Suruki’s

If I could give it no stars, I would. This place is one giant health code violation. Personally, I don’t ever trust a sushi place where it smells like old fish inside, but I was looking for a quick to-​go roll while running errands downtown. The unagi in my roll was sour (?!) and full of bones, and the avocado was brown and unripe. To top it off, my can of diet coke came with some bonus nuggets of mouse shit – on the mouth of the can. I pray that the health department somehow reads this review because that place is food poisoning waiting to happen.

I was setting up for a convention at the Oakland Convention Center and after wards I get hungry from all that heavy lifting and decorating. Walking distance is best because I don’t have to look for more parking.
I honest randomly chose this place because of the Ramen sign. It was also slightly bad weather that day and I needed to warm up.
My Ramen of choice was the Stamina Ramen. It consisted of multi mix of seafood in a lovely lovely broth. While the seafood was minuscule and you could tell they were churching it up by smaller pieces of shrimp that were stretched out.
There was a nice small starter salad to start as well that was nice.
The store front is strange. You can get premade Japanese type items in a refrigerator case along with different beverages.
My lunch was good and hit the spot on a cool day. Service was fast and efficient. They served me green tea ice cream at the end as complimentary but I’m lactose intolerant. So I had to pass with much apologies.
I may have to come back again next year again for some nice ramen to warm my muscles after a hard days work.

Anyone reading these negative reviews will sense that there’s a whole lot of attitude going on here. Yes, Suruki’s is a funky place with terrible ambience. But in Japan the funky little places often have best dishes. In the case of Surukis, the Donburi bowls are fantastic. I haven’t tried the other dishes because I simply can’t get enough of the chicken, beef and unagi donburi. Excellent. This is Japanese soul food, not the pretentious nouveau cuisine inspired dishes you get for $ 30 or more, or the faux Japanese food you get at a Chinese/​Korean-​owned Japanese restaurant. The donburi is the real deal. Served with good hot miso soup, salad and green tea. A solid Japanese working-​class meal.

I’m going to start by complaining about Unilocal because I hate that you can’t give 0 stars because if any place deserved it this is the spot. Why I tried it twice is beyond me. less than a dozen tables yet both times the server doesn’t even drop menus off or greet us for 5+ minutes. The second time I waited 10+ minutes (really) to get noticed. Never happened so I walked out. The food the first time was just god awful. Had a bowl of Udon which I probably could have made in my office break room with a boulion cube and a pack of spaghetti. Stay away people stay away. Now Cosecha around the corner that’s some serious food.

My girlfriend and I were in downtown Oakland yesterday afternoon for lunch. Not knowing what we wanted for lunch, we stopped in this place. There was hardly anybody and a lot of empty tables. I must not have been terribly impressed with the food since I couldn’t even remember the name of this restaurant until another Unilocaler sent a note, telling me it’s Suruki’s. (Oh, yeah, that’s it.) Perusing over the menu, I almost ordered a bento box lunch until I saw the price — $ 12.95. I should have told my friend… let’s go elsewhere, but we were hungry and didn’t want to cause any embarrassment.
She had the chicken teriyaki rice platter and said it was too salty. I tasted better potato croquettes. The ones they had here were slightly burnt and they were somewhat dry. There was too much batter on the tempura (3 shrimps and 5 veggies). Lunch for the both of us, including tax and tip was about $ 20, which I feel is pricey for substandard food. The only thing I enjoyed was the vanilla ice cream w/​caramel sauce for dessert. The tea was okay.
My dining experience was also a meh. Two women and a screaming 16 month old baby boy were seated directly behind me. I can’t blame the restaurant for that, but I wished the family would have sat elsewhere. There’s nothing more grating to my ears than a baby screaming.

I hate it when I walk into a restaurant, realize it’s not a place I want to patronize, and yet continue to go through with it – maybe because I want to see if it’s really just an undiscovered gem, or at least to get a decent Unilocal review out of it. In this case, Suruki’s is certainly not any kind of gem.
If you have to eat here, I’d stick to a cooked dish; ramen, katsu, etc. If you order sushi, you are in for a disappointment — Oakland has some great sushi (Geta), some passable sushi (Whole Foods), but this is really questionable sushi. I didn’t get sick, but there was an «interesting» smell (excess vinegar to cover up the fish?) to some simple maki, which is about as far as I wanted to push things.
The tonkatsu was fine; not excellent, but fine (2.5 stars if you’re hungry, 1.5 otherwise). Miso and rice were horrible; worse than from a packet or powder, somehow. The ramen is more of the dried variety than fresh, but is probably ok, although I didn’t try any.
The staff were friendly/​attentive, so I feel bad about giving this place one star. If it were just the wait staff, I’d go as high as 4 stars, but that would be misleading to someone who came in to actually eat. If you want to support them, come in and order some tea or something and tip well; their tea is perfectly adequate.

Just awful!
Should have know better than to stick around when I sat down, but tried to give them the benefit of the doubt.
There were more flys than people in the place, the tables were «sticky» and the service was non — existant. The place is just no very hygenic.
Ordered number 17, Pork Katsu with curry and received a charcoal pork filet placed on top of rice with some decent curry. Started to eat and found a wonderful HAIR mixed into the dish.
The best part, I am fairly certain they gave me food poisoning. Less than 3 hours later and into the night and the next morning I have been feeling wonderful! I am «leashed» to my restroom.
Just say no.

I’ve been buying sushi made by Suruki’s that’s sold in a local deli downstairs where I work when I need a fix. It’s not bad but on occasion, I’ve had:
The nub of an avacado inside the sushi
Salmon that tasted old and rubbery
Very little or no wasabi
Stale sushi

Weather is starting to get cold and all you want to do is have a big bowl of noodles and go take a nap, right… my coworker and I are big ramen fans, but haven’t found a place walking distance from our work. After searching on Unilocal,Suruki’s was the closest spot (I could actually see it from my office window). After walking past this place for the past 5 years, we decided to give it a try, even though it mediocre reviews. We were the only customers in there so of course the service was going to be good.
We both ordered the ramen with char su. It came in a big bowl, broth was good, noodles were average, the char su was tender, BUT… it was missing EVERYTHING else. No mushrooms, no sprouts, no egg, no fish cake, no other textures or crunch. They did give us a small little thing of kim chi on the side, but what if I didn’t eat kimchi?
SOOO… i don’t love this place and I don’t hate this place, but I just really wish they added more substance/​textures in their ramen. Will I be back? we shall see…

This place is just okay. Ramen portion was huge, our spam musubi was straight up rice and spam wrapped in nori. No special sauce, or those nice seaweed and seasoning flakes (furikake) as I have grown to accustomed to seeing.
So average. I’d steer away from the Curry Ramen, unless you really really like Japanese curry. It just didn’t look appetizing when it came out.

Suruki’s is in housewives market and faces washington st.
music: jazz on cd.
ramen review only:
#3 … ramen (6.95) ramen in pork broth.
–cooked pork slices (2), very tender, half egg, bean sprouts, imiitaion crab slices (2)
–chewy noodles
–tonkatsu type very thin broth.
temaki:
–friendly amigo/​amigas work here but it’s obvious the ramen isn’t made here. the broth was also substandard.
–toppings very fresh,
–would definitely stay away from the sushi/​nigiri…

I’ve been here before… years ago but had never returned and couldn’t remember why. Today I found out.
I was rollin’ around The O after doing some heavy duty shoe shopping and realized I was hungry. I’d decided on another place but saw a parking spot in front of this one and opted to give it my customary second chance — yep I pretty much will give every place a second chance unless they make me ill the first time.
Sushi — thin and smoked I believe. When I saw it arrived I remembered the explanation from the waitress once-​upon-​a-​time ago.
Ramen — came out suspiciously fast even for my being the only person in there. Lets just say it was quantity oriented. For the price I could have gotten B– to B+ Ramen and this was C at very best. There was no flavor medley.
If you want food… just food then okay. However, if you are looking to experience cuisine (or even noodle-​y goodness) then keep on easin’ on down the road.

Yeah this is mediocre japanese fast food. However if you are on the run you can grab pre-​made bentos and donburis!
Also at 5:00 all pre-​made sushi, bentos, and donburis are %50 off!!!
They even have spam musubis!

Suruki’s offers a number of ramens from basic Shoyu and Shio to Nagasaki Champon. Got the ramen combo (3 gyoza + fried rice) with Hakata Ramen (tonkotsu/​pork broth).
The bowl came with 2 pieces of chashu, sprouts, half a hard-​boiled egg, a few kamaboko (fish cake) slices, menma (bamboo), wakame (seaweed), beni shoga (pickled ginger), and a sprinkling of scallions. Not a bad assortment. The presentation of the bowl was a mess, but I guess I was going to mix it up anyway…
The broth was weird. It was a smooth tan with no oil spots on the surface and completely opaque, unlike any other tonkotsu broth I’d had before. I took a spoonful and It tasted creamy with no fatty or porky goodness. After some more tasting, I think it might be some canned broth and they may have actually used some cream in it?!? Maybe the Shoyu or Shio broths are better.
As far as the rest of the bowl, the chashu was very tender and very, very, very salty, like it’d spent the better part of it’s life soaking in shoyu marinade. The menma was inconsistent with some really soft pieces and some quite crunchy. Hakata style ramen is usually accompanied by thin straight noodles while these had a nice curl going. The noodles were cooked al dente, but were otherwise unremarkable.
The gyoza also didn’t wow me. They had a juicy little explosion when I bit into them like a nice dim-​sum dumpling, but were a little too cabbage-​y for me. The fried rice was pretty good. It was the best part of the meal.
Service wasn’t that great either. The waitress disappeared for long stretches of time at key moments like A) when I wanted to order, B) when I wanted to see what was up with my gyoza & fried rice (came out 10 minutes after the ramen), and C) when I wanted to pay. At least she didn’t have her thumb in the soup like you see at some phở shops.

WARNING WARNING!!! DO NOT EAT HERE, DO NOT STOP, DO NOT COLLECT $ 200! Okay here is the deal, I have google on my phone and we are new to the bay area, we love sushi, and tried to find one open on Columbus Day, but the 2 sushi places we wanted were closed??? WTH!!!
I saw a review on this one and it was 4 out of 5 and said some pretty nice things. As soon as we went in it was like a fast food/​cafeteria place with a dinky little sushi bar. Behind the counter was not our sushi chef, just some worker, toying around? They even sell some food and drinks out of a open refrigerator that you see in a grocery store. So our instincts immediately screamed RUN!!!
They took our order and it was CHEAP! But now we know why! They literally served us sushi out of a plastic BOX, but w/​o the box! Lets just say it was worse than the 7 Eleven Sushi, and that was some desperate times for me!!!
We asked for it to go, as I looked around and saw no rating on the food… they asked if it was okay, we said everything is fine, NOT REALLY I screamed in my HEAD, its NASTY!!! We even contemplated on Dine and Ditching, because I felt the food was worth $ 0 instead of $ 25. We got it to go, and threw it away, and that’s a FIRST for ME!!! I swear if you want to eat there, you’ve been warned, because I am sure you will get SICK!!! YUCK YUCK YUCK!!!

I’ll echo the other reviews here and say this sushi is mediocre at best. I’ve had some fish that just did not seem fresh enough at all, and the ramen I thought was close to terrible. Staple dishes like California Rolls or Unagi or Seaweed Salad is quite decent, but be prepared for Suruki’s. This is a cheap, quick, and not very good sushi joint.
But I do give them props for being opened late (hence the third star). Wish other Old Oakland cheap eats would follow suit.

Semi-​decent ramen, but I would probably steer clear of any other dishes here. It’s pretty dirty, and there aren’t really any Japanese people to be found working here.
I don’t think I’d ever have the guts to order sushi here, but I did try their Soba recently. It was close to good, but in the end just tasted like cold spaghetti in soy sauce.
Go for the Ramen, otherwise go somewhere else.

no.
Really.
No.
I rarely give out one star so I will not start.
This place is small, cute, definitely not quiet, and passable.
Their fish tastes like its been flopping around the fishing boat til it died and got mistaken for being a live fish with the other ones. Not very fresh. Rolls are sub par. Ultra. Sub Par.
My katsudon has bones in it… Ew. Why? And not like humongous pork bones, like little teeny, blender pork bones. Service is, eh, it’s good for what they probably get paid.
The thing I like most about suruki’s is that after a certain time they start letting all their sushi go for half price and that is probably the only time I would eat there.
At half price, their food is considered decent.
Oh yes, and it could be possible that MSG galore on the soups… I had to down 2 parts water for every 1 part soup I took in. It is worrisome, but please… Go somewhere for your sushi, I know it’s in a convenient location, but… meh. Fine. Go there.

My girlfriend and I stumbled into this place during a Ramen withdrawal period of our lives. And noticed they had it. We went ahead and tried it. Surprisingly, it was pretty good. The bowls are HUGE, and they hella give you veggies and whatever other toppings you order it with. I’m the type that loves lots of veggies in my soup. And ALWAYS have to order Ramen wherever I go with «Extra Veggies» and with this spot. They just knew!
The California rolls were decent. Still pretty fresh. But that is the extent of Sushi I am willing to try at this place. The Tempura isn’t really Tempura. It’s mostly just «Very» fried and breaded TINY Shrimp & Veggies. The Chicken Karaage is super salty and way fried. But my girlfriend loves it. And she gets it every time we go. The soup is super salty here. So you may want to refrain from ordering the «Salt» flavor.
Overall, it’s super cheap and fast. I suggest it when on a budget, and craving a generous bowl of Ramen. But that’s all.

The ramen is tasty but man, oh man, is it incredibly high in sodium. I had some ramen around 9 Pm at night and woke up with the puffiest eyes I’ve ever had in my life without some sort of allergic reaction or crying binge… Warning: Those with high blood pressure — do not attempt to consume the ramen.
BUT if you like Zaru Soba then come on down! Good portion, wasabi and ginger and scallions included with a nice sauce for dipping the delicious buckwheat noodle. So hard to find cold Soba Noodle dishes, so happy to know they serve em here!