Today it was my wife's selection for lunch, and since my rather picky son was not going to be with us, she decided we should visit Oishi Sushi in Creve Coeur. We used to frequent them much more often but had not been there in a few years. They are located in a pleasant little shopping area off of New Ballas with a fountain next to a Greek restaurant we had also visited years ago. We arrived shortly after they opened at noon and we were one of the very first customers. We were seated at a rather small booth for four with rather hard seats, so it was not the most comfortable seating. Our server was very attentive and took our drinks orders as we perused the menu. Both my wife and mother-in-law decided to get the tempura, and since it usually came with both miso soup and a salad, they instead opted for a double sized salad and no soup (they are not fans of miso soup.) I decided to order the two roll combination lunch, with the St. Louis roll and the spicy salmon roll, and ordered both the salad and the miso soup. We also ordered one order of crab rangoons for the three of us.
When the drinks arrived, my wife thought the iced tea tasted strange with extra something added to it. Our salads and soup showed up fairly quickly and they served generous quantities of soy-ginger dressing on the side of my wife and mother-in-law's "double" salads. I borrowed a little bit of my wife's dressing to add my smaller salad, and it was a very tasty, creamy sweet ginger dressing. The salads were quite fresh and flavorful, and the miso soup was pretty much standard, although it did look a bit pale.
The crab rangoons showed up in a timely manner and they served us five large ones, hot from the deep fryer. They were quite fresh and tasty, but the lollipop sauce was a bit runny so it did not adhere very well to the crab rangoons. They were nice and crisp and they were very generous with the fillings, making them pretty impressive for "Chinese" food in a Japanese restaurant! We did notice the Asian workers in the restaurant were not speaking Japanese nor Mandarin Chinese, so I am not sure what Asian language it was (Vietnamese perhaps?) The menu actually includes other Asian cuisine besides Japanese (Pad Thai, Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Fried Rice, Green and Red Curry) which we found as nice additions for people who are not crazy about Japanese food but might like some other Asian entrees instead.
Our entrees arrived as we were still finishing up our crab rangoons. We noticed right away that the tempura servings were pretty large and came with a generous bowl of white rice along with the tempura sauce. My rolls were also a good sized, cut into five pieces each. I know they were rolled big since they were actually somewhat difficult to cram into my mouth whole, and that is rarely the case with me and sushi! The tuna in the St. Louis roll and the salmon in the other roll were both fresh and quite large and I could definitely taste the fish well. Their wasabi was also nice and strong so I had plenty to go with all of my rolls and plenty of pickled ginger too. The avocado in the St. Louis roll was nice and soft and the pickled radishes were flavorful but not overpowering. Both rolls were very good and well balanced. I also sampled my wife's tempura and all the pieces were heavily battered, but the batter was well fried and crisp and tasty. On some bites it seemed like it was all batter, but that was still pretty good dipped in the tempura sauce!
The service was very attentive with different people refilling drinks, bringing food and picking up empty plates. I believe they gave all of us at least two forks each and I never even used one! All in all it was a very good meal and a reasonable value too for Japanese places (which tend to serve very small portions and still charge a lot.) I am not sure why we had not been to Oishi Sushi in a while, but I think we should go there more often!
Food
Service
Maybe I will go here tonight.
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