Ahi Sushi + Tapas

We went there last year before they closed.
The Sushi was very good.
I would have rated this place 4 or 5 stars if on food alone.
Unfortunately though, our server had very bad body odor and a bit of attitude so we decided we would never return.

CLOSED — OUT OF BUSINESS. Reopening as Yama Sushi.
It’s really too bad, because this had become my favorite go-​to sushi place near my work. I hope the new restaurant/​new owners are as good!

Just had a great dinner and great service with Bryan! He was very informative and the sushi was fresh and tasteful!

We started off with RockStar parking right out front. Then we were pleasantly surprised by the cool space and welcoming service. Our Server, was very knowledgable and explained the menu items. Great Sushi and great prices. We will be back!

Went at about 6pm on a Saturday night and had a wonderful meal. There was no wait, hard to find in portland, and the food was great. The service wasn’t exceptional but it was good enough that I’m not taking a star off. The prices were not exceptional on the special rolls but they were good on the «tapas» and great on the regular sushi & rolls.

The service is good, food is good, prices are not. The atmosphere is outstanding though, very smooth and polished, cool light fixtures, and you could eat in the bathroom if you felt so inclined.
The food is much prettier than it is delicious, but it still tastes great. The wait staff was very friendly too, they have a very attractive darker skinned gentleman there who was kind enough to play along with my flirting even though he was clearly straight! Lol! Bless his heart.
Only problem is the prices. $ 7 for 4 small pieces of fish! One piece on some rice for $ 2! Sushi Ohana has equal quality food for half the price. To stay competitive, they need to figure out a way to bring prices down or portions up. However, prices aren’t so high that I won’t return for proximity sake.

There was a lot of raw food there. Fish, sea urchins, octopus. And what else. Oh yeah, flies! Everywhere. I hate writing a bad review, but c’mon guys, get a fly swatter or something. I can overlook flies in any restaurant EXCEPT a sushi restaurant. The sweet and sour fried chicken was good. Sushi was ok.

Pretty good. I find it weird that it’s called sushi and tapas… but whatever. It’s small plate Japanese style. I only tried a few dishes since I am GF and Veggie. But there were a few options that were very tasty… the eggplant was so sweet and caramelized it was like dessert. but in a good way!
If you sit at the bar you can order from the happy hour menu. which is a good way to get a few cheap things. so you can splurge on the more spendy rolls or sake!
It’s not AMAZING, or anything. but it’s a nice place to have in the neighborhood. not too busy, so you can find a table when other places have a line out the door.

Came early on a Monday with the one year old hoping to get happy hour, as the sign outside indicated it just started. After we had been seated, our waitress told us that happy hour was at the bar only. Which we couldn’t sit at with a minor. So no happy hour for us. They couldn’t possibly make an exception in this case. I have no idea why we stayed but it felt awkward to leave after our water was poured. It’s not like the bar was in a faraway part of the restaurant or that there were really that many customers there at all. I have no tolerance for businesses with nonsensical, unwaivable policies and rigid employees.

Awesome service best miso in town and the hottest saki ever!!! I really like all the rolls that aren’t deep fried. Especially the Willamette roll is to die for! Orgasm for your mouth!

And the service was so bad!
First time here and never coming back.

A very sleek feel and look to Ahi Sushi & Tapas gives it kind of a hip feel and this seems to me a good place to sit down over an amorous date, room to play footsie, have private conversations, and a dark, but cool vibe. My friend and I sat at the bar, and there was no footsie. but we did have some private conversations (as I always do when I’m gonna later Unilocal a place!).
A three star for me is kind of a «catch all». If I give a place 2 stars, I wont be back unless forced by gun or owned by relatives. But three stars leaves room to go up (as well as down) and there are many 3-​star places I truly dig and will oft return to. But I kind of like this place despite some big flaws.
The food is very uneven. Very. Using a groupon that was soon to expire, we went during happy hour — which is not valid for the discount. We ordered a few things from the regular menu (ahi special 3 in a cucumber wrap, nabi yaki udon and bacon wrapped asparagus), and a couple from the HH menu (seaweed salad and panko-​fried pork). The seaweed salad was delicious (but very small) with sesame seeds (A+), the asparagus (B+) was also quite good (but it’s hard to go wrong with that combo). The pork (B+) was lovely and moist but the dipping sauce was so-​so. The udon (C+) was pretty good, but really just one note, and not near enough of the good stuff in the soup) and the sushi (D) was really dull and the cucumber wrap simply doesn’t work. The innards fall right out, and there’s just no flavor to the dish.
The place was not terribly busy on a Friday afternoon, and there seem to be plenty of people working. They were relatively quick with the food, it came out piece by piece — but the help still left a bit to be desired. My friend asked for a recommendation on Saki. She asked for something middle of the road dry and on the cheap side. With all the options on the menu, the bartender (also server) suggested something for $ 15… Are you really going to make my friend humble herself (again) and tell you that that’s still too expensive? Yes, apparently so. Maybe give 2 options next time, one actually fitting the request.
I then told the dude that I would need his attention to sort out my drink needs, so he should go help the table waiting for menus. He did. But he didn’t come back anytime soon which annoyed me. I was unimpressed by the cocktail menu ($ 1 off during HH) so I got the one drink w/​o cucumber. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE cucumber — just not with my alcohol). I got something with ginger and bitters and I really didnt like it — I had to force myself to finish it. Imagine me only getting one drink because it took that long to suck down.
Anyhow — I do like the vibe, and some of the food is great. The presentation and plating is sometimes downright beautiful, and the place feels cozy. But get it together — food and service wise.

The place is beautiful. The food tastes good.
I probably would never go back. There are so many sushi places in Portland to try.

While I agree that the food looks amazing, I do not think that the food is actually as great as it looks. It’s nothing to write home about.
My biggest issue with this place is the service. It took ten minutes for someone to notice us standing in the doorway waiting to be seating. (There’s no hostess or even a place where a hostess would be so you just awkwardly stand there until a server sees you or comes within your vacancy so you can get their attention.)
Then, we get seated. I later realized that the bartender was our server. He came over and was very nice and helpful. BUT, he forgot to put in our order for sushi. We got appetizers but he had to put the order back in after we reminded him. Mind you, that was 45 minutes later and he had not come to check on us at all since. This is when I realized he was the ONLY bartender and our table was across the restaurant from the bar.
Also, the organization is terrible. The kitchen is run poorly. There’s no place to put food that is ready so a chef just ends up holding the plate out until a server can come grab it. It’s slow to churn out food – even without the server forgetting to put in my order. Super slow for a week night.
And finally, they brought out orders as they were made. Meaning, one person would have food and likely be finished with it by the time another dish came out. I get that it’s tapas but if people are clearly not sharing everything, it’d be nice to at least have food ready for both in close succession.
Two stars cause the food was pretty. And I won’t be back.

We came here on a Groupon not really expecting the pictures to be a lot better than the reality. Well, our expectations were met on some, and not on the others.
First, I want to address the fact that sushi and tapas in the name is a big turn off for me. I’ve never had Spanish sushi so it just paints a weird visual. My partner justified the name insisting that the idea is that they serve small Japanese plates. Fine, then call it sushi and izakaya. We learned what tapas meant and people can learn the meaning of izakaya too. Okay that’s that.
As for the service, we arrived at 5pm and only one person was running the whole place. Not too bad since they just opened, but he was also the bartender and it was happy hour, so when a group of six sat the bar, service all but came to a halt. After about 15 minutes of waiting to order more «tapas», a waitress joined the floor and the service issue was quickly resolved. The service overall wasn’t too bad overall but being an observer, I just plain felt bad for the waiter.
Onto food: we started our meal with agedashi tofu, horenso goma, and nasu dengaku. (If you don’t speak Spanish, you might want to learn Japanese. These are izakaya, not tapas!). The tofu left much to be desired without a rich bonito broth and the nasu was absolutely nothing but mushy eggplant with a sugar soy sauce. I almost sent it back but my three year old daughter was enjoying so much se had it for dessert. The horenso was delicious and well worth the $ 4 for a heaping serving of blanched spinach.
We then ordered three rolls, the Crazy Monkey, Ahi Tataki, and Clinton roll. The crazy monkey was super spicy but I ate the whole thing alone as it was perfect for my palate. The Clinton roll was also delicious but with 6 thick sliced pieces, I don’t think it was worth the $ 13 we paid for. And since the Crazy Monkey was so spicy we decided to order the ahi Tataki without the spicy tuna. The waiter told us there was a $ 1 up charge and then brought us a weird looking tuna roll that had some pieces of seared tuna and other pieces of raw tuna on the top of the roll with dried garlic chips. Rule number one of plating: don’t put anything on a plate you cannot eat. Garlic chips are vile! But that is just my opinion.
We finished our order with salmon and hamachi sashimi and a scallop hand roll. My verdict is that this is the best thing they serve. The salmon melted in my mouth like butter. And for a few bucks less, you get more fish than you do in their rolls.
In the end, we bought another Groupon to go back because we are more informed about their menu so I hope to bump this review up to 4 – 5 stars but my first experience was good enough that I would go back.

My wife and I discussed how many stars we would give Ahi after eating there the other night. Unlike Unilocal’s suggested ‘A-​OK’, 3 stars to me means ‘EH’.
In order of eating, we tried the:
Spinach Sesame Salad– Nice, but a tad too much sesame paste for my tastes.
Chicken Yakitori– Not very much flavor and the chicken texture was odd. To the point where we discussed whether it was really chicken.
The Tuna Roll and Spicy Yellowtail came next. Again, rather dull. For such simple rolls, things have to be really spot on to be good. These were just so-​so. It seemed that maybe the nori around the tuna roll hadn’t been toasted, because it was pretty chewy.
The last two rolls were specials, the Midnight Sun and the Flaming Dragon. The presentation on the Dragon was cool, but the numerous ingredients all blended so nothing really stood out. It didn’t taste bad, it just was sort of mixed up. And the Midnight Sun did have an off flavor, as thought the seared salmon had been frozen. In hindsight, I also thought that $ 14 for one sushi roll was pretty steep considering that you can pay less than that for a pretty nice entrée at many places in town.
With several sushi places pretty close Ahi, I would think that they’d have to stand out from a crowd to succeed. From what we experienced, we’ll be going to the other places for our rolls.

–Very good prices for decent sushi — one of the better sushi:$$$ ratios minus the individual sushi (definitely go with a set or roll)
–Drinks were reasonable too
–I could easily see this place being a hot spot for grabbing a few drinks with friends in the clinton area given the style of food they serve (tapas — although it’s a very loose use of the term)
–There’s potential for this place to do very well, but it will have to come with time… and good Unilocal reviews!

I really wanted to like this place considering it likes two blocks from my apartment. I showed up at 6 and was told to sit anywhere I felt like *but* they were having a happy hour at the bar. Cool, I like happy hour, so I sat at the bar. And then I hear a table being offered happy hour stuff. ah, what? Why am I sitting at this bar that has no backs to their stools if I could have sat at a table? Not to mention the lighting on the bar makes their two-​sided menu almost impossible to read.
Waitress gets me a menu and then disappears for a while despite there only being two other tables. I figure out my drinks and my food and once she comes back I order. I notice there’s no timing to the kitchen — people get served whatever comes out regardless if other people at that table haven’t been served. Also some really gross habits like grabbing a dish rag, wiping something down, then reaching into the container of drink condiments (cherries, limes, etc) and physically touching the items going in the drinks. Ew? Im glad I got my $ 9 bottle of sake. that was 200ml. It’d be nice if the size of the bottle was listed on the menu, but at least I didn’t have someones dirty fingers in my drink.
The kitchen put food out pretty quickly, but there was no official place for the food to go, so the plates kind of got put where ever there was space. I had the happy hour spicy tuna roll (5pc) and the caterpillar roll (~8pc?). Both were OK, but nothing to really rave about. I intended on getting something to go, but between the price and the quality, I just bailed on that idea.
I wish I would have walked a few extra blocks and gone to Sushi Mazi.

Ahi? Ah, no.
First the good, Inari and cucumber avocado roll, were very nice. My wife asserts the rice is much better than Tani’s. I’m not so sure. The service was very good.
Nothing we saw or ate resembled tapas, even though four of our dishes came from that part of the menu. Perhaps someone involved with the place has an aversion to the term «small plates.»
The Japanese curry (a «tapas» item) featured two large cuts of onion and three baby carrots in the heavy, decent enough, sauce. The clear broth fish soup started off well, but the uni dimensional flavor profile made it a chore to finish. A baked eggplant dish was overly rich — like a deep pudding. But awkward to eat with the provided chopsticks. One needed to cut through the firm bits as it slid around on your plate.
Looking over the other reviews it could well be that our experience differs in part from staying (with one exception) vegetarian.
I also see other reviews liking the music. On the night we were there it seemed like a Pandora mix of house trance mixed with 8 bit video game sound tracks.
There are many better dining options within a few blocks of that location.

I went here when they were new.
The staff were helpful. When we requested plum saki, and they didn’t have any, they brought over some samples of different kinds. When we wanted eel, the waitress nicely pointed out the Japanese name for it on the menu. We ended up getting the sashimi platter. It was huge, and the chef came out to describe every part of it.
The wait was a little longer than we expected for our food but they brought out a side dish on the house for us to snack on. The quality of the fish was high. There was no fishy smell or oily taste. The wasabi was strong and the ginger white.
It was pretty obvious they were putting in extra since they were new and wanting to please, but it worked. It was my friends first time trying sushi and now he’s hooked. I will be going back.