Kuru Kuru Sushi

Used to be my go-​to spot for a spicy ahi don but ever since the prices went up and the portions got smaller, I haven’t been making a point to dine in. However, I would still go here over genkis any day. 3 stars because the service is good, always greeted and got checked on during my meal, and the spicy ahi is one of my favorites. Very flavorful, not too wet, not too spicy, just right. I wouldn’t go out of my way to get a spicy ahi don from here, but if I was in the area and wanted to get my sushi fix on, then maybe… just maybe. But for now, I can’t justify dishing out $ 10 for a spicy ahi don when I can go to foodland and get basically the exact same thing for $ 7

Finally, we found a good kaiten place! We used to go to Genki but stopped because the quality started to go down and the service was not satisfactory. So we are very happy we finally we found a new place to go.
My kids love the pumpkin tempura, and the mini chirashi donburi. My husband and i like pretty much all of their menu items. Their sushi are so big. We usually feel totally satisfied after a few plates. The service is good too. The servers work hard.
Unfortunately the wait can be long. We may try take out next time. Though kids prefer eating in the restaurant, i would not mind skipping the wait time.

Just a decent coveter belt sushi spot. Cheap price, so expect good enough, not top notch.
Poke bowl is pretty good!
Also the sushi chefs are very wiling to make whatever you want fresh.

I’ve heard about this place for some time before I got to try it out. I’ve been here about 3ish times so far. But I can’t see the hype about it. I only come here because I’m in the area, and sometimes you just don’t want to drive into town for a good plate of raw fish. I don’t expect this place to be great, it is revolver sushi you pay by the plate, after all. The food here is decent but just like any place like this, its way over priced for what you get. The place is kept decent and the employees are fast. There is a decent amount of parking. You’ll find them busy all day. Even at 5, there is a wait. Their bowls (spicy ahi, salmon…) are pretty bland. I always put a decent amount of shoyu on top first then ask for a side of unagi sauce to pour over. It’s the only way I can walk out of there full without paying $ 30+ per person. It helps keep the cost low since it’s so packed with food, just sadly not flavor.

For a conveyor belt sushi joint, Kuru Kuru is actually pretty decent. Many would make comparisons between them and Genki’s. Overall, I think Kuru Kuru has better fish. They usually use fresher or better cuts of fish. Obviously, we shouldn’t be comparing any conveyor belt sushi places to high end sushi restaurants, but once you attain a refined palate for high quality sashimi/​sushi there’s no turning back. I get a little disappointed when eating at lower end sushi joints since I know how good the fish is «supposed» to look and taste when it is prepared and served properly. When I come to conveyor belt sushi joints, it’s usually because my wife or kids want to go. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy it when I’m here but I’ve come to the understanding that you get what you pay for.
Today, we ordered their chawanmushi, garlic salmon nigiri, unagi nigiri, spicy ahi, salmon belly, fried salmon skin, ika karaage, kalbi chicken bowl, and a shrimp tempura roll. Everything came out decent — nothing spectacular, but nothing horrible either. Personally, I enjoyed the salmon belly and chawanmushi the most. The salmon was fried perfectly where the outside is very crispy and the inside is still moist. The belly part was very oily so every bite was quite juicy and flavorful. Ever since Genki decided to take off chawanmushi from their menu, Kuru Kuru is probably the only place where you could get a chawanmushi for the price of less than $ 3. It’s actually pretty well made… not overcooked like some places. Although it doesn’t contain any expensive ingredients, it tasted delicious! The sushi items were all acceptable. I just don’t care for the big blocks of machine molded rice. Prices have been slowly going up the past several years. I still remember when the spicy ahi and/​or ahi poke bowls cost $ 6.95…I believe they’re now $ 9.95. As busy as they always are, the service is never lacking. The servers seem to work efficiently and most of them are quite attentive
We’ll continue to come visit Kuru Kuru as long as they maintain the decent quality of food and excellent service.

There are certain things I cannot knock a rating down for and the first is the occasional «ridiculous» wait time for Kuru Kuru. Considering the popularity of the place and the seating capacity (at max around 50 or so) it would be foolish to go and expect a short wait time and act like an impatient child if you are forced to wait for once in your life. The staff is efficient when a guest leaves and it is just a part of the Kuru Kuru experience.
That being said, Kuru Kuru reigns supreme over Genki Sushi for various reasons. It is far fresher than Genki in terms of nigiri and the Hamachi at Kuru Kuru passed the freshness test of my uncle, a commercial fisherman who catches the very fish they serve for a living. The Ahi looks excellent and not brown like Genki serves. For the price, it is fair and maybe not catering to the Hawaii eater that looks for portion over quality (the only reason why Sushisan lasted as long as it did).
The price increase for the Poke Dons are justified by the fact it is actually bigger than they were before as well.

If you are looking for a great way to procrastinate while getting a decent meal, then look no further. This was my case as I was procrastinating on my seminar paper that I was supposed to have worked on all summer, but waited until the week before the deadline to get any work done. Well actually, I wasn’t planning on procrastinating even more on my paper, but Kuru Kuru Kahala doesn’t take reservations and everyone else in the mall decided to have sushi at the same time as me so there was quite a wait to get seated.
In fact, when we went at 6:45pm on a Saturday, the wait ended up being one whole hour for myself and a friend. Crazy right?! Thank goodness there are stores you can explore while waiting otherwise I would have probably taken my hunger elsewhere. Finally, we were called and seated at one of those table/​booths that are situated along the sushi conveyor belt.
How this works is that the server brings you water and tea. You can pull plates off the conveyor belt or order things off the menu from the server and it will be brought to your table. You can keep pulling plates from the belt and ordering from your server. And when you’re done, they will tally up your plates and calculate your check based on the colors and quantity of plates! Then you pay at the register in the front of the restaurant before leaving. So simple!
The items on the belt are the crowd favorites, mostly spicy ahi bowls and sushi along with a few different types of rolls. My friend and I grabbed a few plates off the belt but got most of our sushi through our server. A couple of times we ordered from our server, we ended up waiting pretty long… it turns out that our order never made it to the kitchen.
There are tons of sushi choices, so I was very overwhelmed! Most of the sushi we had was good and decent… one thing that disappointed me was that the slices of fish on our orders of negitoro and salmon nigiri were SUPER cold! I think fish is supposed to be cold but closer to room temp when served as sushi, so this was a little weird to eat and not very good in my opinion. I think next time, I’ll stick to just ordering rolls and poke-​based sushi.
One thing that you MUST TRY is the fry peanut butter banana bread! Its a dessert on a yellow plate ($ 1.75 per order). This dessert made my night! In fact, Kuru Kuru gets 4 stars just because of this particular dessert! There was so much peanut butter and chocolate sauce and it was deep fried and wonderful. I’m not sure if Kuru Kuru has ice cream but if they do, that combo would be amazing! I’ll definitely return to Kuru Kuru because of this yummy and affordable dessert.
TL;DR — crazy long wait for tables/​seats, decent sushi, and the best $ 1.75 fry peanut butter banana bread dessert ever!

Use to come here all the time with my boyfriend and mom, they had great fast service and the waiters were very friendly, their spicy ahi don was really good, with great portion size and cheap price (6.95). After New Years I had checked the reviews on Unilocal and a lot of people were complaining about the prices going up on the s-​ahi don to 9.95. Big price jump! They also started to take off some items from the menu before Christmas time. So because of that I stopped going.
Around the ending of August my mom and I were at Kahala and decided to give it a try. We signed our name and waited about 5 – 10 mins which wasn’t bad. When we got seated we were offered tea and water and grabbed the menus to look. I can’t say we were surprised at the prices, because they did in fact go up. 9.95 for the s-​ahi don. We ordered 2 s-​ahi dons and a 2 piece Inari, the guy who helped us didn’t seem like he knew what he was doing. So we waited. Our Inari never came so we just grabbed it off the belt. As we waited I seen the sushi maker make two s-​ahi don and put it on the top of the belt to the table next to us, and the people at the table didn’t grab it. I had already knew there was a mix up and that the bowls were suppose to be for us. We waited about 4 or 5 mins and watched to see what they would do.
They started to get busy and one of the managers stood by our table and told the sushi maker that he had gave the bowls to the wrong table and he had argued that the person who took the order put the wrong table number. I don’t understand how that can happen because the tables are marked clearly. So he took the two bowls and gave them to us, with no apology for the mix up by either the manager or the sushi maker. We began to eat, and we noticed the spicy ahi had gotten more spicy. I love my spicy food but that took me back a little.
We kept getting bombarded by different servers asking if we needed something else, it was getting very annoying because we just wanted to finish our food in peace. We then asked to get an order of spam sushi, again we waited about 10 min. By that time we had seen they put out spam sushi on the belt and being annoyed with waited we again like the Inari just took it off the belt. And as soon as we did they came and brought our spam! We were annoyed and put the spam they gave us on the belt. Cos lord knows we weren’t about to pay for two, when we only wanted one!
All in all we finished up our food, payed and got the hell out of there! We swore to never come back.

We are frequenters of Kahala Mall and every time we walk past Kuru Kuru Sushi there are always people waiting. To me that’s a good sign. So last night, after years of watching and waiting, we took the plunge and tried it.
Like everyone else, we waited. But the staff was very courteous (even with some of the patrons weren’t) and tried to get people in as quickly as possible. We waited about 30 — 45min for a party of four on a Saturday evening. Not bad.
I’m sure we did what everyone else does… starts off by comparing Kuru Kuru to Genki. First of all, it’s much nicer. I like Genki but the vibe in Kuru Kuru was really great and inviting. We tried to get some things that we would usually get at Genki so we could compare. The Udon was delicious with a broth that wasn’t too salty. The salad that you can get was amazing — Genki take notes. It, of course, had iceberg lettuce but also had tomatoes, cucumber, and avocado and was big enough for us to share and not feel cheated by the one with whom we were sharing. Spicy Ahi and Tuna rolls were good… the Dynamite was great and we got a couple of those. The Chicken Karage was good too. We loved the Tempura Pumpkin and the Croquettes were yummy too. We especially liked the pumpkin tempura. We couldn’t quite place the flavor but the tempura was a little sweeter than what we’ve gotten in other places but not overly sweet to the point where it was like candy.
The flavors on everything was really good and the price wasn’t that bad! We figured that being in Kahala Mall (and having to make rent) the prices would be a little higher but it was actually cheaper than the last time we went to Genki.
On a personal note, the night we went we were with my brother-​in-​law who has Down’s Syndrome. The wait staff was very attentive and kind to him and that was really nice to see. Sometimes when out with a special needs person wait staff will avoid us like the plague or not really know what to do. There was none of that at Kuru kuru!
Definitely coming back!

Slow employees. Need I say more. There’s tables and space by the bar and they’re not calling people. Guess they can’t handle big crowds.
Had to wait to be seated for an hour
Plus what’s the point on calling out last call if you’re just going to sit the party that miss their turn when they comeback to check in 15 mins after you called out their names???

Sushi here is still delicious even if all the BLUE plates increased by 43%. Expect to see a waiting list during typical meal hours. However, if you come here around 3:30pm it’s surprisingly not so crowded.
Service is attentive and good. It’s still the best place for a quick sushi fix.

Located in Kahala Mall by the theatre. The concept of this restaurant is smiling to Genki Sushi. They have a conveyor belt that carries a variety of sushi that goes around so customers do not have to wait to order. You can also order sushi that is not on the conveyor belt through the waiter and waitresses that are walking around.
My first experience there was good. That’s why I am giving them two stars. I had the spicy ahi don. that portion was HUGE! I couldn’t finish it. But I got the geso (love that stuff!), tuna, masago, and the spicy ahi bomb.
The second time around, I got the same things, minus the bowl… the food was alright. wasn’t the best. There also wasn’t a lot to offer on the conveyor belt. My boyfriend was disappointed to see spam with ketchup. He did not see anything he liked and ended up just eating the chicken karaage. The food wasn’t that good that day. Maybe the workers were different? Anyways, I usually eat A LOT when it comes to sushi. But that day we only ate a few plates, paid, and left. I think I rather have went to Genki sushi even if it’s a bit more pricier, at least they haven’t disappointed me yet (except when they run out of the geso!)

So… not quite sure what happened on our most recent visit to Kuru Kuru Sushi in Kahala Mall. As soon as we sat down and my kiddos excitedly grabbed their first plates off the conveyer belt… it was lights out… literally!
The restaurant had no power. The conveyor belt stopped. Almost everyone either left or walked around to pick at whatever else was left on the belt before leaving.
I ate one plate (ONE PLATE) of spicy ahi on a deep fried wonton chip, topped with eel sauce. I usually love this dish, but alas, today the wonton chip seemed extra greasy and all I tasted was oil. My kiddos ate a plate of tamago sushi each (sweet egg) and shared a plate of edamame. Hubby had karaage chicken and a spicy ahi wonton.
This had to have been the cheapest dining experiences at a conveyor sushi restaurant that I have ever eaten at. We usually have three stacks of plates to tally — at this point it was looking like we were only going to have 7… then like a miracle, the lights came back on after 15 minutes of «mood» lighting. Kiddos then proceeded to grab another tamago, corn on the cob (WTH), and we ordered shrimp tempura udon (with the single shrimp tempura on the side) for my little darlings.
Still not in the mood for anything else… ugh, what a waste of a cheat day! But, I came here for my kiddos. And if they’re happy — so am I, right… Stars for my kiddos happy little satisfied tummies! And the entertaining video that plays how to make sushi and sushi eating etiquette!

Been coming here because the food was fresh delicious and the service was awesome.
Haven’t been here a while, we decided to come here for lunch. However, the quality dropped and the prices had gone up (especially the ahi bowls went up from 6.95 to $ 9.95).
Our favorites were sushi that had tuna. The ahi fish wasn’t as fresh the last time we ate it (according to my colleague).
Service was average but was busy since it was lunch time. However, this is still one of my favs to eat sushi at.

Not down with the service here. Came during an off hour time when business was slow and wasn’t offered a seat although four were open. Shortly after the host said «you can sit anywhere,» she abruptly and rudely told me the three open booths weren’t available (half empty restaurant, 2:30pm).
Something smells fishy.
No problem, I’m not opposed to take out. However, the price of ikura here is much higher than Kozo down the road or Ninja on Kapahulu. I concede and go with the usual ahi options and natto. Gotta have my natto.
I’m perplexed why the location in Kahala doesn’t bring the same quality and friendliness as the original location in Pearl Kai. With that, I say West is best.

Conveniently located in Kahala Mall, next to the theatres, this restaurant serves fresh sushi and other Japanese food. You can select dishes off the conveyor belt or order off the menu. And there are ever-​changing specials to take note of on the boards around the restaurant. Love the chawan mushi, one of my favorites!
The service is prompt and friendly! All of the waitstaff constantly check with you about refills on water or hot tea. A pleasant dining experience!

One of the best conveyor-​belt sushi places on the island. This place prices sushi very reasonably and they always give you huge portions of pretty good quality sushi. They offer a wide variety of staples from various nigiri to specialty rolls.
Reasonable prices for what you get. Usually pretty busy so prepare for a wait or call in a take out order. Prompt and friendly service.

Kuru Kuru management has really made bad decisions lately. They changed their menu on Tuesday, increasing their prices and eliminating items. Most notably, their dons (fish over rice in a bowl) went from $ 6.95 to $ 9.95… and they gave LESS fish! Smaller portions and a drastic increase in price is just bad business.
We used to go to the Kahala location once a week. We loved the place. Now I don’t think we will be going back again. Fish pieces are cut smaller and overall portions are smaller. They went backwards from what made them better than Genki sushi.
I think other customers have noticed, too. We came on a Sunday during lunch and there was no wait. Usually weekends are very busy at Kahala Mall. I guess we’ll just have to drive to Sushi Bay in Kapolei for sushi!

Before, I’d give them 4 stars, but last week, KuruKuru has lost a couple (likely many more) loyal customers. Why? PRICE HIKE.
We would come by here once a week but after the price increase, I’m going to be returning to Genki Sushi on Kapahulu. The long wait times (at least 20 – 30 min) and average quality service used to be tolerable because of the BARGAIN prices, but the 2015 price hike per plate/“don” –with increases ranging from $ 1-​$ 3, depending on what it is– makes these flaws difficult to ignore.
I liked what I thought were generous portion sizes for the older prices in 2014. But they kept the portions similar or smaller despite the price increase.
When I came here last week, our order was lost and when I asked about it, the waitress didn’t bother to physically check where my order slip was and insisted that the chef was about to make it. I then asked the sushi chef dude if he saw my order, and he told me I had to order from the waitresses and not from him. (Did he even hear my question?) Sadly, most of the workers look and even act like they don’t want to be there. What happened to good customer service? There are maybe 2 girls in there who have consistently given me good service, wish I knew their names… But bossman needs to kindly remind everyone else to perk up.
What I liked about KuruKuru was the taste and freshness of their spicy ahi and the tempura pumpkin, but looks like I’ll be taking a break from this place for a while. *sob*
TLDR: Those cheap spicy-​ahi or mixed «dons» are now $ 10. Regulars, double check the prices of what you order.
I suspect the price hike is due to the minimum wage hike – but why such a high price increase? Boo! If KuruKuru is aiming for more tourist clientele, then they’re going in the right direction.

Where else can you fulfill your sushi cravings quickly and deliciously like KuruKuru? While I used to be a fan of Genki, I’ve grown to consider Kuru Kuru my total go to place for the quick fulfillment of a sushi craving. Their spicy tuna/​spicy salmon don’s are enormous! The price is awesome for the mound of fish they pile on top of the rice. I always grab a plate of sushi first before the spicy don combo arrives because I need an empty plate to place the fish on so I can reach the rice underneath! The grilled salmon is also wonderfully oily and delicious. I always order it so I know it’s hot and steamy when I get it. The pumpkin/​kabocha is also a favorite for me. Pass me a natto and a scallop mayo and I’m happy as heck!
Sure there are much fancier places for sushi in Honolulu but when I want to satisfy a quick craving and get a quick meal in before a movie or just some shopping at the mall, this Kuru Kuru is super! Always fresh tasting and the workers also are always there to fill your water and tea and take your order.