Last night I ate at Sushi Land in Lynnwood. It is the 12th and newest of the Puget Sound area Sushi Land locations.
It's your typical conveyor-belt sushi joint, which seem to be springing up as fast as humanly possible. Just goes to show that even in a tough economy, there are some business models that (appear) to be working. As another example, take a look at all the bikini espresso stands that have opened in the past year. But that's another story for another time. . .
Anyways, last night I went with my sister, her husband, and my 16-month old niece. We picked a rather unfortunate evening for my first visit to Sushi Land, as we had to wait over 45 minutes for a table (er, sorry, not a table, but a place on the conveyor line). Yes, it was a Friday night, and it was the first Friday of Lent, but this seemed a little bit outrageous. But the wait was what it was, so we patiently waited for a spot to open up.
The place is actually very small. It's the size of your run of the mill strip-mall teriyaki joint. But even though it's small, they are able to squeeze a lot of seats in.
One of the things that always has bugged me about these kind of sushi places is the bar-style seating. Although many of them (as Sushi Land does) have a few booths, the majority of the seating is facing the conveyor belt. Although this is convenient for grabbing your chow, it does not make for an enjoyable eating atmosphere, especially if you are with more than one other person and want to have any kind of conversation going on. I suppose we could have held out for a table but that may have been another hour or so!
The main draw of Sushi Land, looking past its conveyor-belt format, has to be its prices. This is probably the fourth restaurant of this style I have been to, and the pricing at Sushi Land beats them all hands down.
They had quite a few $1.00 plates, and any that were not were either $1.50 or $2.00. Their most expensive plate is $3.00 but I only saw a few of these.
The sushi all tasted very fresh, however I am sure that had to do with the amount of people eating at the time. I particularly enjoyed the Philly Roll ($1.50 plate for 3 pieces), but my favorite (call me plain) was the House Special. Arriving on the $1.00 plate, it's similar to a California Roll but with the yellow egg-style roll on the outside, and has some regular tuna inside.
Despite the long time to get a table, the service was actually pretty good once we were seating, taking into consideration the volume of patrons. My brother in law had several special requests for the chefs, and they handled them all in a timely fashion.
Sushi Land will compete directly with Blue C Sushi, which opened around a year ago at the Alderwood Mall (or Alderwood as they would like us all to call it) over in the newer area of outdoor stores on the North side of the campus. Blue C is a fine place to eat as well, it is also pretty small inside (maybe that's the model of these businesses) and can be pretty busy at times. The main difference I saw was the prices at Blue C were on average quite a bit higher. A $1 or $1.50 plate at Sushi Land would probably be $2 or $3 at Blue C.
Overall, it cost me just over $10, but had 8 plates of stuff. Not bad. I'll be back.
OK enough Sushi talk for one day!
Website: http://www.sushilandusa.com/
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