SanSai Japanese Grill

I have been having lunch at this establishment at least twice a month. Today I ordered the Yakisoba Steak Plate with Brown Rice and it was very tasty! Actually it is a lot of food and I wasn’t able to eat the rice since I will save it for later. Biggest impression was that the cook who works at a very fast pace asked me how do I want my steak cooked and I said rare and it was dead on!!! I don’t know how she knew it was my order since there were other customers waiting next to me. But I liked the fact that she wanted to make sure the steak was cooked to my liking. I have seen bad reviews for this establishment but so far every time I order I have no complaints.

As a lunch spot, this place is decent. It’s got a limited selection of sushi, but they have noodle and other dishes, which is good for a group of picky eaters. The sushi itself was cut pretty thin though, and the rice fell apart every time I picked it up, which is a sign of poorly made rice. Ask any sushi chef what the key ingredient is and they’ll always say perfectly made rice.
I got the special sushi combo, which comes with a salad and miso soup. I picked the cucumber seaweed salad, which uses the flat, dark green pieces of seaweed instead of the translucent greenish yellow seaweed as I assumed it would. It’s the same seaweed you use in miso soup, so I’m seeing where they’re cutting corners.
I would equate this place to your typical mall food court sushi. Not the best, but not the worst. For a $ 14 price point though, this will probably be the best you’ll find.

Lunch today is a Chicken Bowl, Dark Meat with Oriental Salad. Really tasty chicken and salad, but I had to add Teriyaki sauce to the rice because it’s really dry and sticky. Fast and friendly service.

Pretty legit for a light meal.
Coming from Cali, I used to eat at ‘Flame Broiler’ at least once or twice a week. Chicken bowl which consisted of chicken breast over white or brown rice, little teriyaki sauce, some green onion and Sriracha on top. It was the best for a ‘keep your waistline low’ meal for lunch.
Sansai is pretty much the same, though their food doesn’t quite taste as good as flame broiler for some reason, it’s still good. I usually stick with the white meat chicken bowl, brown rice and sumi salad on the side. I think all told it’s around 350 – 400 calories even with the teriyaki sauce on it.
They serve other meats, such as steak, salmon, etc. They also serve sushi but I’ve never tried it.
One thing I’d like to see changed, is every now and then I get a craving for pot stickers (more like every day), and they only have deep fried pot stickers here. I’m more of a pan fried /​steamed type of guy, it would be a nice option to have.
Service is pretty good, they are all friendly and fast!

Had to grab lunch. Perfect Unagi roll @ Sansai dowtown. Light refreshing oriental salad. Convenient, clean and always good service.

Sansai has really good food at a reasonable price. They are very quick at lunch as well. I tend to go with the Chicken bowl with salad. You really can’t go wrong with it! Order it with breast meat and brown rice and you have yourself a healthy lunch.

Great! Fresh and always good. Spicy chicken bowl is wonderful. Great choice !

Not even worth a star but they won’t let me post this without at least one. 2 hrs for my food and I still haven’t gotten it yet. It’s right by a convention center that has been broadcasting a 17,000 attendance and the guy has the nerve to say they don’t have enough food. They ran out of udon, sushi, and miso soup. They only have ONE chef and ONE sushi chef. I could get better service in a third world country.

I am quite surprised to find out that this place doesn’t have a single 5 star review, as this is one of the best launch options when it comes to downtown. Just be aware of two things:
1. Skip sushi and always go for Teriyaki Steak/​Chick plate. It’s one of the «healthiest» meals you can order downtown — you get decent portion of lean meat (extra portion is $ 3), plus 2 salads and grilled veggies.
2. Pray that cook in that shift is good… sometimes your meal will be fantastic, sometimes just ok.
If you’ll be eating here couple times per month (I’ve been doing that for past 3 years) — get their loyalty card — 10% of the bill gets added to the card and you can add up $ pretty quick for free meals /​drinks.

I use to live above this place. I ate here quite a few times. (I reviewed this before I had Unilocal on tripadvisor. Here is my review)
It’s just fast food sushi. Potstickers are deep fried and not doughy like they should be.
5÷30÷12: Am currently here and two things are driving me nuts. For one their cd won’t stop skipping. 3 songs of nothing but skips. It makes me want to tear my hair out. Also there are an ungodly amount of gnats in here. 5 by the drink machine that I could count. They swarmed me while I tried to get a drink. And are currently while I sit. It makes me nervous to eat my meal… otherwise decent food. a little expensive for one roll of about 6 pieces, a small cup of soup thats mainly seaweed, and a drink to be $ 10 — when it’s not from a quality place and it takes forever to make. Every time I come down here there is maybe 1 – 2 people here but it takes them forever to make my meal… which would be okay if it even tasted fresh. Other than the sushi, nothing really looks appealing here and even the sushi is a little… off.

San Sai is definitely something unique as far as downtown cuisine, but it’s nothing really special. The sushi is just okay. They have a lot of other options like teriyaki and various salads that are also just okay. It’s good for a quick lunch, but don’t expect too much.

A change of pace for Downtown employees, San Sai isn’t necessarily a destination but is a good enough place to have some rice and teriyaki.
The menu, available online, is pretty basic and short (not a bad thing in my opinion). As for quality? Joe R.‘s already said it best in describing the par as grocery store. Just as there’s really nothing wrong with picking up something from Culinaria’s prep counters across the street, you’re going to have a safe option with San Sai.
Price-​wise, it’s worth noting that there are upcharges for a few things, namely the substitution of brown rice (50 cents) and white meat in chicken dishes not explicitly coming with it ($ 1). You’ll also be out if you want an extra teriyaki sauce (25 cents, at least according to the sign).
Petty points aside, being in the Paul Brown building and good maintenance serve this location well. A number of the counters and tables are a handsome, complementary stone (I want to say granite), and there’s some nice detail work in the ceiling that make this a nicer fast-​casual place to eat. Getting in and out within a lunch hour’s very doable.
As a bonus, during warmer months, there’s some sidewalk seating and during the winter, there are a couple of tables on the interior promenade. Carryout is pretty common, but there are an appropriate number of seats.
It’s a good outlet of a decent chain, and there aren’t many options for this niche (fast-​casual + Asian) Downtown.
Note: I haven’t ever known San Sai to deliver and I’m not sure about call-​ahead orders. I also don’t believe that they offer full catering service, though their site does offer that they do party trays which might work well for office lunches if you can call a day or two in advance.

Terrible Service! Everywhere you look it clearly says that they deliver. I called in to have a delivery less that 2 miles away (I’d go get it myself but the parking situation in that area is terrible and many of us were in meetings that day) and they acted like I didnt know what I was talking about. Needless to say, lunch was ruined for 6 people that day. I’m fine with not deliverying, but don’t advertise something if you don’t do it!

The place isn’t really anything special. I wish they’d fix the front door to get in though, it is kind of jarring to open it at first because it catches funny. The food is probably more healthy than going to anywhere else nearby for lunch and it is a nice change of pace than hitting up Culinaria every day.
I’ve had the sushi here a few times and it is on par with the grocery store as far as quality. I guess my expectations are too high when it comes some chains or maybe I’m focusing on the pictures in the menus to much versus what I’m actually provided in my Styrofoam container. I usually go with the Steak Plate or Bowl or maybe the Philadelphia roll.
One thing I do like is the Miso. It isn’t the greatest but since the weather has been up and down I’ve felt like I’ve been fighting getting sick. Nothing works better than Miso in my opinion so if I start feeling under-​the-​weather I can always count on this place being my first stop to see if I remedy it with that before I reach for the cold drugs.

For low-​carb options, choose the chicken breast salad and/​or sumi salad. Both excellent, healthy choices (skip the side of rice).
Sansai isn’t some revolutionary restaurant claiming to tickle your taste buds. It’s simply an easy, quick stop for something other than the normal subs and sandwich shops downtown. I love going there for a quick lunch. Make sure to go early or late if you want to miss the crowd.

In my quest to eat at every place downtown, it was necessary to visit SanSai. Upon reaching SanSai, we discovered a lengthy line out the door. Hmmm, maybe this place isn’t as bad as the other metro area locations?
Wrong.
It’s just as bad. Or maybe I should say bad, but just as fast foody. No, not really fast foody, it’s like Chinese places in airports — they sound better than «true» fast food, but they end up being overpriced not all that satisfying.
The two of us shared:
Spicy tuna roll (yes, I know others said to avoid the sushi): I’m curious what this cut of tuna looked like before being rolled. There were a couple of pieces where the tuna took up it’s normal portion of the roll, other pieces it was minuscule. And there’s about an inch of rice around these puppies. The crunch of the veggies helped, but not much.
Oriental salad: It tasted fresh, but the alleged «honey mustard vinaigrette» apparently made on cameo appearances. And when it did, it had a strange chemical/​metallic aftertaste.
Dumpling soup: The dumplings weren’t bad, but the broth? Again, for another location, it was mentioned that the broth tastes watered down. After eating the dumplings, the remainder of the soup was just bad. This is what they fed Andy Dufresne when he was in the hole.
Potstickers: hey, it’s the same dumplings, just fried! But I had to have them, I mean, you can’t be in a place like this without something fried.
I was hoping to be surprised in a «oh it’s not that bad» way. Instead, I walked away saying «yeah, it really is.»
They were fairly fast though despite the crowd.