Itami Sushi

Saw a mouse run across the floor! Stayed even though wife was a little freaked out. Sashimi portion was small but the rolls were ok.

Solid 4 stars. Light monday night crowd so service was great. Loved the caterpillar and rocky roll. Super fresh.

Enjoyed the dynamite roll and r9cken cali roll very good quality very reasonable price high quality and decent price good hours

I don’t know if this is a Victoria thing, but I absolutely love how the «default tuna sashimi» is white albacore tuna, not the conventional red bluefin tuna! Anyway, before I go into detail with my tuna bias, Itami Sushi is an excellent sushi stop in downtown Victoria. Thickly sliced sashimi and reasonably priced… Just the way I like it!
Normally I am not a fan of tuna because most restaurants serves the red sashimi from bluefin tuna, which is usually lacking in taste as it is generally from the cheapest, low-​fat cut. However, Itami serves the more unconventional type of tuna for its tuna sashimi: the white meat from albacore tuna. The vast difference between the bluefin and the albacore tunas are that the latter has more fat so it has more flavor. As a salmon fan, the biggest plus for me is that because of the higher fatty content, albacore tuna tastes like salmon with the texture of a tuna sashimi!
Okay, sorry for the long rant about my tuna bias, but my point is that it’s awesome that Itami serves the better tuna than the convention. However, whether you are as ridiculous as I am with the tuna issue, you will definitely have a good sushi experience here at Itami!
—
tl;dr version:
1) Albacore tuna for the win!
2) Reasonably priced and thick sashimi pieces

The sushi is good, the prices are reasonable but the service is slowwwww. Good thing we weren’t in a rush.
We had the miso soup, cream cheese rolls, yellowtail nigiri, super dynamite roll, amd the rock & cali roll. The soup was nice and hot unlike most places that serve it lulewarm. The nigiri was a nice, thick cut of meat, and the rolls were very delicious. Just took a bit of time to receive the food than we usually expect from a sushi place. I would skip the cream cheese rolls. The cheese was still cold.

We come here at least once a week — wonderful food to enjoy here. Pretty busy around lunchtime on weekdays, but the bento boxes are fabulous! Fast service, make sure to get the steak sauce on your rice! Can’t go wrong if you’re looking for a solid sushi joint in Vic.

We had lunch here twice in four days. The people are very nice. The food is fresh, subtle and very well prepared. They are also open mid afternoon when many places close between lunch and dinner. Perfect for a lazy vacation day lunch and a healthy meal. It is also really clean and beautifully decorated.

Just wanted to say I’ve gone back despite advice from my friends.
They’ve fixed most of the issues I’ve had now.
Sometimes service can have small hiccups, but I don’t get missed meals anymore.
Thanks Itami, great improvement!

ive been coming here on a semi-​regular basis for lunch since June 2014.
Many great lunch combinations available starting at around $ 10. I usually have the Teriyaki Beef Bento Box and Sushi combo. Good serving of tasty teriyaki beef, miso soup, salad, deep fried battered tofu, rice with delicious Japanese sauce/​gravy, PLUS 3 pieces of very good nigiri (tuna, sake and ebi) and 3 pieces of excellent California roll. Cost was $ 12.95 and I was completely stuffed and satisfied. Service is always very prompt and efficient. The room is large and decorated in an odd somewhat unpleasant way with an overload of black and red — a little weird or odd and very dark. Love the deep fried coconut marshmallow that comes in the middle of the bento box!
Will definitely return and recommend given my multiple excellent experiences here.

My sister and i had sushi and tempura here the other evening. The food was quite good and came fast, but once we received our food the waitresses seemed to forget about us. We sat there for at least a half hour with no one stopping to see if we were done or wanted something else etc. It was quite bizarre.

Our food was very good & our waitress was very pleasant. Glad to see the joint was pretty packed when we arrived. That usually translate to happy customers & good food. We ordered 2 beef teriyaki lunch box. That comes with a side of miso soup & rice with steak sauce on top of it (a bit weird but in a good way). The chicken teriyaki lunch box also comes with miso soup. The beef tatami was a little on the vinegary side but enjoyed it. We also ordered tempura rolls & California rolls. Let’s just say we ate well & we were very happy with the food. Service was good.

The best bentos in victoria. They have excellent service and fresh food. Sushi is a bit pricy — but they often have deals. Try the steak sauce on your rice. A little bit of salty goodness. #yummmm

Itami went downhill. I had a very good plate of sushi there last fall, but yesterday my lunch bento was less than impressive! The chicken katsu was dry, the rice was dry and clumpy, and my agedashi tofu came without agedashi sauce! Any attempt to flag down a waiter to fix the food was ignored. At least I would expect well cooked rice from a sushi restaurant. Definitely not going back.

My husband and i decided to try out this new restaurant, seeing the specials on the window. It turned out to be a great meal. The servers are a bit slow, but nonetheless extremely polite & positive. The sake was excellent & the rolls were great. The pricing is pretty readonable. This place has my full recommendation for good sushi, mind you! nothing mindblowing, but definitely worth it!

rolls are not too bad
don is okay
service is not that good

Decent sushi, terrible service. My wife and I went in last Saturday (²⁄₁) for lunch, the restaurant was not very busy. In the hour we were there, the waitress only came to our table once or twice, every time I had to flag her down, despite the fact that we were seated directly between the few other occupied tables. I asked for water twice, and never received it, ordered miso soup, which never arrived, and I ordered a beer, which also never arrived! Our only theory is that we somehow made our server upset. Our sushi sat on the bar for a good ten minutes before she bothered to bring it to us, while she seemed fairly attentive to the other tables, most of whom came in after us.
The sushi was decently priced, although a lot of their rolls contained smoked salmon and/​or cream cheese, both of which I don’t get terribly excited about. They have two «regular» sushi rolls for $ 3 – 7 and «speciality» rolls for $ 12+, which appear quite a bit larger according to the pictures in the menu. we both ordered a regular roll and a specialty roll, and were surprised that they were nearly the exact same size. If you eat here, stick to the cheaper rolls if you are concerned about value.
When we received our bill, I was not too surprised to see that they charged me for the beer and miso soup we never received, and they charged us full price for a specialty roll that was supposed to be $ 3 discounted according the the menu still sitting on our table. What a terrible, awkward dining experience. Surprising given the other positive reviews here.

This restaurant exists in some sort of time warp that I don’t fully understand but nonetheless delight in! Lots of over-​the-​top art and the like, harkening back to the late ‘80s in some imagined and ridiculously-​exuberant way; music by Com Truise should’ve been blaring over the speakers.
Maybe not, maybe it takes itself more seriously than that, but it’d be a good place to show up in a sports jacket, with a little baggie of coke in an inside pocket.
If it takes itself seriously, it’s not wrong to. Okay, the washrooms are reflective and black on all sides so you feel like you’ve stumbled into a holodeck, but that’s fun. This place is fun. But the food is seriously good.
The tempura, I have to say, is the best and crispiest I’ve ever had, in a lifetime of having had tempura hundreds of times, in all kinds of places from Honolulu to Moscow. It’s something special; it’s the most special thing about the place.
Tempura rolls, even, retain the brittle-​like crunch, which is a stupendous thing. They rush the fresh tempura out from the kitchen and hand it over to the chefs working at the sushi bar, who quickly get it into makizushi so that it will still be warm and wonderful as it reaches your mouth. Their exuberance is further evident in a special tempura yam roll they make which is topped by a mass of fried, crisped yam bits that don’t a little resemble Jeremy Clarkson’s hair, with kewpie mayonnaise slathered hither and thither.
It’s a great place to have a bit of a laugh at, but there’s a serious awesomeness about at least some of the food. Would not hesitate to spend far too much money gorging on tempura maki here. Moreover, it wouldn’t even be that expensive, as the prices somehow aren’t as exuberant as the environs. Very cool!

My new favourite sushi restaurant! The newly renovated dining area looks awesome, especially the huge waterfall by the entrance. The fish was amazingly fresh, definitely wild, and the Cali roll comes standard with real crab. I eat sushi all the time, and this will be my new go to spot!

We stumbled across Itami on our honeymoon, strolling the Victoria streets. We were warmly welcomed and got overly excited about the nifty iPad menus. :) The staff was attentive and kind, and we swapped stories with them about our travels. The sushi was delicious; wild salmon sashimi that was the most gorgeous red-​pink, flaky toro sashimi, unique rolls, and tangy yellowtail sushi. The salad dressing was especially yummy, as was the miso soup. They even brought me the bowl of plain sushi rice I was craving immediately. If we lived anywhere near here, we’d certainly be back. Thank you Itami for our honeymoon sushi feast!