Let’s get this straight: this is a gimmick. If you’re looking to eat “good” sushi, a restaurant where you’re delivered raw fish on a conveyor belt, have to snatch it off before it moves on to the next table and then slot your plates in a discard slot like a reverse air hockey puck situation, you are not necessarily in for a gourmet experience. Not that walking into the cafeteria-style Kura Revolving Sushi Bar in Fort Lee screamed fancy in any way shape or form. It’s like one part diner, one part Jetson’s and one part Japanese video arcade.
I’m not really certain what the rules are here when you walk in. There are servers, but they seem to be multi-tasking, playing host, server and Q&A administrator. We were rather hectically shown our seat — the only open seat — and instantaneously abandoned. I assume they think that reading the insane smattering of hand-written, typed and video screen messages gives you all the answers to your questions. It does not. So rookies like us scrolled through the video menus, watched the little plastic domes convey over our heads and wondered how we might go about ordering a drink. Now, I had a job for some time working on Websites (which I know isn’t obvious from reading this one) and a big part of what I managed were large, complicated practical UI (user interface) portions of sites for big retailers, telecom companies and tech stuff. Needless to say, this place did not hire one of my old agencies to put together the order path for this interface. It’s not… logical. Our server finally came back, leaned over, hit a bunch of prompts and our drinks were magically ordered. Now all we had to do was snag fish as it came by.
How much can one eat without feeling like a pig? At this place, you know exactly how much you eat. Because each plate you drop down the shoot after finishing your sushi tallies on the screen above you. Or — and this is weird — you can actually order what you want off the screen as well. You know, if someone ahead of you keeps grabbing the Alaska roll or whatever, you can hit that square and they’ll send it directly to your table on the upper belt. It comes zipping out of the open kitchen and hits the breaks right as it seems it’s going to zoom past you. The whole thing feels like a giant game. Especially when the Pokemon ball rolls down from the contraption over your screen when you hit your fifteenth plate. We somehow got two of those — well, three, because the person before us left theirs in the machine. They had Jujutsu Kaisen keychains in them. Hipster Jr. Jr. was cool with it even though she claims not to really like anime.
The sushi itself was unremarkable. Not bad. Not great. They had other stuff like edamame and some weird rolls and stuff. I looked at their online menu and don’t recall half of the stuff on there being at our location. Maybe it’s variable. The fun of the place is the place itself. Or the oddball experience of the place. The dessert, Taiyaki Ice Cream, which was a fried pastry-like fish with red bean paste inside and vanilla ice cream was pretty cool. Though Ms. Hipster realize after ordering it that matcha green tea mochi ice cream is absolutely not her thing. Ice cream surrounded by a powdery, gummy substance not being many peoples’ thing, I imagine. I found it textually interesting and the ice cream itself pretty good. Anyhow, it made for an entertaining afternoon, if not a culinarily explosive one. It feels like a joint you’d bring friends back to just for the shits and giggles of it all. And to see who can tally more plates. Pigs, all.
2151 Lemoine Ave. – Fort Lee
973/939-6756
kurasushi.com
