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Conveyor-belt-driven sushi, other Japanese fare are part of Zen
Thursday, March 2, 2006
Gary Seman Jr.
By Lorrie Cecil/ThisWeek
Mobilized sushi — among other Japanese offerings — will serve as the attraction of Zen, which soon will open across from the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
The raw fish will be propelled around the sushi bar via a conveyor belt, the first of its kind in Columbus. Various forms of sushi will be placed on different-colored plates — red ($2), blue, ($3) and black ($4) — which customers will pluck off the assembly line. Servers will then tally the colored discs.
The menu is all Japanese; there will be no creative takes on pan-Asian cuisine.
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- SJT: We had our employee xmas party here and the service and food were excellent
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Conveyor-belt-driven sushi part of Zen
By: Walker
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hehe….that is no exaggeration, Merc.
I never ate there, but I heard the non-sushi items were good. But when you have “sushi” in the name you’d think that’s what they specialize in.
I’m not sad to see it go. I hated it.
I never made it to their store, but I had their sushi often- they supplied the sushi to the cafeteria at Children’s Hospital & I wondered why I hadn’t seen it there for the past week or so. I really liked their soft shell crab rolls. I hope we get a replacement. Getting a pack of 8 tuna maki for under $3 made for a nice afternoon snack.
Saw a sign in the window this morning, this will soon be ’186 Asian Cuisine’.
With luck, those dreadful conveyor belts will be torn out.
Hope they still use the conveyor. That was cool.
We disagree yet again!
Blue C Sushi does this in Seattle—here is the history of conveyor belt sushi….you get charged by plate color…so smart and efficient.
Shiraishi ran a small restaurant in Higashi-Osaka, in Osaka Prefecture, catering mainly to workers from nearby factories. They were employees of small and medium-sized companies, and certainly wouldn’t want to pay for expensive sushi. So Shiraishi opened a new sushi restaurant with a novel idea-no chairs, meaning the customers ate standing. He was able to slash prices by 30%, and word quickly spread. The sushi bar accommodated only about 10 people at a time, but was often packed with hungry customers.
In the traditional sushi bar, freshness is the key-the sushi is prepared only after someone orders it. If the orders keep coming thick and fast, the restaurant has to hire more staff, which always means higher prices for the customers.
Shiraishi needed to find a way to avoid the extra expense. He remembered how, a few days before, he had watched beer bottles moving on a conveyor belt at a brewery. This sparked an idea-if he made the sushi and then sent it past his customers, they could choose for themselves and he could keep costs down. So Shiraishi decided to put his sushi on a conveyor belt.
But what should the conveyor belt be made of? Wood seemed best, except that the raw fish and frequent washing would rot it quickly. Iron would rust, so he chose stainless steel. The belt would go in a loop, so he had it made of thin crescent-shaped pieces of steel nestled side by side.
After four years of trial and error, the first conveyor-belt sushi bar opened in 1958. It was called Genroku-zushi. Within a few years, Shiraishi had a chain of 240 outlets all over Japan. He says, “If I can make my customers happy, I’m happy too.” At this type of restaurant, the bill is calculated after the customers say how much they have eaten.People say Osaka merchants look after the interests of their customers. This Osaka entrepreneur was no exception. His idea added modern technology to a traditional Japanese meal, and spread it to different parts of the world.
The thing you lose, though is freshness, which is the most important ingredient in sushi.
I loved the conveyor belt. I gorged myself by ordering off the menu during one lunchtime sushi orgy…and found I was still hungry. I never would have flagged down the server to order yet more food…so I just picked the most appealing thing that cruised on by and ate it. Several times.
The food wasn’t the greatest, & it’s kinda tough with Nida’s & Kooma RIGHT FREAKING THERE, but it was still fun.
^ and here lies the issue as this was not the case with Zen.
I went there a couple times. The sushi was “meh” but I was never able to turn down that calamari salad when it would cruise past me.
The thing you lose, though is freshness, which is the most important ingredient in sushi.
I’ve been to a number of conveyor belt places. It’s not too bad if the place is busy enough to go through a lot of fish. The ones in japan were like that. While not the best quality, It’s super easy to get what I wanted and go, not to mention cheap.
The some of the ones on the west coast are pretty good. Even the one in Portland where they ran the sushi around on a big train was decent (busy evening, longer train.. not so busy, shorter train).
I never tried the one in the convention center area though.. I always heard bad things about it, and frankly I’m very picky when it comes to eating raw fish..
Ideally with conveyor-driven sushi joints you’re NOT really losing freshness, because there’s enough of a crowd that things aren’t making it around the belt more than once. As rave_til_dawn pointed out though, that was NOT the case with Zen.
My experiences at Zen weren’t great at all. The sushi was just OK, nothing spectacular. The selection on the conveyor belt was really poor (just the pure vanilla stuff) — though I’ll chalk that up to not having enough crowds to drive through a wider selection –and the worst was the service, which was TERRIBLE. Not rude, but woefully understaffed/inattentive – since anything NOT on the belt had to be ordered through the floor staff, and they were never around, it took twice as long as it should’ve (at least) to get anything done.
The conveyor-driven concept is a really fun one. I’d love to hit up a conveyor sushi place out West somewhere where they get good crowds. But Zen missed the mark.
I hope they change the lighting. They had these weird green lights in there which made everything look peaked.
The thing you lose, though is freshness, which is the most important ingredient in sushi.
Not at this place because they are SLAMMED crazy busy.
I liked the conveyors at Zen. Sure, it’s hokey, but it’s fun from time to time.
Plus, you had the option there of ordering custom rolls from the chef. The conveyor was optional for those of you too picky for it. ;)
You guys, Upper Arlington–Lane Ave. Kingsdale area needs SUSHI ASAP. You have to drive to Henderson or to Grandview for a sushi spot. Perhaps ZEN would like to relocate to the ZUPPA spot on Northwest Blvd. or the former Ritters Frozen Custard spot on Lane Ave. shopping center.
There is a great sushi restaurant in Upper Arlington. Kikyo