Monster Chef

My friends have visited this place before me and had decided to pull me along for their second trip to this place. I was intrigued at the AYCE sashimi and overall sushi experience I hyped myself up to go to Monster Chef. Plenty of parking outside of the restaurant. We had a reservation and when the reservation was made, a 'preorder order' was needed to be constructed. My friend ordered ahead and when we were seated, they brought out the 'preorder order'. The rule is 3 orders per person; we had a party of 6 so we had up to 18 orders from the menu. We ordered mostly sashimi and nigiri (honestly the only things you should really order from here and the takoyaki). If you want to get some sushi rolls, you best head to a different place to satisfy your sushi roll cravings. The miso soup tasted salty and not that good -it’s a skip from me. I will let you know that there will be a pretty long wait in between each order you do. Once we waited 40 mins for our order to come to our table, we later discovered that there is only 1 person doing the sashimi and another doing rolls -totally inefficient with our time and hence the 4 Star rating. I would do 3.5 if I could, but since the fish was fresh and delicious I gave them a 4. The workers sometimes would ignore your call or just forget about what you ordered or never get back to you -definite minus in my book. It would make sense for them to have more than 1 person working to make the sashimi/nigiri since they are serving the whole entire restaurant -understand the restaurant isn't large, but still a large and time consuming task to make sashimi/nigiri for each and every table (especially if the table has a large party). There is a small scoop of ice cream at the end that’s not unlimited. This is a ‘no tip’ establishment; however, you can tip on your own discretion if you want to.

I'm not sure how people give this restaurant 5 stars rating. I was sitting here just eating edamame. It's a $40 buffet for 2 hours limit, and one round would serve more than 30 mins. This is even slower than regular restaurant. At the end, I just know the restaurant will close on August 11. YES, you should close your business. SHAME ON YOU!

Wow. This place gets packed. So packed that they actually enforce the 2 hour time limit as they literally book their reservations back to back. We did the AYCE and how it works is that you can order 3 items/dishes per a person at a time. We had 7 people so we could order 21 dishes at one time and once we finish all that, we can order a next round. The cool thing is that if you make a reservation, they can send them an email of your first round of orders and they can start cooking it once you arrive instead of using up your time to pick from the menu. Let me tell you – 3 dishes/person is not a lot. That’s like 3 handrolls, or 3 nigiris, or 3 appetizers. The dishes are all super small and if you have a big group, it gets eaten up really fast. We found multiple times where the food would come and we would eat it and then we would sit there for a while before our next order comes. There was one point where we waited half an hour with no food! That’s a quarter of our time there! The staff was actually really nice and let us know when the sushi counter was backed up and I appreciated the courtesy, but that didn’t put food in my mouth. Our 2 hours were coming close to an end and I wasn’t full yet. I was getting annoyed that our food came so slowly and I was going to be super annoyed if I left still hungry. They were super nice and let us stay an extra 15 minutes but probably because we placed an order and it hadn’t came yet so it gave us some time to eat it. They also give you a scoop of ice cream at the end, but it’s hard to enjoy when they kept reminding you of the time. Overall, I didn’t really have a good experience here. Everything was so limited and it was hard to enjoy and I felt rushed the. We got a mix of apps and sushi and they were all alright. A few items were pretty good, but the portions are super small. I rather go to a more relaxed AYCE place.

One of the best all you can eat sushi places in the Bay Area. I thought this place had one of the freshest sashimi around for the price. It's around $30 and the service was excellent. They give you cards to check off the items you want. Each round was 3 items per person. I went with a group so our rounds had a lot of food. I definitely would recommend this place to everyone.