Remember when a sushi and hibachi spot used to be a rarity? You'd tell all your friends about it, maybe have a birthday or two there, and cherish it like some weird only-child of a restaurant. Now, they're everywhere, and for good reason. Hibachi is (typically) delicious, entertaining, and with four out here in the Brandon area alone, convenient.
Located just off the Brandon Parkway, Tsunami Sushi & Hibachi Grill is one arm of the four-hibachi-restaurant monster in Brandon and a competent destination for sushi, drinks, and other Japanese fare for lunch and dinner.
Inside, Tsunami boast a modern, but pretty tame assortment of wood tables, moody lights, and other contemporary accoutrements easily interchangeable with any sushi spot built in Tampa in the past five years.
Nothing special, and it doesn't claim to be. This modesty (or budget savvy) extends to Tsunami's lunch menu which features a variety of their most popular sushi rolls for $4.25 each and full hibachi meals ranging from $9 to $11.
Tsunami's Tampa Roll - a mix of tempura grouper, cucumber, and spicy mayo - was far from mind-blowing, but passable. It tasted like the grouper was fried to an bland crisp with the tempura, but the addition of the half-spicy spicy mayo and cool cucumber rounded everything out nicely.
The shrimp tempura roll followed suit, with a near untaste-able addition of tempura shrimp with asparagus, cucumber, and spicy mayo. It's hard to complain when they're $4.25 each though.
A lunch hibachi meal of chicken, rice, noodles, veggies, and soup was nothing to write home about. A well-executed assortment of hibachi staples, but nothing really shined like I wanted it to. The chicken was a tad tough and doused in soy like nearly everything on the plate. Stripped of the awesome show you usually get when it's all prepared by a ninja chef at your huge table, the hibachi staples all make for a pretty simple, uninspiring meal you could easily just whip up at home.
I'll still recommend Tsunami Sushi & Hibachi Grill, though, even if it's only for lunch. It's good, just not great, but the prices alone are worth the mid-day visit.
