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Restaurant Files: 888 Sushi & Robata in Las Vegas

March 27, 2026 Leave a comment

When it comes to food, Las Vegas is one of the top places in the US. There is no shortage of great restaurants in Las Vegas, no matter what cuisine you are craving.

Considering that the city of Las Vegas is located in the middle of a desert, you wouldn’t think that sushi should be one of the culinary staples there, but it is Las Vegas after all, the city of no limits.

When visiting Las Vegas, which typically happens once a year for the work conference, I always try to include sushi in the dining repertoire. This year was no exception, and while researching online, I found this highly rated place, called 888 Sushi & Robata, which had very high ratings on Yelp, so it definitely got my interest. The only challenge was the fact that the restaurant doesn’t accept reservations and offers a waiting list instead.

I conveniently joined the waiting list on Yelp, and was told that even for the solo diner (none of my colleagues arrived yet), the wait time would be between 3 and 3.5 hours (we are talking about the middle of the day on Sunday). Okay, waiting is not a problem. I decided to walk to the restaurant as it was only about a mile away from the hotel, so I left about 40 minutes prior to the earliest time I could be seated according to the wait list information. Arrived at the restaurant, let them know that I was there, and as I was happy to sit in the bar, I was seated almost instantly (my waiting list was still not complete, but it worked fine).

The restaurant offers a number of menus at different price levels and with different content. As I didn’t want the menu with Wagyu beef (carpaccio, etc.), I settled for the Sushi and Robata menu.

I was not familiar with the term Robata, so based on the menu, I figured that Robata is basically a Japanese BBQ, with food served on little skewers. The waiter explained that the restaurant is all you can eat, but you need to order as you go; this is not a buffet, and you have only 90 minutes to dine. Note that the menu is really overwhelming, but my waiter was very helpful and we were able to figure out I think an excellent program.

I fully took advantage of dining just by myself. I took a bunch of pictures and took notes for almost all the food I was having, so now all I need to do is share my notes with you. Here you go:

I started with a few Robata items:

Squid on the skewer – tasty, but a little chewy
Beef on the skewer – very good, tasty.
Kurobuta sausage, made from the famous Japanese Kurobuta pigs – superb, incredible amount of flavor. I would love to eat like 10 those little sausages at once.

The next few items were served on the small plates:
Crispy Calamari – wow! Crunchy
Tuna Poke – wow. Flavor!

And then there were sushi, many different types of sushi. What was very interesting was that generous pieces of fish were served with tiny, very tiny rice balls – I really appreciate that we were truly able to enjoy fish in the sushi.

Salmon – a huge piece of fish and a tiny amount of rice
Salmon roll – very good
Yellowtail – perfect

Seared salmon – wow. Absolute wow. A little slice of fatty salmon just very lightly seared – what a pleasure!
Mackerel – great, really good. Love mackerel!
Yuzu yellowtail – not very spicy. This was one of the few small disappointments – if you promise spicy, you better deliver 🙂
Eel – melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Love eel, this was delicious.

I asked for a few more pieces to complete the meal.
Ikura – superb. Delicious caviar, excellent quality.
Uni – good, a touch of bitterness which you can often find in the uni. I’m personally looking for a uniformly sweet profile.

As I was looking for something else to complete the meal, I noticed in the Robata section a bacon-wrapped scallop, but it was not available. Instead, the waiter suggested that I should try a bacon-wrapped oyster mushroom. OMG.
Bacon-wrapped oyster mushroom – wow. Tastes similar to scallop. This is really something. A properly chewy, slightly sweet mushroom wrapped in a delicious, salty piece of bacon. Wow.

This was an amazing finish for an amazing meal. Well, almost finish, as I couldn’t resist a soft-serve green tea ice cream, which was delicious and refreshing.

Here you go, my friends – 888 Sushi & Robata. If you are in Las Vegas, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Next time I’m in Las Vegas, this restaurant will definitely be on the list.

888 Sushi & Robata
4480 Paradise Rd #900,
Las Vegas, Nevada 89169

Categories: Bars and Restaurants, Experiences, Food Tags: 888 Sushi and Robata, las vegas, las vegas food, Las Vegas Restaurants, Restaurant files

Restaurant Files: Oyster Bar, One Of The Best Hidden Dining Secrets Of New York

November 16, 2014 7 comments

Let me ask you a question – do you think trains and freshest possible seafood have anything to do together? Here is another question – thinking about train station, what kind of food would you expect to find there? Does the word “gourmet” easily associates with the train station?

Of course I’m not talking about an average train station in the town with population of 10,000. The tricky part of my question is that we are talking about New York, and the train station is the famous, beautiful Grand Central Terminal. Still, let’s say if you are visiting New York, how many of you would set the restaurant at the train station as your desired dinner destination? Well, if you like seafood, especially if you like oysters, Grand Central Terminal might be a very wise choice, as since 1913 (!) it houses, on the lower level of the station, one of the best if not the very best seafood restaurant in New York, called Oyster Bar and Restaurant.

As you enter into the restaurant, you get the feel of the authentic diner from the 30th. Nope, I’m not that old, but this is an impression from the movies. Red checkered cloth definitely adds to the ambiance. And once you get to your table and given the menu, especially if you are a seafood aficionado, you understand that you are literally in the heaven. The menu is presented as unassuming large piece of paper. The reason for this is simple – the new menu is printed every day (!), as the bulk of the menu is a fresh catch. Nope, they don’t offer the coveted but equally anonymous “oysters on the half shell”, where you get whatever single kind of oyster there is. You can pick and chose from the daily selection of about 30 (!) different oysters. Overall, Oyster Bar has a 5 pages long oyster list which includes about 250 (!!) different oysters – here is the link for you to take a look. Of course the menu goes well beyond oysters offering all kinds of fish and seafood. Here is a fragment of the menu from November 15th:

Oysters, fish, lobsters and more – whatever your seafood lover’s heart desires. And don’t forget the soups! New England Clam Chowder at Oyster Bar is my perennial favorite. One of the very best and very consistent. As Grand Central Terminal generally is my link to New York, from time to time, I like to stop by the Oyster Bar for a quick bite to eat – at $6.95, the bowl of clam chowder is literally the best value one can get in New York – definitely beats any deli.

As we were planning for the oysters to be the main dish, the appropriate wine was in order. One of the traditional choices for the seafood wine is Muscadet-Sèvre et Maine, with its steely acidity. But that is exactly the point – this is a very standard and traditional choice, and we wanted to try something new and different. Conveniently, wine list at Oyster Bar listed few very nontraditional wines as the winners of the popular choice as oyster’s accompaniment in the section called “Oyster Wine Pairing Champions 2014”. One of those wines was 2011 Hétszölö Tokaji Dry Furmint from Hungary, which we decided on. This happened to be a great choice, as wine showed not only acidity, but also a wonderful salinity (I can only guess – attributed to the volcanic soils in the vineyard), all together making it practically an ideal pairing for the various oysters.

And then, of course, there were oysters. There is not a lot I can tell you about them, except that the selection included 8 different oysters (you can see the list in the picture above), which were one better than the other, both in the taste and in ability to support the conversation.

There you have it, my friends – now you know about one of the best seafood destinations in New York – lunch, dinner or a quick bite on the way – Oyster bar will serve you well. Oh yes – and reservation is highly recommended if you plan on dinner.