Sushi Ota | Omakase Style

We had known that Sushi Ota is purported to be one of the best sushi restaurants in San Diego, but we had never been there.  When our friends Roby and Dejah wanted to try a new restaurant once a month with us, we heartily agreed.  Where should we go on our first outing?  Todd and Roby chose Sushi Ota.  After all, it has 1292 Yelp reviews, averaging 4.5/5.0 stars!  Dejah is not a fan of fish though, so she sacrificed herself for the night, for the common good.

We had reservations on Sunday 7/1 at 6pm and we arrived right on time.  It took them several minutes at least to get a table ready for us.  When we finally got seated, the waitress came.  I’ve had lots of sushi before, but never at Sushi Ota, and never “omakase” style.  Omakase is basically chef’s choice tasting menu.  The masterful sushi chef picks the best he’s got that day and serves several courses.  It’s not cheap, but we knew that going in, and we were ready for our omakase adventure!

First course was a bite of Golden Ice Snapper with watermelon radish & baby corn from Chino Farms.  The fish was smokey in flavor and it was very good.


Second dish was a bunch of sushi on a wooden plate.  There was Amberjack fish, uni (yellow sea urchin), raw sweet shrimp, some sort of pink fish, and toro.  It came with real wasabi too, which we’ve never had.  The middle of the plate were raw shrimp heads, which they took back to fry after we were done.

The fried shrimp head came back.  There was actually quite a bit of delicious meat in there, but in order to eat it you had to avoid the spiny legs, which hurt your lips!


We shared an 8 oz sake.  I had never had sake before either!  The sake came in this pretty jar, with four tiny shot glasses for each of us.


Next course was a cooked course.  There was Crab Dynamite, King crab, sea bass, eggplant, and veggies from Chino Farms.  So yummy!  My favorite of the night.  For as long as I’ve known Todd, I’ve never seen him eat crab.  He liked these!  They were so fresh.


Next was the tempura course.  There was snapper tempura, corn tempura, a veggie called kaleidoscope that's a mix between kale & Brussels sprouts, and a green pepper tempura.  Yum!


The next course would normally be the nori sushi plate, with seaweed.  But Dejah doesn't eat seaweed and told them no seaweed.  I thought they were going to replace her portion with non-seaweed and serve the rest of us nori sushi, but they brought all non-seaweed sushi.  We got everything on rice.  Eel, Uni, Golden Ice Snapper, Amber jack, Salmon, toro, some other ones that I failed to catch the name.


Look how delicate this fish was.


After that, we were served clam soup.  It was very fresh and yummy, and miso based.  Todd drew the line at clams and didn’t eat it.


They served us ice cream for dessert.  Todd and I had red bean ice cream, while Roby had plum wine, and Dejah had green tea ice cream.


Our adventurous dinner mates Dejah and Roby.


We were so impressed with Sushi Ota and the omakase experience.  It was such a unique and new experience that we won’t soon forget!