Fuji Restaurant

My boyfriend, Matthew, & I vacationed in Big Bear last weekend in celebration of my 23^rd birthday. After a few days of greasy meals eaten on the road & one too many drunk McDonalds runs, we were craving something healthy yet delicious & decided that sushi was the only logical option.
We were rather disappointed when both Google and Unilocal revealed only ONE sushi restaurant in Big Bear & were even more put off by the fact that Fuji sushi had only 3 stars. Given that our next healthy meal option was salads, we decided to give it a shot anyways.
The first to arrive upon opening, we made ourselves comfortable at the bar & were greated warmly by the sushi chef behind the counter.
Most other reviews about this place complained about slow service, but to be fair… every person working there during our stay was AT LEAST in their 60s. If you’re looking for sushi to be thrown over the sushi bar to you in minutes, please keep looking. but if you’d like good quality sushi prepared carefully by kind people, then I’m sure you’d enjoy your stay as much as we did
Matthew & I ordered the 3 Color Delight, the Spicy Ribbon Roll & the Seared Tuna Sashimi. All of our food was wonderful, but I just have to talk about the Spicy Ribbon Roll. Most of the time when you go to a sushi place & order «spicy tuna» you get some bright red, siracha flavored mixture that doesn’t in any way possible resemble a cute little tuna fishy. But wasn’t I surprised when our roll came out & the «spicy tuna» we ordered was fresh tuna marinated in spices. Wonderful!
If you’re looking for a good authentic sushi place while in Big Bear, give Fuji Sushi a chance. You won’t be disappointed.
…unless you want sushi at 3 pm. Then you’ll be disappointed because they don’t open until 5!

It’s a clean, respectable Japanese restaurant with fresh food. No, it’s not the best food or sushi in the world, but it’s Big Bear and it’s fine. The people are nice and professional. They’re proud of their restaurant. I’ll come back.

Japanese owned, and very professional. A totally undiscovered gem in Big Bear. This restaraunt is awesome. I highly recommend this place for dinner, and it is totally kid friendly.

Absolutely amazing food and service. The hidden gem of big bear. Staff was super friendly. The sushi was fresh and tender and don’t even get me started on the beef teriyaki!

We are locals and this is the only place we go for Sushi. They recently repainted and recarpeted and replaced the blinds, so the interior looks and smells clean. The food is always good, but Sho is my favorite Sushi Chef Friday through Monday night. We go once a week because Japenese is our daughter’s favorite cuisine. However, there is only one waitress, Hideko, so service can be on the slow side and the bathrooms did not get redone also, hence only four stars. That said, the sushi and hot food are all delicious. Susie the owner and chef is the real deal and her recipes are authentic. We had a party of 12, we sat around the Teppan table (No Teppan Chef for over a year), but EVERYONE loved thier food! We has sushi, sashimi (yellowtail jalapeño, salmon and whitefish carpaccio, and salmon skin salad, all were incredible) They make really good miso soup and the beef udon soup is really excellent, the tempura was perfect not greasy. The service was really good too, but it wasn’t that busy. It was a wonderful fun meal! I recommend Fuji.

Had dinner here last night. Had a great meal and friendly service. We are fairly new locals and have been wanting to try Fuji for a while. I love sushi and was not disappointed. I had tempura, sushi and sashimi and my husband had two kinds of grilled fish. We would recommend Fuji restaurant.
But please, if you are up here on one of the busiest nights of the year do not expect ANY restaurant to be at their VERY best. I have noticed that most of the bad reviews that I have read here on Unilocal,for local restaurants, seem to be from New Years or Fourth of July or other out of the ordinary busy weekends. The restaurants up here try their best to be ready for big crowds. But I think it would be difficult to hire and train additional staff to work just a few nights a year and do the job well. Please be patient and kind.

First time coming here was delicious, I got the tempura udon 8.00 and the sunrise roll 13.50. Friendly service and good atmosphere. ¹⁰⁄₁₀ would go again.

THE WORST!!! Let me repeat it, the worst.
I wouldn’t recommend this place to eat to my worst enemy.
I just left this restaurant 20 minutes ago and felt the need to warn others about this experience.
The service was terrible. I had to track down the 70 year old server to order my drinks, then again to order food, then again to receive the bill. Thank god I didn’t need more water.
Now onto the actual sushi. It was not fresh and smelt like bad fish.(Guys, you know the smell I’m talking about). In our oysters there was a nice thick black hair chilling right in the middle of one of the oysters. I should have then taken that as a sign to leave then but I am an idiot. We ordered 2 cut rolls and 3 hand rolls. They got the 3 hand rolls and 1 cut roll out in about 15 minutes. And then the next cut roll didn’t come out for about 20 minutes after I had to remind our server that we were still waiting.
BEWARE!!! SAVE YOURSELF THE TRIP AND JUST WAIT TO EAT SUSHI BACK AT HOME!
So as we speak, I am sitting across from my beautiful girlfriend at Laguna Grill while she is eating French toast and very satisfied. And now I sit here with an upset stomach hoping to God that my New Years is not ruined from food poisoning.

Bad service and bad fish. Took two bites and left the rolls on the table. There «fresh» tuna smelt like out of a can. She screwed up on our drink orders, shorted us a beer. The imitation crab seemed like straight outta the grocery store. We left scared we were getting food poisoning. I feel like I might and my family as well. We ordered a lot of stuff on happy hour and were charged full price. My mom ordered the baked oysters, flouting in slimy sauce, she took one bite and ran to the bathroom and threw it up. This place should be shut down

Worst sushi I’ve ever had in my life !!! The flavors you’re used to are not there and it’s not fresh tasting what so ever. Baked mussels are oily and no flavor the table before us left all their food and we had our one year old daughter with us and we’re so tired we tried to give it a chance.

Fuji’s Sushi is the best in Big Bear hands down.
And recently discovered the whole hot menu and I may take sometime to get to all the stuff I want to eat!
Keep it up guys and have a good winter!

Believe the bad reviews, and then some. I honestly think most of the one star reviewers were holding back their understandable rage.
Anyway, I’ve come here about 3 – 4 times. The times when I came in and sat down with some friends and ordered happy hour weren’t too bad, but the service is cold and vacant at best, and the sushi is meh. The best thing on the menu is probably the saki, and that’s because they don’t make it in house.
Anyway, the reason I am writing this one star review is to warn people away from this restaurant, both to keep you from getting food poisoning and to save you a night of agony and disappointment when you should be enjoying dinner.
So I had called in to see if they could make an order to go, because I wasn’t sure if they did. However, they confirmed and took my order, and told me to be there in about 30 – 45 minutes. When we got to the restaurant at the time they told us, we walked in only to find that our order was not finished, and they told us to come back in ANOTHER 30 minutes. I’m kind of upset at this point but agree because I want sushi.
We drive to the store and pick up some things we needed while we waited, then drove back to the parking lot and waited the remainder of the time. Upon entering again, we not only found out that our order wasn’t done, but that they just started to make our order as we walked in THE SECOND TIME.
When asked how long it would be, the chef chimed right in with his horrible attitude and said that he didn’t know since they had to serve the tables first (all of which already had food when we walked in the first time, although I’m not sure if their orders were complete.) Anyway, we didn’t wait for them. We went through the Carl’s Jr. drive-​thru on the way home and had a much better experience. Avoid this place like the plague.

I had no desire to visit this place based on the reviews, but my friend was craving sushi, so off we went.
Friday night, 7:30 pretty prime dinner time. Or so you’d think. We saw four vehicles parked outside, but guess they were the employees’ because inside the restaurant, there were absolutely no other diners.
Service was prompt and fairly polite, albeit a bit cold and standoffish. Almost like she was surprised to have customers.
They had a fairly decent selection, but everything I tried seemed a bit off. The seaweed salad was still somewhat frozen and icy. Miso soup, bland and forgettable. The cuts of fish were very thin. The rolls were not tightly rolled, so that when you picked it up with your chopsticks the entire thing would fall apart.
There was also a sign in their windows about a dinner time happy hour discount, but don’t think it was honored because no discount was shown on the bill. Didn’t really care to ask, just wanted to get out of there.
I could see why the place was dead on a Friday night. Felt a little bad because they seemed like nice people, but meh.

Very friendly and helpful wait staff. Our waitress and food were very prompt and cooked/​prepared well. Sukiyaki was pretty good, and rice was very authentic with a slight vinegar taste (those of you who don’t like vinegar, authentic Japanese rice isn’t for you then, don’t complain). Tonkatsu was good as well. The fish tasted pretty fresh especially for 7000 feet up in the mountains. They even gave us an extra roll on the house. This is a family run restaurant so you can expect all the quirks that may come with that, but they are good people. Mochi was generously sized, and delicious! Would definitely visit again.

Fresh sushi in Big Bear! Not only was our meal delicious but also beautifully plated. The sushi chef was very interactive and helpful in trying new things. Definitely will be returning! Highly recommended.

Waited 45minutes for our food and still didn’t get any water. Shitty service.

The taste such as ramen is good.
But I feel it take too much time to food come. (serving time is not suit for me)

First, explaining the stars. I’m spoiled. Used to having easy access to some of the best quality food and chefs who know I prefer leaning much more toward Japanese style food and definitely not American style. Where omakase always is the way to go. Given the location must be tough and lots of their visitors probably aren’t too picky (I’ve been to long lasting places serving real actual rotten fish that sat around too long and wasn’t refrigerated properly… Not on purpose! Haha) I must give them bonus points for being able to even pull off «decent» or «meh» ingredients. But they do much better than that!
Really nice service. Cool hole in the wall type places I’ve come to enjoy more often than not. So I’d be really tempted to go 5 stars!
I just haven’t been there enough times yet to justify a full 5 yet. But I’m. Moving to town soon so we will see how things go.
They even serve natto, nice surprise. On the other hand they didn’t have ume (shiso), one of my favorite treats. Nor did they have mozuku, which I love to start off with. Probably because most people don’t want that stuff.
Most of the nigiri sushi was surprisingly nice. The salmon collar was really great. Some of the other «safer» stuff may have been a little uninspired but tasty, good quality. I intend to get back once a week.
Went during happy hour. I’d have gladly paid full price but love saving money. I’d have gladly waited much longer if it were busy season at peak hours but going while they’re not busy was great. They don’t waste time.
I get the impression they care about the ingredients, the food, the customer.
As of now I’d pretty confidently order anything on the menu even though I’m technically against patronizing any sushi-​ya that has white tuna on the menu. Wish they’d forget the peer (er client) pressure and just name things properly. I couldn’t even tell what it was. There’s no such thing as white tuna! What the F was is it?!?
So I’ll be breaking my own rules and going as often as I can. Until I get burned a few times. Hopefully that won’t happen. They’re nice folk who deserve to do well as a food-​oasis in a town of mostly smoked /​BBQ this or that with a nice sandwich shop tossed in…
In summary, don’t write this place off, don’t hesitate to ask about Japanese stuff off the menu, maybe they’ll add a few more rarities. Maybe bother to ask what the white tuna really is. I wish I had; just hungry with a lot on my mind that day.

Garbage. With lots of vinegar.
I take it the 5 star reviews are either fake or people were desperate for sushi up in the mountains. This place was a real bummer and the seared ahi at the bar down the street was much better.
Let’s talk food.
Salmon: delicious. It’s very hard to mess up on salmon. It was great and I highly recommend it. If you chose to go here.
Tuna: thinly cut. So much so that any remnant of flavor is lost.
Striped bass: over priced and chewy
Scallops: same quality you would get at an all you can eat place.
Yellow tail: delicious. But very thinly cut with a bulging glob of rice underneath.
Albacore: over seared, chewy. Not much to like here.
California rolls: not even rolled properly, rice is extremely soggy with a sickening vinegar flavor. I didn’t think it was possible to have bad imitation crab. But mix dry with barley any and you have yourself a miracle that is a nasty California roll.
«Premium rolls.» Why charge $ 14 for something that isn’t any good? Why charge that price for fish cut thin as paper?
I know why…
Because they are the only sushi place in town.
I didn’t even get started on the service but long story short, terrible. Drink refill are scarce. And it takes forever to bring out the food. Expect the table members to be eating one at a time.
Overall regretful. And I feel like I was robbed out of my hard earned money sampling all their crappy nigiri.

Very cozy restaurant, host by real Japanese, the food is amazing, don’t like the ramen so much, but sushi sashimi and wine are great! friendly service!