New Restaurant Review: Nagoya

Nagoya - South Sherwood Forest, just north of Picadilly Cafeteria.

Atmosphere ***
Cleanliness *****
Service *****
Selection ****
Taste ***
Value *****

So I went to this place right after work, after hearing about it on here yesterday.

When I walked in, the place had a very strong salt-water fish market smell to it, which threw me off, since it was just a restaurant, and not a fish market.

First thing I noticed is that sushi/asian restaurants in Baton Rouge have this strange affinity to paint their walls sea-foam green.

The second thing I noticed was that there were a lot of asian families eating there. Kinda goes along with my theory about ethnic restaurants that if there is a good percentage of people of that ethnicity there eating the food, they must be doing something right.

The dinner buffet is $15.95 - including all you can eat sushi, sashimi, 'regualar asian buffet food', and hibachi grill. I'm thinking to myself, 'for $15.95 I'm not going to hold this place to the same standards of other sushi bars in the city - it just wouldn't be fair'.

I went straight for the sushi/sashimi - because thats where I thought I could get the most out of my $15.95; and I was right...In about 10 minutes, I had already eaten what would have probably been $25's worth of sashimi.

This place is not like King buffet on Bluebonnet (that says they have 'sushi', but its just one guy back there making california rolls). Behind the bar were 4 'real' sushi chefs cutting fresh shanks of fish and rolling a pretty wide variety of rolls.

While I don't think they used the highest quality fish, I had no complaints about the sashimi. Again, was it the best Ive had compared to other 'non-buffet' sushi restaurants in town? No, but there was nothing to complain about either.

After eating a good amount of sashimi, I had a couple of the rolls, and again, not the absolute tastiest sushi, but not bad either...All of it 'worth the money you paid for it'.

They had a couple of hot food items that I hadn't seen at other asian buffets in town, like pineapple sweet rice - which I had never tried, and tasted quite good.

They even had a guy behind the bar shucking fresh oysters (didn't try them, though - but again still impressed that a buffet for that price would have freshly shucked oysters).

The hibachi grill was very popular among the clientele...I didn't try it, but the family sitting in the table next to me seemed to really enjoy it (but really, how can you frick up hibachi meat anyways?)

There was a dessert bar with 'real' cheesecake, 'real' pastries, and a woman serving about 15 different flavors of ice cream (order by flavor number cuz she wont understand 'chocolate').

The service (for a buffet place) was tremendous...but I would expect this for any restaurant open for less than a week (law of diminishing returns has to set in at some point, though). I could not get my ice tea glass all the way empty before the girl brought me a new glass (and this becamse sort of a game for me to try to drink down all my tea before someone would come by with another refill). Didn't hurt either that my waitress looked like an Asian Shania Twain.

Overall, I would not consider this a 'date' place at all...but if you want some decent sushi and are on a budget, Nagoya exceeded my expectations. They also give an AARP and LSU student discount - and the manager told me that he plans to advertise pretty heavily in the LSU area when school starts.

This place is not on par with high-end sushi restaurants in Baton Rouge, but I more than ate what I thougth was $15.95's worth of decent food. I will go back, and recommend that people try it out.