Hong’s Cave

1814 Hillsdale Avenue Suite C
San Jose, CA
408.445.9696
M-Sa: 11:30 - 22:00
Su: 16:30 - 21:30

I love sushi: Not the rolls, not sashimi, just nigirizushi. But I am also cheap. :p

For the past couple of years, the sushi place of choice for my wife and I were Sushi Maru in Sunnyvale, CA. It was a bit far from where we lived, but we loved its “price-performance ratio” (PPR). (If that wasn’t a factor we would go to Ino Sushi in San Francisco.) For a sushi boat place, their fish quality was very good. We’ve always ordered directly from the chefs and their cuts were fairly large and the taste were very good.

Well, that’s what we thought until a couple of weeks ago.

I think I’ve seen the sign for Sushi Expo around the neighborhood since I moved into the area a couple of years ago. But it never occurred to me that a better sushi place would be around the neighborhood. Also, the place was behind a couple of buildings from the main street and in a strip mall that looked deserted, so I didn’t think it could be that good.

Was I ever wrong! (And they’ve been around for almost 10 years.)

It turns out the Sushi Expo’s PPR is even better than Sushi Maru’s (both are sushi boat places). Their cuts are larger, and the bills are 10~20% lower. Some expensive items (cho-toro, for example) are maybe more expensive, but the quality was very good. On bonus, you get fried head for ama-ebi!!! (This has been the reason why we haven’t been enjoying ama-ebi at Sushi Maru).

For my wife and I, saba has to be good at a sushi restaurant. We order mostly saba, hamachi, and sake. We usually order toro, uni, ama-ebi toward the end. They were all good here.

Also, they seem to have various “creative” rolls. They aren’t really my thing, but they seem to be popular among the mostly non-Asian regulars.

Sushi Expo is run by a Korean chef/owner, Kevin. He is pretty cool (but we liked Eric, the other chef). The first time we were there, we thought the decor was “interesting”. I mean “interesting” by the TV showing CMT and country music playing in the background. I guess the fact that the place is a bit away from the center of Asian communities and most of their regulars are non-Asian probably played toward the ambiance. But did we care? No, the fish quality is very, very good. I’d say at least equal to Sushi Maru. And it is cheaper.

We did not try much else besides sushi. But we did order agedashi tofu once. That was not great. Had a very weirdly chewy texture. I think we would just stick to sushi.

My wife and I think agreed that we don’t have to drive far any more for good PPR sushi.