Sushi spots abound in philadelphia. Sometimes, you can’t walk a block without running into one. Where were all these when I was growing up? I’ve gone to Makiman Sushi a couple of times recently, and I’m a fan. It’s a nice sized place with a small sushi bar. It’s very casual and a BYOB. The house salad with ginger sauce. I’m very judgy when it comes to these, because I’m a big fan of ginger dressing. Their’s was quite respectable. And props for a mix of greens and not just iceberg lettuce, not that I don’t love iceberg lettuce. They also had cucumber in there!
Miso soup… just fine.
The best dish at this place are the tuna nachos. It’s not like a pile of chips with tuna thrown on top. They’re two fried wontons (I think) topped with some veggies, raw tuna, and a spicy sauce. And they are glorious! I was hesitant about these but M convinced me to get them. I’m so glad he did! It’s more like an openface asiany tuna taco. The sauce is delicious, but at times, can be a bit too spicy. On our second visit, the sauce was sooooo spicy that M could barely eat it. But really folks, you’ve got to try these!
Here’s the sushi regular… M always gets the sushi regular, just like my mom. How many other people out there are sushi regulars?
For whatever reason, I decided to try a couple of random rolls that day. These were quite nice! While their sushi is just fine, let me just reiterate my love for the tuna nachos. I will keep coming back here because those things are so darn yummy!

There are a thousand and one sushi choices in center city. So we pretty much just ended up at Wasabi House, just by picking a neighborhood and roaming around. The dining room is small, and it really seems to be mostly a take-out joint. Their normal house salad thing with the ginger dressing is HUGE! I wanted something refreshing and crunchy so I ordered the cucumber salad, because it said hot & spicy. This thing was totally korean! And I loved it.
Here’s Wasabi House’s version of Sushi Regular. While it tasted fine, my problem with it was that there were multiple pieces of some of the sushi. With only 7 pieces in total, you only got 3 types of fish and shrimp. Did they run out of other fish that day? Is this their normal Sushi Regular? I have to call them out on the lack of variety here.
Here are the tuna and avocado roll and the Fancy Roll (cucumber, avocado, carrots, crabstick). Both of these were fine, but nothing exciting. I have to say, I picked some boring rolls that night! My bad! It wasn’t particularly memorable, but just fine.

Izumi is a japanese / sushi spot on East Passyunk, in an otherwise mostly asian food-less strip of the area. It’s got outdoor seating and some indoor seating in tables, hightops, and at the sushi bar. It’s fairly clean, sleek, and modern on the inside.
Here are the gyoza, made with pork. They’re served with pickled cucumber (which weren’t particularly pickley) and already come doused and bathing in some dipping sauce. These were decent.
Here’s the izumi sashimi sampler. We have surf clam with spicy miso, squid with smoked sea salt and lemon oil, fluke with tataki sauce, salmon carpaccio kaiware and shiso oil, and tuna with tofu vinaigrette. These were all excellent and super fresh!

Here are a couple of their specialty rolls. The one on the left had some spicy tuna and avocado and crunchies on top. The one on the right was a special of the night and had a spicy scallop topping. Both of these were great as well.
The dessert was the craziest thing ever. It was a chocolate cake topped with coconut gelato, all covered in meringue, then topped with chocolate sauce and toasted coconut. It was truly decadent and while tasty, was a bit too rich for me. I could only take a couple of small bites. It was a nice meal!