Tabu Sushi Bar & Grill

Love love LOVE this place!!! Can’t go wrong by giving this place a shot. I recommend the fresh lemon cilantro roll or the tasty and filling Andy roll. Friendly staff, good ambiance and tasty food. It’s a no-​brainer!!! Stop by before you head to the fair or track depending on time of year. Tabu sushi is yum yum yummy!!!

Love the food, salmon belly amazing! All fish is fresh. Service is great and friendly. Maki is exceptional. The fried rice and baked mussels are the best! I go 2 – 3 times a week.

While neither my boyfriend or I are fans of sushi in general, we do enjoy a good yakisoba and Tabu delivered with the noodle dishes. I ordered the chicken yakisoba with no veggies while he chose the vegetable variety. Each dish came with a choice of miso soup, onion soup or salad and we both went the healthy route with salads.
The yakisoba was plentiful and I had enough for a lunch of leftovers the next day. The noodles had a great flavor and the chicken wasn’t dry at all. My boyfriend enjoyed his yakisoba so much that he declared it to be yummy-​soba instead of yaki/​yucky-​soba. The salads had a delicious dressing on top.
I also ordered a side of chicken fried rice and it was well worth the upcharge. It’s absolutely wonderful and complemented the yakisoba perfectly. I liked that onions, which I typically hate, were chopped up so small and cooked so well that they were virtually unnoticeable.
Service was quick and I’d definitely consider returning in the future.

I have enjoyed Sushi here during the day a few times. This visit was Friday at 6:30 p.m. They were not at all crowded. There was a funky smell, and the service was HORRIBLE from start to finish. The cold sake was brought out lukewarm and was very overpriced. The sushi was okay, but totally ruined buy everything else.

I came here awhile back with my family. They tried serving me rotten raw fish (yellowtail). When I sent it back they tried telling me that they just got it in. Come on! (Smell the fish, it smelled so bad). We asked to talk to the manager and they told us that the manager left for the day and won’t be coming back. We ended up asking for our bill, paid only for our drinks and the soup we ordered.
Won’t be coming back to a place where they tried to serve us rotten food and say that they just got the fish.
If you want to get sick (food poisoning) this is the place to go.

Even though the sushi is a little pricy, it is DELICIOUS!!! We ordered the Sexy roll, Da Bomb Dynamite and the Hula roll. All of them were amazing. The staff was super friendly and very attentive.

Typically dependable quality sushi and imaginative rolls. Our favorite: the crunchy roll, with faux crab (Krab), shrump tempura, spicy mayo and eel sauce; and the salsa roll, spicy tuna, cucumber, avocado and their own spicy salsa. We just had the worst short-​rip appetizer iin decades. Looked great in concept: four pieces of pork on a skewer, Korean barbecue style. But it was 90 percent fat, cleverly concealed in barbecue sauce.

This is absolutely my favorite sushi bar in town. The food is fresh. Chefs are extremely fun and talented. The service is great. Atmosphere is fresh and clean.
I’m blown away by how friendly and hard working the staff is. A special thanks for your outstanding service to Maki and Beto. Maki is extremely sweet and knows her sushi! Beto and his chefs are very knowledgable with the menu and really know how to make you laugh. Spectacular sushi.
Thanks to all of the Tabu staff for your excellent service.
Go here and treat yourself to some killer sushi!

It was pretty good
A little on the small side for portions
Nice atmosphere nice service

Bland and unimaginative sushi. They put cream cheese in most everything. Poor service. VERY POOR. Place was empty on Saturday night. Seems we did not get the memo.
Why come here with so many better alternatives. If not for Groupon we would have been spared. Now we know.

I love this place!!! Although I am not crazy about sushi any friend of mine that I bring who knows the difference between good sushi and bad have always been very impressed! The staff is always so kind and welcoming and never mind the substitutions I make with my meals! I come here all the time! Just wish it was closer to me :)

Definitely WORTH the money & time spent every time we visit this Sushi Bar. For starters, they actually have one of the longest Sushi Bars in the community and surrounding communities for that matter. So you can usually always expect to find at the very least an open seat at the bar to get front row attention from the two Chefs themselves. Don’t get me wrong though, you will absolutely get the same stellar treatment sitting at a table as you will at the bar. But keep in mind that both Chefs are happy to engage and keep the energy high if you decide to dine at the bar.
So let’s see, I’ve had almost every roll on the menu, but I have to rave about a few that are always on my receipt at the end of our dining experience; Big Ed (spicy amazingness) Pizza Roll (baked heavenliness) Cilantro Lemon Roll (tangy & spicy) Crunchy Roll (they do it very tasty) The Sexy Roll (you’re so sexy while eating it) & last but not least The Inside Out Roll (so fresh and tasty).
All in all, this is a VERY affordable Sushi joint, it’s VERY fresh & the customer service is genuinely happy to have guests. :) #AffordableStellarService

Tender sushi. Yet lack luster staff. Concentrated more on their own conversations. Good sushi poor environment.

Awesome experience. I was greated immediately by the the Sushi. Chef with a warm welcome. The entire staff made me feel like a regular and that I was a VIP. As a first timer they showed me the menu options and made some suggeations. Everything was sensational in appearance, quality and taste.
I had 3 extraordinary items on the happy hour menu and amazingly was less than $ 10. Great people great value and extraordinary Sushi. My new favorite place.
Thank you Pedro and the warm staff.

Went to a «Sushi Smackdown» event at this location. The event was fun but the food was bad. Actually had the 2 sushi chefs have new roll competition where winning roll was to be added to menu. We actually got a imitation crab roll with a mayo sauce…0 stars! Too much mayo based sauces for all the rolls we tried.
Won’t go back here ever!

I was reluctant to come here because of the three-​star average. This just goes to prove that people have different tastes and going to a restaurant is like a roulette. Your experience is only as good as the dish that fits your taste. The dishes I picked were amazing and I am definitely coming back for more. The portions are big, the fish is fresh and the chefs are very talented.
The décor is very nice, definitely fits the Del Mar area. The prices are good for the area as well. Lastly, the staff was friendly so I highly recommend this place.

Eh.
So I don’t venture out to Del Mar, but a friend was staying in Vista and this was our halfway point. He wanted sushi so I looked it up on handy dandy Unilocal to see what the options were and this was one of them.
The food here is OK. We did take advantage of the happy hour (I may return here solely for that reason). They have lots of rolls and appetizers on discounted price. on to the food:
Calamari — meh, skip this. I don’t think it was fresh. The sauce was ok, had a little spice to it.
Philly roll — not bad, decent
Shrimp tempura roll — decent
[By the way the rolls, were large portions at least eight rolls per serving!]
Spicy tuna hand roll — also decent.
Service was fine. All in all, not a bad place — if you can take advantage of the happy hour — decent food at good prices.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been here. We sat at the sushi bar, our chef was very pleasant. I bumped into a couple friends while I was there which was nice. Our waiter came right over and took our order. The soup and Edamame was piping hot! Very tasty. We ordered Tempura for my son, which was hot, and perfectly cooked. Not too much breading, a variety of veggies and shrimp.
WE had a couple large rolls, they were happy to sub out a fish for me. They were great. Mine was some hot spicy roll with jalepeno,. but it wasn’t at all hot for me. My chef was happy to whip me up some fire hot sauce which I loved.
Danny the manager came over and bought us another cold sake (the same type we were drinking) which was so nice. Sometimes they bring you over a choice of theirs, not what you are having. I hate that.
He introduced himself, knew my friends that had been there earlier. He was sweet and very personable, he didn’t need to come over to chat or buy us a bottle. He really made a difference in our experience. The prices are comparable to other sushi bars. Large specialty rolls $ 12 – 15. I’d definitely give them a try.
You can also go in, have a great Happy Hour and watch a game on one of the Tv’s at the sushi bars!

Tabu was a go to sushi bar for me a couple of years ago. There are a couple of good spots in town so I have strayed. Today’s visit was because I wanted to believe in Tabu even though the current ratings are on a decreasing trend.
I popped in for a fix on the way in to Verizon today and something’s fishy. The facility is nice and modern but the fish left me underwhelmed. As a sushi connoisseur I know the difference between tuna belly marble and gristle, and the second one was getting stuck in my teeth.
I Ordered a roll with Hamachi and jalapeño and it was not prepared very well at all. The chef left the chiai or bloodline in it. The pieces of meat were dark red to brown in color and very fishy tasting. Take a look at the photo, I took three dark bits out of my first bite,
Hopefully Tabu will recover, I would like to come back here again so I will keep my eyes on the reviews of my fellow Unilocalers.

Decent sushi in a great shopping center. We’d been meaning to try Tabu Sushi Bar & Grill for a while but ended up there last weekend with the kiddos.
Our experience didn’t start off well. The sign said to please seat ourselves and on the way in two servers said hello, but then nobody approached our table for probably 5 – 10 minutes. Just as I was about to get up to grab some menus myself the guy finally came by.
Commenting on edamame is like Unilocaling about salad — it should be straightforward but lots of places overcook their edamame. Not so here. This edamame was served nice and hot, perfectly salted and with just the right amount of bite. Oh why not — the salad looked really nice too — they had purple carrot shavings on top which added some attractive color.
Speaking of presentation, my wife’s Chirashi Bowl was beautifully styled. The colors of the sashimi assortment over the rice was really gorgeous. We thought the sushi rice which was also used in the bowls needed some vinegar, and the fish itself didn’t taste quite as fresh or as high quality as the prices would indicate.
Our kids’ noodles were great and well seasoned with garlic and butter, and they also enjoyed their California Roll, both from the kids menu.
Overall we liked Tabu, but we weren’t blown away by it. Ultimately we judge a sushi place by the quality of the freshness of the fish, but Tabu’s was about average.