Shoji Sushi

Well priced and delicious food! Had the chicken sukiyaki: the broth was clean and fresh, not overly salty or sweet.

This place is awesome! I always get nervous ordering tempura for pick up or delivery since some places don’t poke holes into the container resulting in the tempura becoming soggy by the time I get it.
However, Shoji Sushi does make holes in their container so my tempura was nice and crunchy when I received it and it was delicious.
Definitely going to order from them again in the future.

One of my Japanese restaurant choices for lunchtime. The lunch bento box is around $ 9 – 12 that gives you one type of meat or salmon with two side dishes like tempura and sashimi. The sashimi impresses me the most as the salmon is fat and fresh and they cut the sashimi in big pieces too. For that price in downtown Palo Alto I think they serve you with decent quality and enough energy for you go back to work.
If you want something better than the bento box, I would recommend to get the chirashi don which is a variety of sashimi over rice. The fish is taste fresh and decent so I think $ 17.50 is a decent deal for downtown Palo Alto.

My biggest pet peeve about Unilocal is that we use a singular scale to rate all different types of restaurants. This restaurant isn’t trying to be Nobu and therefore doesn’t qualify as a «5 star restaurant». BUT for its niche, which is a fast casual sushi restaurant it is 5 stars. The service was good. We came here at 5:40 and we were the first ones in. The fish was good and tasted really fresh. The salmon sashimi melted in your mouth. The miso soups were also good. Overall all the rolls were good and I would come again. This will probably be my new go to spot for quick sushi in Palo Alto. To everyone reading the bad reviews give this place a try it’s not bad! Yes it’s not Katsuya or the like but it’s good for a some casual sushi!

The sushi was good. This review is not for that though. If it was, I would give this place 4 stars, but this review is for the service that my friends and I received this Saturday night (⁴⁄₃₀) at around 9:30-closing.
Oh hell no. First of all, oh hell no. Second of all, oh HELL NO. Tipping is a privilege. Let me say that my girlfriend and I always at least tip minimum even with subpar service and we received some pretty good service from this sweet elderly man who had a small conversation with us as he was cleaning up our table. He was really nice so we were going to leave him a good tip which we would have set aside from our change that we assumed we were going to receive. Keyword: assumed
Dude. Our check was $ 87. We paid with $ 100. This girl that took our check didn’t give us back our change and we were waiting around seven minutes. The POS system does the math for you so I don’t know how they’d have any problems with calculations and since we were the second to last table, I didn’t understand why they would take so long giving us our change back. You know why it took so long, well because they never decided on giving it back until my girlfriend asked for it. So they gave it back right and we took our change out and I glance over to them and they’re hella eyeing us. Like HELLA EYEING US EXPECTING US TO TIP THEM THE $ 13. Like bruh. You know we got eyes too right? Do you notice me looking at you while I’m eyeing you back? Guess not since they continued to stare at us, checking to see I we would leave the $ 13 or however much they expected.
We were going to leave $ 8 which I think was more than enough because the guy was so nice and he did all the work, but the girl who took our check the first time was so quick to come back that she didn’t give us a chance to decide on how much we were going to give. My friend had $ 3 laid out on the table already, but we were still deciding on how much to give. She pointed at the bill holder and asked if it was ready and my friends and I said «I guess.»
Dude she opened it, looked hella disappointed to find there was nothing in it, saw the three dollars on the table, and hella grabbed that shit and didn’t even say anything to us. Like what if that wasn’t part of the tip? No. Hell no. They didn’t even provide us ANY type of service and she has the nerve to get angry at us? Tryna give us attitude? You want a better tip? Act like we’re actual humans instead of dollar signs. So damn disappointed. Workers shouldn’t treat customers this way. That elderly man should set the example for the youngsters who couldn’t engage in a conversation that existed outside «is the bill ready?»

Not coming back! Got the lunch bento combination #10 which comes with 2 pieces of salmon and tuna sashimi. Sadly the sashimi was not fresh, it was kinda old. The tempura was also saggy; Kinda like they tried to cook it in a hurry in oil that was not hot yet… had the same experience last month but I wanted to give it another try. That was the last time!
Going to have to find another sushi lunch place!
=(

There are surprisingly few sushi choices in Palo Alto — so I’m very happy with the addition of Shoji! My boyfriend and I came for dinner on a Saturday; it was busy but we were seated right away. We ordered the Stanford roll, Dragon roll, Volcano roll, Crunchy roll, and edamame. The Stanford and Dragon were my favorites and the price /​amount of food was quite fair. The downtown location means you’ll have to drive around a bit to find parking in the evenings but it’s definitely doable, and there are cute dessert options in the area too! In contrast to some of the other Unilocal reviews, service was very fast and so was the amount of time to prepare our order.

Thought I’d give this spot a try since under new ownership. Fast service, food is nice fresh and hot. Will be back soon

A friend and I came here for a quick lunch break on a Saturday afternoon around 1:30. The service was very quick and friendly. Wasn’t very crowded when we walked in, lucky us, and we were seated right away.
We both ordered bento box lunches and I must say, the prices are great. $ 9.90 for a 3 item bento box with salad and miso soup? Yes please! My friend ordered a bento box with some substitutions and they allowed her and never batted an eye.
The food came out in a few minutes and tasted great. The soup had a few too many onions in it for my taste. They have the creamy salad dressing which I LOVE. The gyoza was some of the best I’ve ever had. The portion of chicken felt small, but it was the lunch and I don’t need to eat more, so I am ok with that. We both ordered diet cokes and were slightly disappointed when we realized it was the cans of diet coke… always a bummer.
Since we were in a hurry, we asked for the check as soon as we recieved our food and they brought it to us shortly after. We were able to eat quickly and return to where we were going on time at 2:00.
I will certainly be returning to this establishment again!

Reasonable quality of fish, sizeable rolls, and prices that won’t break the bank (shocking on University Ave!).
Shoji Sushi isn’t going to provide the most phenomenal fish you’re ever going to have, but it will give you all the Americanized rolls you could ask for while using fish of good quality (which its predecessor, Sushi Tomo, could not say; I still shudder at the food poisoning I got after eating there several years ago). We had the double hamachi roll along with another similar roll (yellowtail and tuna?). The fish was good, the size was reasonable, and above all, most rolls were sub-​$ 15. For a quick sushi roll fix, you can’t go wrong here.

The service is not professional. (But getting better) The food is OK+.
I like the hamachi kama! My wife likes the udon and salmon-​avocado roll.

Came here during the lunch rush and this place was packed. The food was really good and the service was friendly and the prices were fair. My only complaint is that they didn’t bring out both plates of food at the same time. My boyfriend got his probably 10 – 15 minutes before I got mine, so I was just starting to eat at the same time that he was finishing up. I hadn’t even ordered anything complicated — just a standard lunch bento box. That being said, I’d still come back and give this place another shot as the quality of the food made up for the weird timing of service.

Came in here for a quick Sunday lunch. My friends and I all ordered the lunch bento boxes, which were pretty well priced. We got our food and were seated pretty quickly but leaving took about 30 more minutes than expected, although the restaurant was closing and we were one of the only groups left. Another star gets knocked down for the mediocre quality of the sushi and salmon teriyaki (you get what you pay for, eh?)

Had a great experience at Shoji. All the food we ordered was delicious!
Appetizers:
Fried tofu
Gyoza
Entrée:
Tempura roll
California rolls
Chicken katsu
Crunch roll
Sashimi

Pretty good food, though the staff seemed a bit confused at times (but they’re still pretty new, so I’ll cut them some slack).
I tried some of the wakame salad and the poki salad, and then had the 6-​piece salmon sashimi and an unagi-​avocado roll. Everything was good! The salmon in particular stood out.
I like that they have pictures of all the fancy rolls on the menu :-)

Hamachi fresh. Got seated right away. Service good. If I’m in Palo Alto again I would come back.
My lady ordered the crunchy roll. She really liked it.

Came here for lunch 40 min before closing. Food was just O.K. After our meal, I asked for their dessert menu (2x) and twice the waitress ignored me and handed our bill instead. –_–

As everyone mentions, this is a great budget-​friendly sushi place in Palo Alto. I was impressed by the prices, especially given the location.
The food was pretty good. I got the flame roll. The sashimi was not the best I’ve had but definitely exceeded my expectations. It tasted fairly fresh. The rice was not very good. My friend pointed out that it just tasted like plain rice rather than sushi rice, and I think she was spot on.
Service was fairly quick although not particularly friendly. They serve tea to everyone when you get seated and orange slices when you get the check. Overall, it’s a pretty decent local sushi joint.

This place replaced the notorious sushi tomo which managed to survive for years surprisingly
Shoji sushi is not expensive at all. Especially given its prime location in downtown Palo Alto.
We came here for sushi and got sushi nigiri set which was a lot !!! And I got super chirashi bowl which was hugeeeee. We were stuffed when we left (the nigiri set and chirashi came with salad miso soup and dessert which is just a sunkiss orange)
Now moving on to the fish/​taste … to be honest, it is still league below sushi tomi in mountain view … Generous portion, fish quality was ok but the rice was terrible :(the cut was a bit too thick at times but I was actually surprised that they hv bonito (katsuo) and hirame and tai as well … Not typical beta (fish) that people think of in the USA
Uni and Ikura (salmon roe) in the chirashi were of decent quality as well (many places used low quality Uni which tastes horrible)
In conclusion, great place in Palo Alto for a quick and affordable sushi fix :)

I’m so excited that there is a new sushi restaurant in downtown Palo Alto. I never tried the old restaurant as the reviews were the most dismal I’ve ever read, and all other options in the area are pretty mediocre.
I’ve only had their lunch Bento Box as take-​out, but I’m already impressed by the quality, as well as the awesome pricing (especially for downtown Palo Alto). They have a ton of combinations, all of which include maguro and sake sashimi. I ordered the Saba Shioyaki and Tempura combination. The saba was perfectly cooked and marinated, while the tempura was FRESH! It definitely had not been sitting out, but I could very well owe that to the fact that I came right at opening. The sashimi was excellent quality and meaty.
As I’m glancing over their full menu, I really am impressed by the affordable pricing as well as their wide selection compared to their competitors in the area. This is definitely my new go-​to spot for my work lunches. I hear the line runs out the door, so I recommend arriving early.