Volcano Sushi Cafe

Maximum order of 5 pieces of sushi. 30 minutes in between each order. Entire business model is centered around how long you’re willing to wait until you give up and leave. Unless of course, you fit their profile of what a good customer should look like. Then you can place your larger order and get your food before everyone else. 5 piece of nigiri. Not rolls. Slice the fish. Squeeze the rice. Put fish on rice.

I was a little hesitant to come here for lunch since it did not have a high rating, but a friend and I stopped by anyway. I had the rolls and crab rangoon and I must say they were delicious.
The place was almost empty and the waiter would come around often or you could easily catch his attention as he was off to the side.
Overall, I would come back (:

I can not believe that this place only has 3 stars. I’ve gone to Volcano twice, and both times the food was great, the servers were nice, and I left feeling full and happy.
The all-​you-​can-​eat sushi is absolutely spectacular. For lunch, until 4pm, the price is $ 15 per person. For dinner, 4pm-​close, it goes up to $ 20. Either way, it was so worth it. A lot of other reviewers complain about the roll limit and the time limit, but I only needed one round to fill me up. I got a cup of miso soup, some gyoza, a chef special roll, the red dragon roll, the crunchy roll, and a variety of 5 pieces of sushi. This counted as one round, and I could barely finish. I don’t know how people come here and can eat more than one card of food. And it was some amazing food: the rolls were unique, the fish was good, and the rice had the perfect consistency.
My only complaint is that it did take them 40 minutes to fill my tables order. But there were three of us, and every single one of us maxed out our cards. Meaning, they prepared 9 rolls and 15 pieces of sushi in 40 minutes. When you look at it like that, it really isn’t that long.
I will definitely be going back again, and again for the AYCE sushi. At most sushi places, you get one special roll for $ 15. At Volcano, you can have as much as you want for $ 15 – 20, and I guarantee you’ll leave full!

just bad. crab ragoons taste like cream cheese. edamame was cold. fish wasn’t fresh.

Great food and quick service. I’m really happy for my all you can eat experience. For $ 15 per person, it’s one of the best deals in town.

Not every all you can eat sushi place can be the bomb, but they should definitely strive for it. The price was what drew me in, $ 14.95 was the lunch price, even on the weekend.
When you come in, you can pick where you want to sit and order using the paper forms on the table. They have a good amount of options as far as appetizers, sushi, and rolls. I ordered the spring rolls and vegetable tempura for appetizers, the white tuna and red snapper sushi, and a shrimp tempura roll. The appetizers were great and the shrimp tempura roll was tasty even if it was unevenly cut. The real issue was the fish used in the sushi. They had a slight bitterness/​sourness to them that could be tasted in the rice which made me question how fresh the fish actually were and if they were sushi grade quality. The fish was also kind of dry and had a strange texture to it.
On top of that the service was lacking. My friend did make a few requests (wanting a straw and silverware and asking for spicy mayo) but I don’t think that warranted inattentive service. She had to stare down the server hoping to catch him to not only remind him that she had asked for silverware but also that I needed a refill.
You get what you pay for here, considering all the other higher end sushi places around but I’ve had much better back home for around the same price for the same concept.

Bottomless sushi, you cannot go wrong. You will need someone to help roll you out of there when you are done! My friend took me there for my birthday and we been going there ever since. Food is delicious, quality and service are awesome. Highly recommend!

Great bang for your buck for the all you can eat sushi lunch special! That’s why I come here! The sushi is delectable, and they have a good selection on their menu.

Wait for a tempura for 1 and half hours. Worst experience ever. Don’t go this one, there are many good Japanese sushi all you can eat around here.

TooK way too long for our food and limited 5 pieces per person for sushi. Quality was under par as well

Horrible service. Takes 40 – 50 minutes to get your food. Have restrictions on how much you can order. Frequently mess up your order too. Two hour limit to eat so most you can order is twice and again it’s limited with how much you can eat, so not really an all you can eat

Really mediocre, and I never take the time to write Unilocal reviews. Ordered delivery and though food came on time yakisoba was slimy, tempura vegetables were cold and sushi didn’t taste fresh. Ended up throwing half my meal away. Only good park was the frozen fruit smoothie.

I went there a couple of months ago and tried sushi for the first time :) sadly i didnt really like the sushi but the service was ok. It took awhile for the sushi to be served and even longer for the check.

Lunch time here with my bf. Salmon sushi and rolls are good. Others just okay. Wait for like thirty minutes since ordered. Can’t really eat up all we ordered. too full.

The good — unlimited sushi, rolls, some appetizers, etc. for $ 14.95 (lunch price). Fast, efficient service. Clean dining accommodations.
The bad — No sashimi option for the bottomless sushi. If you’re like me and consider just ordering sushi, and not eating the rice, then you’re going to be disappointed to find out that they’ve already thought of that and will charge you another $ 1 for each leftover piece of rice. –_​_​– The rolls are not very authentic — a lot of them have cream cheese and/​or are fried.
If you’re a college student, this is a good deal due to the price point. Otherwise, recommend skipping it, or ordering the items you really want to eat a la carte.

Came here yesterday on a whim. $ 15 for all you can eat sushi is a really good deal. I had a number of different sushi. Crab Ragoon, spicy tuna, spicy salmon, golden nugget roll, shrimp tempura roll. I was a fan of all of them. I also had a few rolls which had green apples in them, which was an interesting taste. They have a white tuna roll (escolar) which was really good as well. I didn’t think I could get full from sushi, but it certainly happened. I’d certainly come back again.

Despite having the same owner as Ichiban, they’re definitely better as far as freshness, speed, and organization. If you’re going to do the all you can eat, i recommend eating it there.
I did the to-​go and the ayce limit still applied and appetizers weren’t included.

If you’re a picky eater craving Japanese but are just looking to get full on a budget… Volcano will work.
My friend and I get the $ 14.95 all you can eat sushi deal not because we really want AYCE, but because it would cost us more to order individual things that we want off of the menu. Weird how that works out.
We’re pretty hesitant about sashimi, so we mostly grab miso soup, edamame, and pretty much anything that would come out hot (like eel). We eventually ordered some sashimi… which were… edible.
The problem for us was that so many of their rolls have cream cheese in them. SUSHI AND CREAM CHEESE? No. This wipes out about ¾ of the rolls that we could order.
They often forgot to bring our orders to us, but we were in no hurry and didn’t mind reordering them if we had to. The service is kind of like that of… a Chinese take out place. Did they mess up? Yes. Do they care? No.
Anyways, there’s a 20% off discount if you are a student, just make sure you ask them when you get the bill. Ah, and if you get AYCE, you can’t order a bunch and NOT eat it — they’ll charge you for rice that’s left on your plate!
Let’s pretend it’s them being environmentally friendly.

$ 14.95 for all you can eat sushi?!
If you’re really craving for some sushi & don’t want to spend the bigger bucks this place is it.
ALSO, if you don’t care about slow service.
You can also get student discount so it’s pretty awesome.
Came her with my boyfriend on a sushi crave but didn’t wanna go too far /​spend too much.
I wouldn’t recommend getting anything FRESH, like their sashimi or anything but everything else is okay.
I’d definitely come back just because it isn’t too expensive. Alsoooo, included in the all you can eat you can pick appetizers as well like a chicken kabob, crab ragoons, miso soup, etc. (UNLIMITED!!!)

Two things pain me:
— Why do I continue trying AYCE sushi restaurants near UIC? and…
— Why did it happen to be a hot day and Volcano was closer than Ichiban to East campus?
The later is just me being lazy and wanting an excuse to Unilocal another restaurant (it’s who I am okay). Volcano attracted my friends and I on the way to Ichiban because it looked like another standard AYCE joint on Taylor. After walking in and getting seated, we realized that this is essentially Ichiban 2.0, but without the claim to being «number one.»
Volcano was definitely a… dare I say it, even more basic version of Ichiban. At a $ 15 AYCE price for lunch, I shouldn’t expect top quality sushi. However, there were some things that made me really unsettling while eating here:
1. Service was hella slow. We were the only group inside and we had to wait a good while for our food to come out. Towards the end, when we all paid for our checks, we waited nearly 10+ minutes for the server to bring back our tabs.
2. The food here was not even up to par with Ichiban. The rice was hard and it made it a complete chore to finish. My Ichiban roll’s piece of tempura was terrible. Stale, limp, and NOT what you’d want out of fried seafood. I wasn’t even able to finish all the rice from my sad nigiri. I also tried my friend’s yakiudon, and it did not have that stir-​fried taste that tells you it was made with care.
3. My friend and I both agreed that we kept getting stares from the sushi chefs as we were eating. I’m not sure why, but every time I turned my head towards the direction of the chefs, they would give us these cold stares which made me feel uncomfortable eating. I felt like we were being judged, especially when I wasn’t putting the entire piece in my mouth and scrapping for the ingredients. Seriously, the rice was not good here, and that’s nearly half of the piece of sushi.
I won’t give this place just 1-​star because some of the appetizers were decent, the fish quality wasn’t terrible, and they didn’t charge us extra even when some of us had extra food lying around. However, unless they kick it up by a few notches, I definitely don’t think this is worth it. You are much better off going to Ichiban or just not getting AYCE and ordering rolls elsewhere.
Parking is available on the street, but don’t forget to pay! Chicago traffic po po will get you otherwise.

Some of these other reviewer are crazy. First of all, Tatsu wasn’t good either, so stop comparing. If they were, they’d still be in business. I’m not sure what people are expecting when they pay $ 15 for AYCE sushi, but I know this place doesn’t warrant one star. One guy gave this place one star for waiting «10+ minutes» for sushi. Are you kidding me?! I’m happy if I get my Pilsen McDonald order in 10 minutes, let along sushi.
I’ve been here three times since it’s opened and they’ve gotten better with their service, speed, and preparation. The food is decent and I’m really not complaining since I go for lunch and it cost me $ 15. I enjoy both the gyoza and seaweed salad for appetizers. The other apps are just okay. Sushi and maki’s are a personal choice.
Anyways, this place is solid. It’s nothing spectacular but given the price, it warrants a four star ‘Yay! I’m a fan.’ I’ve had enjoyable experiences each time I’ve been there. I’ll be back.

For the AYCE sushi buffet there’s a limit on how many pieces you can order each time and that’s three roll and five pieces of nigiri. I came here for the nigiri and had to wait 25+minute each times…
Yea anything own by Ichiban is getting on my nerves. Never coming back again…

Be sure to come in with time to spare. This is one of the lengthy dining experience due to the slow service (one waiter) and about two people behind the sushi bar. This dining experience started at 2:15pm and it is currently 4pm. A round of sushi took 30 minutes to arrive. The second took 40 minutes. I have the picture of the stopwatch for this dining experience.
The quality of the sushi is not bad. It is fresh and time is definitely spent on ensuring perfection.
They’re really apologetic and I did not hear anything less than very sorry for each table of guests. Good luck with this place!