It’s Tuesday night, and you and your roommate are trying to decide what to get for dinner. You want sushi, but she wants to get burritos. This would have been a problem before the opening of Sushi Secrets, Berkeley’s newest sushi restaurant that specializes in – you guessed it – sushi burritos. San Francisco has had sushi burritos since the opening of Sushiritto, but we’re excited to no longer have to cross the bay to satisfy this craving.
Located at 2110 Shattuck Ave., Sushi Secrets is a convenient spot to grab lunch or dinner, especially for students who live on the west side of campus. There is indoor seating that could comfortably sit groups of two to six people.
They offer eight predesigned sushi burritos as well as a Tuna Poke Salad for $8.25 and Kawaii Trio Sashimi Bowl for $8.99. Sushi Secrets also has a make-your-own option for $8.99 that allows you to chose your own combination of vegetables, fish and sauce.
We went at 6 p.m. on a Sunday and easily found an open table. When you arrive, you’ll go up to the counter to order and pay before choosing a table. We were greeted by a very friendly staff and received excellent service. Once we ordered, we only waited five minutes for our food to arrive at our table.
Our favorite sushi burrito was the Bijoubu, which contains tempura unagi, tamago, crab, cucumber, garlic chips, cabbage and carrots with a toasted spice sriracha aioli and anago sauce. It was neither too sweet nor too spicy.
If you’re interested in getting a little spicy, we suggest the Denemon. This was a vegetarian option that features purple potatoes, eggplant, carrots, cucumber, corn and spinach with miso, wasabi and anago aiolis. This was the spiciest of all the items we tried.
Our least favorite option was the Amabuki, which contains cheese, surimi crab, lotus chips, cream cheese, avocado, shrimp tempura, julienne carrots, tobiko, house marinade cucumber and burendo sesame with toasted garlic and anago aiolis. Personally, we thought it was just too sweet.
In all of the rolls we tried, the sauce was heavily concentrated in the ends of the burritos, and the sauces’ flavor became overwhelming as we finished our rolls.
Compared to other sushi restaurants that charge around $7 to $8 for a roll, Sushi Secrets is a pretty good deal because their sushi burritos are larger than your average sushi roll. Even so, we all agreed we could have eaten more after finishing.
We also ordered a strawberry smoothie for $3.49, which we all agreed was the best part of the meal. It had an icy consistency that paired well with the fresh strawberry taste.
Overall, we would come back but would opt for the “create your own” option and ask them to go light on the sauce.
Contact Elise Lagana-Aliotti at ealiotti@dailycal.org.