Ichibankan Express SFU

I don’t usually write reviews but I seriously have to for this place. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY HERE. This place serves the worst quality food you can imagine. I purchased 3 different roles and got food poisoning from it. The rice was so gross i felt like puking while eating it. I ended up throwing the other 2 rolls out. Seriously avoid this place for your own good.

I tried their teriyaki salmon, and it was barely edible. It was slimy with the skin on. It was not teriyaki sauce but some kind of weird brown sauce. I promised to myself I would never eat there again! Very nice people though.

Avoid at all cost. I had an oyako don. The egg was like a separate thing added onto a rice bowl. The egg and meat were cold while the rice warm. That is not how you make an oyako don…

By far the worst food on campus. Considering how abysmal some (clearly, not all) other options are, that’s quite the statement.
Over the last 8 years, I’ve:
— Gotten a Katsu Don that was clearly microwaved (hot on the outside, cold on the inside),
— Gotten a short rib bento box where some of the meat was actually just fat,
— Gotten the worst sushi I’ve ever eaten, period. Both rice and fish tasted stale.
Three strikes, you’re out. Avoid this place like the plague. I’m amazed they’re still in business.

yeah definitely not impressed with this place. Went in here starving and picked up a ready sushi box. Worst sushi I’ve had… pretty sure the tuna had gone bad and they tried to cover up the taste with teriyaki sauce… I ended up throwing it away… I do not recommend this place.

$ 2.50 for miso soup — and it was at least a good centimeter and a half empty from the top of the bowl when I opened it.
There was a time when this place was considered decent (quality/​price ratio) but now it just feels like you are being gouged because they can’t compete with all the other offerings in the area.

So bad. I ordered a beef teriyaki don in this place and there was a pebble it it. Literally a rock the size of your eraser on the back of a pencil. And I bit into it. Not a happy camper. Prices have gone up steadily over the past several years. It’s no longer a great deal for lunch.

As excited as I was to see a sushi place up on SFU, this place is disappointing.
Parking is available in front for 15 minutes. Not sure how tight they enforce this rule.
The inside is a bit bare, but you have to remember that this establishment caters to mostly starving students.
Donburi bowls can be had in the $ 7 range, and sushi rolls (pack of 6) are some $ 3 – 4. Not the cheapest to be honest, and the pieces are quite small.
What really got me though is the rather low quality of the food. I’d say some food courts taste better than this. The rice was decent, but my teriyaki chicken bowl also came with a soggy piece of lettuce.
Can’t say I’ll be coming back anytime soon. I’d recommend eating at Subway next door instead.

I used to come here for sushi, but quickly realized that there are much, much better options on the SFU Burnaby campus than this place. The rice in their sushi is always stale, and plus they put a ton of avocado in the california rolls and not enough [imitation] crab.
I always see people ordering their rice bowls, so I thought that I’d give it a go, and it was very bland and the texture was just off. There was a ton of rice and not enough meat, too, so I thought that the price was ridiculous as it literally cost them $ 1 to make considering the ingredients involved. (For me and my boyfriend, it ended up being around $ 20.)
Anyway, now that I’ve found someplace better, I won’t be going back here.

Prices at Ichibankan are generally pretty low, but not quite low enough for the food quality.
The sushi is definitely a no-​no unless it’s a veggie roll, and most of the rice bowls and bento boxes aren’t too impressive either. As a rule, avoid anything from there with chicken in it too. Every once in awhile I’d get one of the meals with gyoza or eel, and those are fairly okay, though I probably wouldn’t choose them over a lot of the other restaurants at Cornerstone.
The actual place itself, as mentioned, is pretty uncomfortable to eat at. It gets pretty crowded and the seats aren’t too cozy. There is some space outside though.
Overall, I’d go there out of necessity, but I rarely choose it when there are other options.

The only reason we would ever come here is because we were up on the mountain and didn’t want to go down for anything better. The staff here are pretty busy and they don’t spend much time trying to make anything good. The sushi quality is lower than a mall’s food court. But, there isn’t much else to choose from if you are stuck at SFU.
The place is quite uncomfortable. Buy your food and leave! Go out and sit on the steps and enjoy the sunshine (it’s almost worth it to eat out in the rain). Overall, the prices aren’t all that bad and I’m sure that this place will stay ultra busy.

I have such a tumultuous relationship with this place. Indeed, it is very love-​hate.
I love it because the sushi is fairly reasonably priced, and I live within a two-​minute walk, meaning I can pick up some rolls whenever I’m too lazy to cook. This has saved me on more than a few occasions.
I hate it because the rolls really aren’t that good at all, but when I’m craving sushi I just can’t keep myself away. Don’t even get me started on the hot food items. Those are just plain nasty and should be avoided at all cost. Have you ever watched them being prepared? They literally just stick the plastic serveware into the microwave. Heating foods in cheap plastic is a big no-​no in my books.
If you go into Ickibankan around dinner time, the choice of rolls is usually scant to say the least. Also, if you ask them if it’s possible to get a roll made, they will (politely) apologize and tell you that they’re out for the day. Really? You’re out? I have a hard time beliving that, but I’m not one to press the issue.
Also, they have a tendency to close whenever they feel like it. There have been numerous times when I’ve gone by in the early evening, only to find the lights out –even though their sign indicates they should theoretically be open.
Oh, Ichibankan. Will we see eachother again? Yes, it’s very likely, although thankfully my impending move back to Vancouver will bring me much better sushi options.

This is sub-​par sushi. It’s rolled by machine. And over the past 3 years, the prices have been rising steadily to the point where it isn’t even a deal anymore. I’ve also noticed the quality degrading rapidly. They even give you less ginger and wasabi now than they used to.
I realize that global food prices, and especially the cost of rice, have been skyrocketing in the last couple of years. But this place is now at the point where their major redeeming quality — being a bargain — is now gone.
However: I will give 2 stars rather than 1 for the simple reason of convenience. Outside of lunch hours, you can walk in and grab a ready made sushi box and pay for it and be out of there before the next 145 bus arrives at its stop. And sometimes, when I’m starving and I have precisely 9 minutes to get something or collapse in the Burnaby Mountain snow, this place is handy to have around.

Ichibankan Express is the Japanese restaurant at SFU’s new Cornerstone complex. To call it a restaurant is an overstatement, but it’s too small to be a cafeteria and too big to be a sushi stand. There’s a display of take-​away sushi in disposable plastic containers and a cashier, who can disappear to a kitchen somewhere in the back. You order at the front and wait, or if you bought sushi, leave. Hand-​drawn 8′ 11″ signs and ugly photos of the food cover the walls. It feels like a high school cafeteria but with much less food.
The other reviewer mentioned it was «the only decent sushi you can get on SFU Burnaby campus». I’d have to disagree on the use of the word «decent». I also don’t know who would call it cheap. $ 3.75 gets you a 6-​piece roll of styrofoamy rice and some minced-​up mush of fish and mayo. This includes the california roll (not actually fish), spicy tuna, and a few other kinds. There’s also a dynamite roll or prawn roll for the same price that have tiny slivers of shrimp or prawn in place of the mush. There might be one whole shrimp in 6 pieces. I don’t see why anyone thinks these $ 3.75 rolls are special, especially when they’re so bad. You could also order a few fish nigiri for $ 1.50+ apiece, tuna and salmon or something, if you were in the mood to pay an actual sushi restaurant price for a old, gummy sliver of fish. There are also inari and tamago, which are nicer because there is no Inchibankan Express fish in them.
From the kitchen you can get a $ 7 bento or a don (from $ 6 to $ 7.50 depending on the kind of meat). I would like to re-​emphasize what a terrible deal this is. Who really thinks $ 6 is good for a credit-​card-​size square of greasy meat in a giant bowl of white rice? Even by SFU mountain standards it’s a rip-​off. The Bamboo Garden chinese restaurant and Donair place both give more and better tasting meat for less money. The sugary BBQ sauce makes the meat more bearable better than the sushi, but sugar and chili aren’t strong enough to wash out the taste of rip-​off.
I don’t usually go into so much detail about such tiny places but I think it’s a disservice to perpetuate the weirdly popular myth that this place is such a boon to have around.