Sushi Ai Clayton - Visited June 2014

Last week we gave the Saturday lunch restaurant pick to my daughter who is soon leaving the country, and I gave her a not so subtle idea by leaving a coupon for the recently opened Sushi Ai Clayton on her desk. Luckily, she took the bait since I knew she loved sushi! They offer a $12.99 all you can eat sushi deal (the coupon took 1/2 price off the second one), and with being open for Saturday lunch, it was conveniently located in Clayton if you do not mind the parallel parking on the streets (free parking on the weekends too!) My son is not a Japanese food fan but he begrudgingly went along, planning to get the teriyaki chicken, and I knew my mother-in-law would get the tempura.

My daughter drove and parallel parked on Central (I hate parallel parking!), and we walked by various other eateries on our way to Sushi Ai. It was not too crowded when we arrived shortly before noon, and we were seated at a booth where we could watch soccer being played on a HDTV mounted on the wall (this was before Team USA was eliminated.)  My daughter and I looked over the sushi selections on the paper we could fill out, and we together ordered an assortment of sushi pieces and rolls. My son ordered the lunch special Teriyaki Chicken and my mother-in-law ordered the lunch special Shrimp Tempura (we thought), but when her order arrived it did not include the rice and soup like my son's did. We tried to convince her to ask for the rice, soup and salad, but she said she did not want them anyway so her order ended up just being the appetizer version. Both she and my son thought their food was just okay, so I think the non-sushi is not as good as the sushi.

But the sushi was pretty good and custom made to order. We ordered tuna, salmon and eel sushi pieces and we ordered a California roll, Shrimp Tempura roll, and a couple other rolls I cannot remember. They were all well made and quite tasty. You just have to fill out a little sheet each time you want more and they fix it up and bring it out. She and I both enjoyed our sushi and we definitely received our money's worth. We also ordered an order of gyoza (pot stickers) and I will have to say they were a bit on the bland side.  I would stick to the sushi the next time we go. Since we had a coupon to take 50% off the second $12.99 sushi order and my mother-in-law ended up only ordered the appetizer tempura, the overall price was pretty reasonable too.

All in all Sushi Ai is a great place to eat the all you can sushi deal, but skip anything else on the menu. I would definitely go back for more sushi! Note that another coupon we received from them also said they gave a student discount to anyone with a student ID, so that is a nice little incentive as well.