Bayridge Sushi

Tonight we found ourselves in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn with M's parents and we decided to try Bayridge Sushi, recommended to us by a few people.


We started with a special appetizer of pizza with salmon:


Not the most attractive dish, but it was tasty. There was a thin crispy crust on the bottom, a layer of creamy avocado, sashimi style salmon and a lot of sauce. This was a great start to the meal.

We ordered an assortment of 9 rolls which arrived in one of those big sushi boats:


Forgot to take a separate photo of the yellowtail scallion roll (which was nothing special and seemed to be missing scallions), but here's a closer look at the other 8 rolls.

Clockwise from top left: tuna tartar roll, chicken tempura roll, Ginza roll, salmon avocado scallion roll
Tuna tartar roll: The tuna tartar roll (5 pieces) was also on the page of specials, described as a tempura roll with tuna on top served with chef's special sauce. M wasn't sure what a "tempura roll" was, but it was just rice wrapped in seaweed and fried. The tuna topping was kind of like poke - cubes of tuna (instead of being chopped finely like other tartares), seaweed salad and bean sprouts. Although it was nice to have something different like tuna tartare over a roll, the tempura roll part of it just felt unnecessary as it didn't add anything other than texture. We think it might have been better to just order tuna tartare.

Chicken tempura roll: The chicken tempura roll (5 pieces) contained fried chicken, avocado, cucumber and caviar inside. There were 2 large pieces with chicken sticking out (A got one of these) and three middle pieces (M tried these). This one was OK, but nothing special. There wasn't much about it that screamed out that it was fried chicken and not fried something else. The chicken tempura was rather bland, and A couldn't pick up much else flavor-wise.

Ginza roll: The Ginza roll (6 pieces) had cooked salmon with onion and "crunchy caviar" outside. Not really sure what crunchy caviar is, but this seemed just like your usual roe. A didn't really experience any textural difference from the "crunchy" caviar, and he could barely taste any saltiness from the roe. M liked this one because of the crunch and flavor of the onions, but it didn't seem to be a favorite at the table. The cooked salmon and onion was an interesting change to the normal sushi we've had.

Salmon avocado scallion roll: This roll (6 pieces) should have had salmon, avocado and scallions (kind of self-explanatory), but just like the yellowtail scallion, there were no scallions. It's like they ran out of scallions but forgot to mention it. It was a little less noticeable here than in the yellowtail scallion roll since this roll is often just salmon and avocado. It was your basic salmon avocado roll and had a nice clean flavor.

The rolls in this second collage all had 8 pieces, much easier for a party of 4 to split:

Clockwise from top left: Mexican roll, pink girl roll, T roll, 007 roll
Mexican roll: The Mexican roll had crunchy spicy tuna inside, avocado outside and spicy sauce on top. Their spicy sauce isn't very spicy but this roll had a nice texture and flavor. It was probably M's favorite, although a close tie with the next roll on this list. A thought this was just okay. Once again he didn't really get any textural differences from the crunchy portion of the roll, but at least the flavors were good.

Pink girl roll: The pink girl roll had eel and avocado inside with spicy crab meat on top. M thought the spicy crab here was much stronger than the flavors of the eel and avocado. It was really tasty and M's second favorite. The spicy crab was not spicy at all in A's opinion. He also agreed with M's assessment that the crab was pretty much all you could taste in the roll. For someone that really likes eel in sushi, this was disappointing.

T roll: The T roll consisted of spicy tuna, eel, avocado and salmon with spicy mayo and eel sauce. They didn't mention it on the specials board but this roll was wrapped in soy paper. M liked that it had a refreshing flavor. Once again, A didn't think this was spicy at all. (It's a common thread here - nothing labeled spicy was really that spicy.) The roll tasted nice and fresh, but it just didn't do anything to wow him.

007 roll: This roll was labeled "most popular" on the menu and had shrimp tempura and cucumber inside with crunchy spicy tuna on top. This was the first of the tempura/crunchy rolls that A actually got some sort of crunch. On top of that, the flavors were very good, and it was probably A's favorite roll of the night.

Generally, the sushi was good. A was a little disappointed by the sushi as he didn't think it was anything that special. They were missing some key elements, and he didn't think the elements presented really reflected what the descriptions were. M didn't think they were the most amazing sushi rolls we have had but that it was good. Definitely better than some of the places she's gotten for delivery at work. The prices were quite reasonable as well.

To close out the meal, they brought us a plate of red bean, green tea and vanilla ice cream on the house:


We had originally gone to Bayridge Sushi because we had heard that they had all you can eat sushi (for $20/person) but since we didn't see it on the menu, we ordered an assortment of rolls. When we were leaving, we saw a table with all you can eat forms so it looks like they do have it but you just have to specially request it. A was disappointed that he did not get all you can eat sushi. Oh well, next time!