Edo Japanese Restaurant

In a word: The real thing.

The specs: #0150
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at Dane101, Yelp, Ted Tang, 77Square;

Latest Edo Japanese Restaurant news and reviews

JM ate the shrimp hibachi with a lemonade.
Nichole ate the all-day vegetable tempura bento box with a tea.
The bill was $32, or $16/person, plus tip.
JM gave Edo Japanese Restaurant a B; Nichole gave Edo Japanese Restaurant an A- (see our grading rubric).

A word about the Edos, of which Madison has three: Edo Garden and Edo Japanese Restaurant are owned by the same people and are considered, for A to Z purposes, to be a "chain," while Edo Sushi Bar and Buffet is owned by different people.  Trust us, there's a reason that we do what we do.

On to the food. For starters, the miso soup, which we both imbibed, also contained bouncy seaweed. JM appreciated the smaller tofu cubes as a welcome alternative to chewing large hunks of curd at some other sushi bars.

Nichole found Edo to be rather good.  Her all-day bento box lived up to its name, lasting long after JM had consumed his hibachi.

She ended up stuffed with veggie tempura, which included yam, potato, broccoli, and zucchini -- yum, yum and yum. The seaweed salad had a texture that was too springy/slippery for her naive 'buds, which was a shame since it had an excellent, tangy flavor. The sushi itself was underwhelming (limited choices were available with the bento box), but the shumai, steamed and stuffed with savory filling, were the highlight.

JM's experience was less even.  His shrimp hibachi lacked flavor for the first (top) half, but the sauce came roaring back toward the end, leaving him feeling ambivalent. 

The lemonade was nothing to write about (although now we have).  On the other hand, JM was cheered by the length of the non-sushi menu and had several items that he wanted to try.

We agreed that the service was excellent.  It is likely, since Nichole has many sushi lovin' friends, that we'll be back in short order.

Comments

[Samantha]

A group of us from APT frequented this Edo branch during a day off. We must have come in on a day they received a fresh shipment of fish, because that is the best sushi I've had to date.

I would not recommend getting sashimi here but the rolls are great as is everything else I have tried (the katsu don is fantastic!)

[S]

I had a HORRIBLE experience with delivery service here.
I won't go back.

[Fanny]

I wouldn't go as far as to recommend this place, but its got an affordable lunch deal and the food is OK.

[John S.]

I had a great Spider roll and California roll for dinner recently. I knew there would be a wait while the chef prepared it, which is no biggie, but still a waitress came over and gave me a free tea and a free wrap-type thing because of the wait. The wrap was interesting (not sure what it was though, but it was big), but that service and the rolls (especially the Spider) were wonderful. I'm sure I'll go back.

[nulldevice]

I've eaten here 4 times total, and each time, someone in my party has gotten sick. That's a bad streak.

Aside from what is either serial food poisoning or eerie coincidence, I didn't find the sushi to be all that great. Passable, better than grocery-store sushi, but compared to the other sushi options in town, meh. The miso soup tastes and looks like the stuff that you buy freeze-dried (and is oversalted) but sadly that seems to be the norm everywhere but a few of the more upscale places. Two of the times I went the rice was gummy and bland, a definite black mark for a sushi joint. The tempura was smothered in panko, which while ordinarily not a huge problem, in this case seemed like a method of disguising a leaden tempura batter.

In short, not good.