1000 Sushi Islands

Horrible food, so-so service!

There is so much rice, I cant even see the stuff inside the rolls! The fish is suuuuuuuper thin, its like you're getting full by eating just rice.

What is the tempura batter made out of? Its hard, not crispy! They can't even cook soybeans properly! The served it to us when it was still hard inside!

Not impressed.

positive points: very good price for all u can eat japanese food, we ate for 3 hours.

negative points: The service!! Absolutely terrible, we got there at 12, we order 20 min later, 20 min after that they ask us if we wanted to order, we said we already have, they had lost our order. We order again, food came at 1:15pm. We asked for 5 miso soup, they came with 4, then we ordered 1 sushi pizza, they came with 3 orders..

Then the food.. I noticed there wasn't a single japanese person working in this restaurant, so much for the authenticity. we ordered the salmon terriyaki, it was burnt, the beef was over cooked, but the chicken was very good! we order another beef terriyaki, it was extremely good, so we ordered it 4 more times, and each time was worse than the previous, too cooked, chewy, just not good. The sushi was so so, they don't have hamachi or red tuna.

I really wasn't impressed with the food, and the service just pisses u off, who wants to go to a restaurant and get pissed off? not me, and it won't be happening again.

First off, the sushi itself was quite good. The tempura was very light and crispy; seemed quite fresh. The eel sushi was surprisingly good, and the crispy rolls were probably a highlight.

Okay, enough about the positives, its time for the shortcomings. We came at around 11 for the lunch buffet service, and it was pretty normal. A small flub where the server brought us a second set of amenities occurred, but that isn't really an issue. Where it kind of became amiss was when the dining room filled up with people. It got to around its maximum capacity, and the staff seemed to be pushed to their limit. We had orders stacked up for very long periods of time, some becoming disordered and amiss. It got to the point that we received our dessert before we got the rest of our entrees. Not to mention that we had no tea for about 15 minutes.

We had to resort to drawing on the back of our order sheets. The ambiance was average. The fish tank probably needed cleaning. They need to repaint the building.

This was actually the first time I dared to try sushi and I can say I loved it...Great food, there was not one thing I didn't like!Good serving, nice location they could do lot better obviously, nice serving, a pleasent experience.I would go back with no regrets!

I can now say I've been to all 3 AYCE Sushi restaurants in Ottawa and from my personal experience I would have to say that I like 1000 Islands' decor best (simple and lots of natural light). Unfortunately, out of the 3, I would have to say the quality of their food is the worst. It has more variety than Sakura but less than Sushi Kan. Some of the dishes just seem wrong to me (their spicy crunchy salmon roll is salmon and crunchy stuff mashed together and rolled up... unlike my favourite at Sakura where it is fresh salmon pieces rolled up and cut then topped with crunchy stuff and spritzed with spicy sauce). Our salmon rice was basically grease piled at the bottom of a bowl surrounding some salmon with steamed rice on top (not a fan of grease). The tempura was nicely done, I liked how they had a variety and you were able to choose the amount you want. We were also satisfied with all the appetizers we ordered.

I found their food came out fast and complete, they did not miss any of our orders (we were a large group of more than 10 people so that impressed me).

I was a bit dissatisfied with their waitresses. They are very unattentive as we had to flag them over each time to order more food or enquire about something. On top of that one waitress turned away as she was placing food on our table causing the entire dish to spill onto one of our guests' lap. (He basically looked like someone took a dump on him... not pretty). A few minutes later a different waitress knocked a glass of water off her tray onto the customer it was for... at least it was only water I guess.

In general it was an average experience. The entire dining room was filled for lunch, decor was tasteful and food wasn't too bad. However, if the choice were up to me next time, I would choose to travel a bit further eat at one of the other 2 AYCE sushi restaurants.

The food was excellent, well prepared, cooked and presented. However, initially they had me wanting to throw my drink in our servers face, firstly they sat us at a larger table then necessary, which for me was fine. Considering the place was almost empty, 5 minutes after they seated us they then returned and basically forced us out of our table( including my 5 yr old daughter)( being in this industry for over 10 yrs the one thing I know is you do not move people after you seat them!) So they had absolutly no customer service or common sense knowledge at all. Then tehy sat us in the crappiest spot, and 40 % of the different items we ordered NEVER came to the table, which pissed us off even more than we all already were.

So in the end the food was so delicious, but it was such a shame because their lack of industry knowledge, repeated different servers serving us and the fact we didnt get half the items we ordered , I dont think we will go back.

if you love the food but care less how your treated ENJOY!

At an amazing $13pp for Japanese AYCE lunch, needless to say, these poor people made no money off of me :). I went hungy, and was rewarded with above-average nigiri, inventive and tasty maki, and a chicken egg don that took me back to the Dotomburi market in Osaka (I used to live in Japan, it was food heaven for me). I had read a lot of conflicting reviews on this restaurant before going, so I was a little skeptical, but I'm happy to report that my experience was very enjoyable, and the staff were very attentive and promt. We got there on a Saturday morning at about noon, and the place was already almost full, with mostly Asian people I might add, which is always a good sign to me. The staff found us a sweet little booth-for-two thingy, and had tea on the table post-haste. We ordered our first round, and received our first dish (veg udon) in about 6 min! There was a steady stream from then on. One thing about the nigiri sushi - its small. The good thing about it is that it IS perfectly proportioned... it has a small piece of fish and a small amt of rice. Most places would still have that small piece of fish, but with a huge clump of rice. So, I like this way better because they are small and tasty and I can order as many as I like. In the end, I ate a total of 27 separate pieces of sushi, plus all the other stuff I mentioned in the "What did you order" section. For $12.99 it is an amazing deal (Note dinner is $20.99 but its still an amazing deal cuz there's even more stuff on the menu then, like sashimi). Funny thing, after eating all that food and walking out feeling like a weather balloon, I somehow felt strangely healthy! I will definitely go back, I recommend you do the same!