Samurai Sushi Bar And Restaurant

Overall: good sushi in a chill environment, the minus is the price but nothing you can't expect from an hotel restaurant (about $50/person). We ordered the boat (48 pieces of different rolls and nigiri).

It's good sushi. Not the best ever, but certainly the best in the mountain region. You can tell the concept of the restaurant has been compromised to meet the demands of a large hotel,which is unfortunate. Expect to pay a bit more than usual. This isn't a big city by the ocean with an abundance of fresh fish

Fantastic, highly recommend. We ate here with our two teenagers while in Banff skiing. The service was really good - very friendly and informative - and the food was off the charts delicious. We all chose one sushi or sashimi dish to start (all 100% perfect - fresh, delicious and authentic) then shared a hot pot dish. You can only have the latter at a table, not if you are sitting up at the bar, as the hot pot is put on a heated ceramic plate inset into the table. You are then brought a huge selection of meat, veg, tofu, noodles etc to cook in the bubbling broth (you just add things to the pot as you like). Delicious and great fun for sharing. Fairly expensive but a must do treat. Not open every night and you do need to book.

Unreal experience at this restaurant. Really superb service and amazing top notch food. Sushi Boat was my favorite. such fresh ingredients will blow your mind. authentic Japanese feel.

This is how it’s done. The Roger Federer of Sushi, the Michael Andretti, dare I say, the Steve McQueen. How easily can a master shame an entire city? I speak of my hometown, more importantly, I speak of my hometown sushi chefs. In recent years, the quality of Japanese food has decreased somewhat where I live. Don’t get me wrong, we have many options, around ten in fact. And most of them…kind of…well…suck. A few are dreadful while others gain a passing grade only out of desperation. Some fail because of a limited menu, others because they cut their sushi too large. Some simply lack passion, or at the very least, an actual sushi bar. Ultimately, my point is that years ago, after the closing of a favored Japanese restaurant, I began searching for a replacement. To this day, that has yet to occur locally. When I travel, I inevitably find surrogates. My demands are simple. I require a dominating sushi bar and a relatively intimate atmosphere. I require a charismatic chef with unequalled knife skills. And of course, I require the food to be good. Every time I go on vacation, I always insist on sushi at least once. In Banff, I found Samurai. Those 200+ words of preamble was necessary for the following statement to carry the necessary weight: I really wish Samurai was in my hometown. Granted, such quality comes at a cost, prohibiting it as a weekly indulgence, perhaps monthly. But it’s depressing I found such superior sushi hiding, literally hiding, in the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. My girlfriend and I weren’t staying there, just freeloading on the free entertainment, snapping photos and browsing the incredible architecture. We had planned to eat somewhere, but where… Then someone mentioned sushi, and I became excited to the point of being borderline aroused. We went searching, almost gave up a few times. In the end, I almost ran into it, Samurai—okay, the name sucks. Sorry, to break out of the moment, but really? Samurai Sushi? I thought the names of Japanese restaurants in my hometown were bad. Sushi Hut? Wasabi Sushi? Might as well call it “Japanese Typecast”. Is it such a chore to give it at least an original name, something cool, like Japanese words with six or seven syllables? I mean, you could’ve translated the address number into Japanese, and that would’ve been more interesting. The fish are brought in via plane per the claim. All right then. So does the mail; I’m not sure why that’s special. It could’ve been brought in by truck—Vancouver is like eight hours away. That one good sushi restaurant in Prince George I alluded to brought in stock via ground from Vancouver—they did just fine. But that’s unimportant; what’s important is how good the itamae is. Has he proven himself? Not just how he handles the fish, but how he handles his knives or his clients? The art is as much in his interaction with customers as his creation of sushi. Fear not. My eyes were locked on him like a lava lamp; if the itamae was the Ark of the Covenant, my head would have exploded. It was perfect, every cut, ever form. This was what I was waiting for. A rainbow of nigiri—shrimp, scallop, tuna, salmon. The whole experience was painfully short. I tried to extend the joy with casual conversation, but eventually, I had to swallow the last bite. It was not some strange fusion cuisine. There were no deep-fried rolls or pizza sushi. This was a classic serving, like watching a Spielberg movie. It looks easy, but if it were, everyone would be doing it.