Portland Sushi Hotpot (Portland Cascade Station) Review

There are not many places to eat at cascade station we find.We thought that since we came all this way we might as well find something we don't have back home. There were places like Red Robin's, IKEA, IHOP and etc... But they are everywhere and from the outside they don't look so special. As we walked around, we saw something that we don't have at home. It is a Japanese place that sells sushi and hot pots, and coincidentally  it its called "Sushi Hotpot".

  
 Even though the name doesn't sound too creative or appealing, the actual store is pretty legit. They have a revolving sushi conveyor belt that. Brings all different types of things from sashimi to calamari to sweets around.  This restaurant have a happy hour thing from 6 to closing from Sunday night to Thursday night.

In the two nights we were in Portland, we ate at this restaurant. The first night,which was a Saturday, all we ordered were donburis. Their donburis are only $4 each, and with no tax, and a fair portion and good quality, it is a steal! We ordered the pork katsu don, chicken teriyaki don and the unagi don. The pork katsu don was quite plain because it only had a piece of pork cutlet on it along with rice. In a sense it ws abit dry as it was lacking other things such as vegetables. Essentially, it is just a bowl of rice with a piece of fried pork on it. Even though the katsu don was a bit dry, the pork cutlet itself was good as it tasted not too overly fried or greasy. Next we have the chicken teriyaki don. This rice bowl tasted less dry than the pork katsu don because of the teriyaki sauce. The chicken teriyaki itself was fun if flavour, you can tell by its appearance that it was flame grilled, and it was full of flavour. Finally we have the unagi don. Eventhdough the unagi (eel) on the unagi don was abit thin, for the price that it comes at along with all of the vegetables that were included it is a good bargain.

     In addition, we also got a cup of calamari off the sushi belt and it was pretty decent. It was on a blue plate so the price was only 2 dollars. The quality was pretty good. The portion wasn't too big, it was fair.

    The downside to this restaurant, I must say is the fact that it is always busy and they way they organize their servers are like a gong show. There are only a few servers and all these seats, and they must clean up, be at the cash register, take orders at the same time. At some points during our visit, we would get random orders that the waiter forgot who ordered. Also, tryibg to call a waiter over to get something, it is alittle difficult because they are all over the place.

      The second day we decided to eat here again and try their rotating sushi bar. This time it was their happy hour, so we had to wait because it was slightly busy. During happy hour, everything on the conveyor belt was only a dollar provided that you buy a drink. The funny thing was we thought that the tea was free so we ordered tea, of which we realized later that it actually costs around $1.75 and we also ordered iced tea thinking that the iced tea is the drink we have for the happy hour. Compared to yesterday's selection of food on the conveyor, we noticed that there are less selection. Yesterday, there were calamari, sashimi, but today, there were none, and we found that the sushi seem abit smaller. It took about 10 plates of sushi to fill me up.