Kura Revolving Sushi Bar – Finding good food is one of the essentials when it comes to traveling. And our best bet for conveyor belt sushi in Japan is the Kura Sushi. It has quickly become our favorite due to its cheap yet delicious nigiri dishes.
Kura Sushi menu
After learning about Kura Sushi Japan, we decided to give it a try if it was worth our money. We checked out a Kura Sushi Tokyo branch a few days after we landed at the Land of the Rising Sun.
When we arrived at Kura Sushi at a quarter past 6 PM, we immediately got a number to queue for dinner. We were surprised that it was going to take a while for us to dine because there were not too many people lining up outside the store.
So while waiting, we checked out Marugame Udon on the opposite side of the building to see if there was something on their menu that would delight our toddler. The Marugame Udon menu in Japan looks a little bit similar to the Philippines minus all the people queueing.
However, I didn’t see rice bowls on the menu and I was also afraid to enter the restaurant to check out their side orders as the chef might not appreciate me entering without plans of dining. In the end, we finally decided to give Kura Sushi a chance even though we had to wait.
After 30 minutes, we were finally called to go in and it was our best decision that night. The server led us to our table and then left. We found a tablet near the conveyor belt and knew that it was where we should place our orders.
Thankfully, you can change the language of the table to English (other restaurants don’t have language preferences in the setting). We checked out the menu and found many different types of nigiri.
The majority of the Kura Sushi prices are at JPY 125 (PHP 49.93 or USD 0.89) which is a great deal especially when you can have the same quality of food in the Philippines for a more expensive price.
You can get salmon, tuna, mackerel, or squid nigiri, but you can also order pickled toyama squid nigiri or sardine nigiri. There are a whole lot of choices so you can try whatever you like by browsing through the tablet.
You can even choose to have half the rice versus the amount of rice in a normal nigiri. It’s another reason we love going back to Kura Sushi because we prefer eating less carbs. We didn’t understand the menu at first, but when we ate again at another branch, we were able to fully utilize the half-rice menu.
When you click on the tablet, you can get your order delivered to you through the conveyor belt. Otherwise, you can also choose from the ones revolving and you don’t have to worry because they are covered so you are sure they are clean and safe to eat.
Besides sushi, Kura Revolving Sushi Bar also offers sides like our son’s favorite, Chicken Karaage, and noodles and soups. Of course, a meal wouldn’t be complete without desserts, and you can also find them on the tablet.
In the first Kura Japanese restaurant that we dined at (Yes, we ate again at a different branch), the cutleries, sauces, matcha powder, and pink Japanese pickled ginger are found in secret storage on the table. They are neatly placed there so you don’t have to call the server to attend to your needs.
For the wasabi, you can get it on the revolving conveyor belt. We found that Kura Japanese Restaurant uses only pure and fresh wasabi paste. So, be sure to try it out when you visit Kura Sushi. Once you have tried the fresh wasabi paste, you’re never going back to wasabi imitations.
We mostly ordered beef, salmon, and shrimp nigiri. It was great that they have those proteins topped with cheese or some sweet sauce. There were others topped with cheese and then torched for the added smoky flavor.
We also tried a matcha mochi for dessert. The mochi was matcha flavored, and there was a matcha paste filling inside. Outside, there’s a matcha powder drizzled for that overall matcha experience.
Since we are not fans of sweets, that was the only after-meal we tried at Kura Sushi. Our son didn’t like matcha during that time, so he didn’t try it, but maybe next time, he’ll also like it (now that he has learned to appreciate matcha flavor).
Kura sushi game
When eating at an affordable sushi bar, you can easily forget about how much you’ve eaten until there’s no more room on your table for new plates. But what’s great about Kura Sushi is that when your plates start to pile up, you don’t have to wait for a server to clean them.
There’s a slot beside the ordering tablet where you can shoot all your empty plates to have more space for new orders. Best of all, for every 5 plates you shoot into the slot, you get a chance to play the Kura Sushi game.
You stop shooting after 5 plates are gone and wait to see if you win in the mini-game that will play on the tablet. It features different types of games from Festival Day games, like goldfish scooping to shooting, to traditional ones, like racing.
And when you win, you get a gachapon (capsule toys coming from a vending machine). It was amusing to watch the mini-game on the tablet and entertaining even though most of the time we lost.
Upon winning, our toddler got so excited to open his capsule toy, and what’s inside is a cute mini version of the Kura Sushi placed on a mini plate and covered to look like the revolving sushi in the restaurant.
But not all toy inside the gachapon is a mini Kura Sushi plates. One that we got at a Kura Sushi Osaka branch had a Detective Conan washi tape instead. But, I do hope you get one with the mini sushi plate because it can serve as a cute souvenir too!
What a great way to make customers (with children or not) come back to dine again. We certainly got caught with its quality nigiri dishes and the bonus of possible chances of winning a capsule toy.
Kura Sushi Locations
Kura Sushi can be found in many different areas outside of Japan. It’s available in Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
So, you don’t have to travel all the way to Japan if you are near the locations indicated in the previous paragraph.
Kura Sushi Review
We could’ve visited more Kura Sushi branches if we had stayed longer in Japan. The next time we go back, we’ll surely locate the Kura Sushi near me branches because it’s worth every penny!
Have you ever tried Kura? I’d love to hear your favorite sushi dishes in the comment section below!
