Thursday, January 7, 2010

Happy Hour/Happy Times at RA Sushi!


RA Sushi
2401 Park Ave.
Tustin, CA. 92782

So, the couple above is my sister and brother-in-law, and they love sushi. I, on the other hand, will eat it, but it is not my favorite thing in the world. They had been to RA Sushi in Corona, and rave about the happy hour. Now, I do love happy hour, so we decided to check it out.

When you walk into RA, it has the feel of a P.F. Changs, but much hipper and fast paced. Decorated in lots of red and black, we made our way to the bar for the happy hour. The bartender, Drew was on top of everything for us on this busy Saturday night. Yes, they do have happy hour Monday through Saturday 3-7. As the night went on, more and more hipsters arrived and were scouting out for prime spots on the patio, or at the bar. So lets get to the food, before they try to snag our seats.




Here is your standard California roll. It was good, and at $3, for eight pieces, it was well worth the price. Pretty decent flavor also, but it was brought to life with the wasabi.


Next we have the spicy sesame chicken wings. These nicely presented wings were not nearly as spicy, as they were sweet. The chicken was a little fatty, and the sauce was okay, but again at $3.50 for six wings, you can not complain too much.


Here are the pineapple cheese wontons, with roasted pineapple dipping sauce. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of cream cheese wontons, so I will not add my two cents here, but everyone else really enjoyed this. And again, this is under four dollars.


Here is one of my favorites of the night, the "RA"ckin Shrimp. The shrimp may not have been huge in size, but they were flavored well, and the creamy ginger teriyaki sauce was an added bonus. Very good dish, and it was a real hit with all of us.


Sorry the picture is so blurry, still trying to figure out my new camera. If you can see through the haze, what we have here is the blue claw crab cakes, served with ginger mayo. The mayo actually made the dish, because the crab cakes alone were a little dry. Still a decent dish, just not great.


Here is another one of my favorites, the Viva Las Vegas Roll. It is crab and cream cheese wrapped in seaweed, then lightly tempura battered, then topped with spicy tuna, more crab, lotus root and eel sauce. A lot of items that create a lot of flavor. These were really tasty and had all of us raving, so we ordered another plate of them.


The lobster spring rolls above, were just okay. The rolls were filled with cream cheese, mango and lobster. I do not recall now, even tasting any lobster, so they totally skimped on that. The mango sauce was pretty good, and helped out with the bland taste of the roll.


This is the Crispy Spicy Tuna. This was another big hit for us. It was big on flavor, and had a great texture. The soy chili sauce again went really well with this.

As for drink specials during happy hour, there were plenty to choose from. A partial list includes, $1 sake, $2 domestic beers, $3 well drinks, and  $4 wines and martinis. Katie got a Sake Sangria that she really enjoyed.

So how would I sum up my time at RA? I think of it as the Fridays of sushi places. Just like Fridays they try to get you in with great prices on happy hour items, and then they hope that you try something off of their regular menu, to get you hooked. Mission accomplished RA, I will be back, but I think only for happy hour, I am not a sushi convert yet.

So, out of five spicy tuna rolls, five being best to zero being worst, I give RA Sushi 3 spicy tuna rolls.

For more locations of RA, and more info about there happy hour check them out here: http://www.rasushi.com/

RA Sushi Bar Restaurant on Urbanspoon

2 comments:

  1. Awesome post as always...I loooove sushi. But I looooove you more. And that sake....holy tuna roll. Good stuff.

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  2. Had lunch today at RA in San Diego. I am not a Sushi guy but went with three who are. Much better than I thought, except for the eel, and the "jowl" of some fish. Pass on that next time. I would go back.

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