Banzai Sushi (Greenhaven)

food: 4.5/5
experience: 5/5
overall: 5/5

Fresh sushi in an unexpected location: a strip mall, next to Grocery Outlet. It's in the area so it was on my list. Takumi downtown is their sister restaurant.

A tiny joint, but cute, and their selection of rolls is great. I've been here several times. Yes, mostly to try their sushi. The rolls I have tried are as follows.


The Cherry Blossom. A simple roll containing salmon and avo, topped with tuna and "special sauces." Nothing exciting, and not my favorite.


The Creamy Tataki. Like a California roll but with cream cheese as well. Topped with tuna and more "special sauce". Creamy, cheesy, and very American.


The Extreme. Spicy tuna topped with many types of fish and even more special sauce. Very complex. Extreme-ly good.


The Fire In The Hole. This will satisfy the spice lovers. Spicy sauce plus jalapeños. Be prepared. Actually wasn't too fond of this one, the spice was overpowering.


The Hawaiian Poki. Spicy tuna/cuke inside, seaweed and sauce on the outside. Another simple roll. Eh, s'whatever.


The Kaiju Madness. A very fish-focused roll with, you guessed it, special sauce. Simple but fulfilling.


The Rainbow. For those of you unfamiliar, the Rainbow Roll is always a roll with a variety of types of fish (hence, rainbow). Another filling roll. With that special sauce, special sauce!


The Lion King. A cooked roll with a California-roll interior and salmon and special sauce outside. Wonderful combo of flavors, plus the fact that it's cooked, made this one of my favorites.

Aside from the rolls, I've tried the sashimi which is actually keto-friendly. (I like to lie to myself that I'm following a keto diet.)


It's your standard four fish: white tuna, red tuna, hamachi, salmon. Fifteen pieces total for $23. It's fine, whatever. Fresh I guess. Nothing spectacular flavor-wise. I've had amazing sashimi and this isn't it.

BBQ albacore tuna always looks hella good but theirs has soy in it :( so none for me. I did try their lunch though. About thirteen bucks for a bento box with two items (11:30am to 3:30pm). Pretty good.


This is the chicken katsu (also known as fried chicken) and a custom chicken shioyaki because I can't have teriyaki sauce. Chicken shioyaki is just grilled salted chicken. The katsu is the obvious star player here. I don't like that their salad is cabbage though. Yuck yuck yuck.

Sit at the sushi bar to watch them work. That goes for any sushi joint, really, but here it's not noisy (unlike Mikuni). This place definitely beats the sushi place that used to be in the Bel Air shopping center. But we don't talk about that place.

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