who are very nice and prepare great food. It's rare in the Bay Area to find Japanese owned sushi spots so I really appreciate the gems when I find them.The inside is nice, they have a variety of sake and beer, as well as wine. I've enjoyed all of the dishes I've had from agedashi tofu, to the udon, sushi rolls, and bento meals. The miso soup comes with the rolls and is a nice addition to the meal.

I was a regular at this restaurant but I had a very bad experience today. On my tray of sushi, the egg omelette sushi was bad. It did not smell fresh and gave off a rotten egg odor. I brought it to the attention of the owner and instead of acknowledging the there was indeed an issue with the freshness of that one piece he tried to make me eat the piece of rotten egg and told me that the smell was normal to Japanese egg sushi. This was ridiculous any sane person can smell the rotten egg without even eating. I also got diarrhea after the visit when I returned home. I guess something else was also not fresh. Time to find a better place to eat.

Updating my review of Hanabishi as I have now gone once since the pandemic. My experience was wonderful. The staff are great: kind, helpful, quick. The sushi was excellent (as was the saki) and it came with complimentary miso soup and edamame. I just love this place. It has such a great "homey" vibe versus being super trendy, loud, crowded. It's just great for families. The fish was excellent and the price can't be beat. I'll be returning often.

Okay, so we have a favorite sushi spot here in town, but we love to try new things. We've heard great things about this place, so we decided to give it a try. We walked in the door and waited a solid 5 minutes before the gal server even noticed us standing there. When she realized we were there after the sushi chef told her, she told us to sit anywhere we would like. We did. But the vibes were a little bit odd, it was totally silent in this place. No music, and Fox News on the TV. There were six people total in the restaurant including us. My SO ordered Sapporo. I asked if they had a certain wine. She said she'd check. She came back and said they didn't have it, but that they did have Chardonnay. I said okay I will take one of those and water. In the meantime, we got our soup and salad, and still zero drink for me. Then we ordered the firecracker as an app. Once that came, I reminded her of my wine and water, and she brought those. We were probably there 20 minutes before even water was in front of me. We ordered our sushi, and other groups were walking in. She did the same with them, barely noticed they were there and when she did, told them to take a seat but did not bring menus or anything. We watched another two groups sit there for 20 minutes without even a menu or a hello. A guy and girl walked in and stood at the front so long without being acknowledged, that they ended up just walking out. I don't think the gal even noticed. Meanwhile my water had been empty since about 1 minute after I got it, and she never even noticed throughout our entire meal and coming to our table to bring sushi rolls. We ordered dessert because there was something that intrigued us, but asked for the check at the same time because we knew it would take forever. The sushi is good. But the service was so slow, I don't think we'd be back. It was honestly not a pleasant experience. We both felt that, knowing nothing about the sushi biz, we could've stood up from our booth and done a better job serving.

Business partner and I stopped in here on a long drive to a meeting. Wanted something on the fast side but still a sit down experience. Had good reviews (4 stars) but man, what a letdown. We ordered two appetizers and two rolls. The food was overcooked, had weird textures, rolls were very small. Everything lacked flavor. The rolls were room temperature, like they had sat around quite awhile before coming out. Service was good since it was pretty slow and there was only one server. She was very nice. Ambiance was lacking too, but I generally don't give that too much weight when eating a restaurant. However, you could see lots of kitchen things from the table we sat at, and not in a good way. Also you have to walk through the kitchen and serving area to get to the bathroom, which was odd and showed things the public shouldn't see, or should be kept up alot better. Sadly I would not go back and would strongly suggest others find a different eating location. Good luck to them!