Saturday, June 14, 2008

The Nikko Chinese/Sushi Restaurant

The Nikko Chinese/Sushi Restaurant
1165 Marginal Villamar
Isla Verde, Carolina, Puerto Rico
00979
(787) 268-3043

So far in Puerto Rico I have had lunchables and sushi. Good job, Renee, for diving right into Puerto Rican culture!

Also, typing the address made me realize that I am not actually in San Juan now, which means this blog is a lie and therefore useless.

Anyway, after an extremely stressful 24 hours in Puerto Rico, there was no way that I was going far for dinner, which led me to The Nikko, since the Chinese and Sushi restaurant is built right into my hotel (The Coqui Inn) and was literally 16 steps from my room.

ATMOSPHERE:
The restaurant is very elegantly decorated in traditional Japanese style. The cloth napkins are elegantly origami-folded, which screams, "We aren't a quick sushi bar lunch place! We're fancy!!" There are decent sized alcohol and sushi bars. I had dinner at about 5:30 on a Saturday night, and there was not a single other person in the entire restaurant, though there were a lot of tables. I'm not sure if it was just an off day or what, but if this is how this place operates, I have no idea how they can stay in business. Oh wait, yes I do, they charge more for sushi than any sushi restaurant I have ever been to! Is it worth it?

FOOD:
Nope, it isn't worth it. The best way I can describe the food is: Meh. I have had many better and a few worse sushi experiences, although my tasting ability was no doubt marred by the fact that I had seen beforehand how expensive their food was. $3.00 for MISO SOUP? That has to be some sort of crime. Not to mention that I saw the lady bringing frozen and freeze-wrapped "sushi" to the chef. A regular Chinese food sized portion of Chicken and Broccoli is a hefty $12.50 and fried rice, yes, pork fried rice, is $8.00. Anyway, I got some seaweed salad, which tasted like most other seaweed salads I have had. The eel roll and spicy tuna roll, which I picked to try and stay on some sort of budget, were totally unremarkable. I didn't even get that "Mmmm...sushi..." Homer Simpson-like feeling that I usually get (you sushi-lovers know what I am talking about). That's really all I have to say about it. Oh and then I had some lychee for desert, which consisted of 5 canned lychees on ice with toothpicks. The ice tasted like hotel tap water. Overall: Meh, Meh, Meh.

SERVICE:
The woman who served me was actually very sweet. I asked her if she spoke both Spanish and English, and she said she spoke "leetle bit Spanish." She also asked me if I was here on business, since I was eating dinner all by my lone self. I feel bad to give the restaurant such a bad rating, because she seemed like such a nice lady, with her little daughter was asleep in the back of the store, and I don't want to see them do poorly, but all's fair in love and restaurant reviews. Also, I'm sure that their business won't be affected by this blog, since it's mainly my parents and friends reading it. I'm a loser!

SHOULD YOU GO?
Honestly, no.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

At least she was sweet... I mean I'm sure that itself was enough to tip her, right? (i hope)

On the other hand... freezer wrapped sushi is not acceptable. Someone needs to get in there and do something about it. I'll be sure to link your rating to Restaurants.com ;-)

...I'm kidding!