Sushi Showdown: Local student attempts to find the best -and worst- sushi around
Everyone loves sushi, and if you don’t, get better taste buds. The quest for the best sushi around suburban Philadelphia is often stopped short by our limited budgets, but I can take that burden from you and give you my not-so-professional opinion on which sushi you need to spend your money on, and which you should avoid like the plague. I have compiled an up-to-date and comprehensive list of where you should get your next sushi fix from with an investigation of options both on campus and locally.
To start slow, sushi is a Japanese cuisine of rolled rice, seaweed, and fish and/or vegetables. There are lots of different types of sushi and this article can’t fit all of the possible combinations, but here’s two little diagrams to breakdown what sushi is and just a few of the types you might want to try.
Throughout my time at college, I have mostly stuck to a few safe sushi options for distance reasons, but since moving and buying a lot more takeout during the pandemic, I have officially begun my journey to expand my taste buds in the search for the best sushi. My selections and opinions will be very biased based on my current location within the context of Arcadia University, as well as Willow Grove (nearby town). Based on these parameters, I will curate a list of restaurant, grocery store, and college-based options to provide a well-rounded ranking of which sushi brings the best bang for limited buck (bonus points awarded at my discretion for anything cool I find along the way). I will be selecting classic sushi items such as the California roll for baseline testing, and add other types of rolls at my preference for variety. My guest eaters will purchase their roll of choice as well, at which point I will beg them for a bite and receive feedback from other sushi amateurs similar to myself. And if you don’t like my system of rating and selections, then please keep reading anyways for my quality wit and humor as I ascend beyond the average-joe sushi plane into an all-knowing sushi fanatic. Without further ado, here is my official sushi quest and ratings from start to finish:
Sushi Option 1: Arcadia University campus sushi
Stars: 1/5
My baseline since arriving in Philly has been Arcadia University’s pre-packaged sushi options for sheer matter of convenience, which I initially thought was fairly decent quality, but since I have explored my options further, it has become nearly inedible. For the purposes of today’s analysis, I purchased a California roll for its classic qualities and ease of judgment since I know what to expect from this roll already.
Texture: cold and hard ( 1/5 )
Freshness: about as fresh as a refrigerated on-campus food can be… unknown but suspicious (2/5)
Taste: 3 years ago I would’ve added at least one more star… but after revisiting, I have come to disdain that imitation crab aftertaste that sits in my mouth for hours. Bad burps take off another star. (1/5)
Presentation: It’s takeaway, so I can’t hate on the artificial green grass in the container. Average. (3/5)
Price: $7.95- high price for low quality (3/5)
Overall: please avoid at all costs. Its redeeming qualities are that I have never gotten food poisoning from them, but I have no need to continue that test with further investigation.
Sushi Option 2: Sushi House, Willow Grove
Stars: 5/5
Sushi House has previously been my tried and true favorite sushi restaurant, so I really just wanted to see how every other place stacks up. They are local, you can order online, and I’m really hoping for the best to see if another place is even better from my past experiences.
Texture: fresh, good mouth-feel, not hard, cold rice like store-bought is (5/5)
Taste: very fresh ingredients, high-quality taste of both rice and fish
Presentation: average, takeout sushi really can’t look that different from each other. Clean-cut rolls and more plastic grass (5/5)
Price: it was an average of $3.95 for their classic rolls, which is the cheapest I’ve seen anywhere, especially for such high quality ingredients (5/5)
Overall: Each roll is made to order and the price can’t be beat for their options. They have an extensive selection and provide great rice, great fish, and even their fried sushi options (tempura) were good. My only complaint is that they have a $15 minimum for credit card website purchases so I have to talk to someone on the phone to order pickup, and talking to people is hard.
Sushi Option 3: Emoji Sushi
Stars: 4/5
Emoji Sushi is a newly opened restaurant, so they were a cool little place to pick up from, but I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Be sure to listen to the live audio reaction to me and my colleague Maeghan trying the sushi… and mostly trying mochi for the first time.
Texture: fresh, good texture soft rice (5/5)
Taste: very fresh ingredients, high-quality taste of both rice and fish
Presentation: Same old same old. Nothing new, same takeout box as previously tested sushi (5/5)
Price: it was $4.95 or $5.95 for their classic rolls, so I can’t complain but they still have some competition (4/5)
Overall: They make their rolls fresh from what I can tell with a fairly solid selection. It was slightly fishy and the chicken fried tempura roll tasted a bit fishy which was less than fun considering it had no fish in it. They were quick and easy to pick up, and the inside was fun and clean looking as well. Emoji Sushi gets a happy face emoji from me, your loyal sushi ranking overlord.
Bonus!
Join me in my short audio segment about one of my trips to get sushi at Emoji Sushi.
Sushi Option 4: Store Bought frozen sushi, Aldi
Alright so I’ll leave some suspense for the ratings, but take your guesses about how Aldi sushi tastes, and how the aftertaste is. If it sounds suspicious, I don’t disagree with you. All I can say is… I survived the experience. Ba dum ba baaaaa, I now present to you frozen California rolls.
Stars: 1/5
Texture: Honestly better than I thought, the rice wasn’t the worst. But the ground up crab was just a foul and weird baby food vomit kind of texture. Maybe try the veggie roll next time. /5)
Taste: very fresh ingredients… just kidding, it was not great crab, but the rice was pretty okay.
Presentation: Not much to say about plastic-wrapped sushi in a cardboard box. (2/5)
Price: It was definitely cheap but I lost the receipt, but the price was not the issue. (3/5)
Overall: So Aldi California rolls were as expected, not great. But I will say that I thought it was going to be a lot worse so I have to give them bonus points for that. That crab aftertaste was seriously nasty though and lasted for hours, so be warned if you have the psychotic tendency to buy frozen sushi.
Conclusion
Out of all of these lovely, and less than lovely options for sushi, I have come up with a few conclusions. To start off with the bottom of our lineup, I did have to put Aldi frozen sushi as the loser, not to forget how close Arcadia sushi came to being in last. After those two very sad losers comes our second place winner, Emoji Sushi. They did alright, but the faint fishy smell and the cost difference of a dollar made them slightly less desirable than our winner. I can’t say I’m surprised, but Sushi House was the ultimate winner and made the best possible sushi for the cheapest prices around. They are truly the superior sushi takeout around and I’m so happy my favorite place came through in the rankings. Thanks for tuning in and I’ll see ya’ll on the next round of Sushi Showdown where I give my biased opinions on the best and worst sushi around.
