harakari time. while i have certainly discovered many a hidden gem in less that divine surroundings before, most of the time things are exactly as they would appear on the surface. sushi kata is situated in a run down strip mall in milwaukee. having discovered, much to our dismay, that our go-to japanese spot (meiji en) had recently closed its doors, we figured we'd give this highly rated spot a go.
chicken udon soup is my usual thing and i figured that was as good a way as any to see what was what. the ol' mamasan went with a spicy chicken bento box. it comes with a california roll but she was hoping she could swap it for a spicy tuna roll, and pay the difference in cost. the gentleman assured us that would be no problem. a couple minutes later we were brought some miso soup and a salad. the miso was bottom of the barrel, salty dung (no tofu or seaweed?). probably the worst miso soup we had ever been served in a restaurant. the "salad" consisted on a bunch of iceberg lettuce, a couple slivers of carrot and some type of sweet salad dressing. we gently brushed it all aside and our entrees arrived shortly thereafter. things looked fine for the most part, until our eyes reached the tuna roll. over the years ive seen the tuna in tuna rolls done a couple different ways, either chopped or with whole pieces. what i have never seen before is the tuna pureed. like it was whipped in a blender. it looked disgusting. i knew id be paying for it either way and took the plunge. it was not as awful as it looked but was certainly a poor representation of what this particular roll could be. as far as the rest of the meal went, my soup was fine, though there were more tendon clusters in the chicken than my gag reflex generally allows. the shrimp tempura tasted like old, frozen shrimp with a overabundance of batter. the spicy chicken was good in a 'cheap chinese food' kind of way. look. lets not dance around it; basically, our food sucked. to add insult to injury, when we received the bill, rather than charging us the $1.50 difference between the two rolls as he said we would, we were charged $3.95. not sure where that figure came from.
yes, the prices are cheap and that is made possible by the low quality (and lack) of ingredients that they are using and the corners they are cutting. if you look carefully at the positive reviews here for this place, the majority of them come from 1 time reviewers, which is usually a sign that "friends" of the restaurant are writing them. well, im a friend of good food as well as the working man and my advice to you would be to steer clear of this vastly mis-rated dump.
grade: d- (at least the food didnt make me sick)