On Walkabout At: Hamachi Sushi In El Paso

Where I live in El Paso, Texas the quality of the Japanese restaurants here is pretty poor compared to other places I have lived.  So I was a bit excited to see that a new sushi restaurant opened up in the northeast which I hoped would be better than the other Japanese restaurants I have eaten at in El Paso.  The restaurant is named Hamachi Sushi, which is located on north Dyer Street right before where Dyer intersects with Loop 375.  When my wife and I walked into the restaurant we were impressed by El Paso standards with the interior, which was nicely decorated and most importantly clean:

The menu was typical Japanese restaurant fare though we were able to order some Korean BBQ ribs as an appetizer, which was a dead give away that this restaurant was run by Koreans:

The BBQ ribs were a bit chewy, but were actually quite good.  Not the best BBQ ribs I have had, but I would definitely order them again the next time I visit.  We did end up finding out that the restaurant is Korean run, which I have found in El Paso is a good thing since the Koreans tend to not modify their food to meet local tastes, which gives it a bit more authenticity.  So I was eager to eat some more food and soon enough my order arrived:

The chicken teriyaki with my order was really good, the salad tasty, and the California rolls weren’t too bad, but for a restaurant with the word sushi in it, I found the sushi to be quite poor.  In fact I couldn’t even finish eating it because it was so dry and was obviously not fresh and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t left sitting out for awhile.  I actually worried I would get food poisoning if I continued to eat it so I stopped.

My wife ordered a bento box with beef teriyaki, which she found to be quite tasty as well:

This place can definitely cook up some good teriyaki.  My wife like me enjoyed the salad and the rest of her meal as well.  As far as the service we found our waitress to be average, but not bad.  Overall we left with a positive impression of the place because of the good food despite the bad sushi.  It may have been a one time thing, but that was the worse sushi I have had in El Paso and trust me there is some really bad sushi in El Paso.  Despite its faults my wife and I will definitely give the place a try again in the future and hopefully the sushi gets better.