Balgowlah Sushiroll

This place is great for small groups and is an ideal place for families with young children. 3 hour parking in Stockland shopping centre car park below. Hours of business between 11am-8:45am. You can order takeaway or dine in. Seating can be beside sushi train or at seperate seating in restaurant. My family has been coming back for years as it is quite a nice location and has a great family atmosphere.

I came here with a friend, sushi was way over priced and not good quality. Was disappointed wouldn't return

We were not expecting haute cuisine, but this was very underwhelming. We ordered two dishes to start and two mains. Everything came pretty much at once, in a hurried manner. The green beans were over-cooked and flavourless, the tempura batter was thick, the teriyaki salmon was dry and the yakini beef overly sweet. The mixed tempura plate was described as two prawns and five vegetable pieces. Two of the vegetable pieces were capsicum, two were potato, and the batter was so thick I could not determined what the other was. The rice was good. The main flavour in the meal was from the little packets of ginger and wasabi provided, added to the rice. Not the worst meal I've had but we won't be back.

OK, so dining out Japanese is not what it used to be. You can get Japanese from every shopping centre food court, and indeed some supermarkets. Japanese used to be a somewhat novel, exotic and healthier option – and good value to boot. At Sushiroll (and to be fair they are not alone) the healthiness has been reduced by slathering every other roll in sauce in the name of “fusion”; and what is left is the most ordinary range of sushi imaginable. Sure to delight bland-palated teenagers and meat-and-three-vegers (including potato) everywhere (the latter may well still consider this type of cuisine “exotic”).So OK, we hadn’t been for a while, but when the Sushiroll opened at Balgowlah it as REALLY GOOD, it had a different menu from the majority of other Japanese; a bit more expensive but worth it for the imagination and execution of the dishes. It still had the train for novelty and more standard sushi offerings. It also had my all time favourite Okonomiyaki, which I used to duck out for of a lunch time as a treat.And, yes, I know they can change their menu without my permission, but when I asked about my missing favourite (which I think I do a fair job of pronouncing) I was met with blank/incomprehensible stares and lots of menu pointing – and really I can’t point to what’s not there. Finally, one of the sushi makers (nope, sorry the ordinariness of sushi offered I just cannot credit him with the title chef) comes over says “Oh, Okonomiyaki. No”. By this time, the frustration of the exchange had already defeated me. I was ready to leave. But in the interests of family harmony, I spent the remainder of the evening sipping my one glass of wine (which was not bad), and watched the sushi go round. There was nothing there that appealed to me – bland, bland, same, same. Somehow the bill was still just short of $100, for 2 children and 1 adult – there goes the final criteria of “good value”. The train concept has always been deceptive in terms of cost, but with one adult not eating, and 2 children with pretty straight forward sushi palates this was very expensive to my mind.Maybe, the business has changed hands – but ultimately this is a local eat for us, the fact that we hadn’t noticed the change just evidences the wealth of choice = competition. Something to think about for the owners. If you are hungry and feeling like sushi, I would suggest you swing by your local shopping centre food court towards closing time and buy up big on the reduced sushi for a fraction of the cost.

Warning, it took 25 minutes to get a drink!!!!! The store is really pretty, however the staff is incomparably.