Shima's Sushi - Japanese Restaurant

Shima’s is one of my all-time favorite restaurants in the US, a true hidden gem for the Chicagoland area. The sushi is top notch quality, and the hot menu items are always fresh and delicious.

me and my friend went here on a holiday, and came in expecting a wait, but not 2 hours. we were sat immediately in the corner at the back of the restaurant and had to track down server, ask for menus and drinks, and ask to put our order in. we then waited over an hour for our food and had to ask if it was coming. as soon as we asked about the food they started preparing it. we have come here many times and service is usually great but this day they were very rude, and completely ignored me and my friends table. it was a very disappointing experience.

Let me start by saying I love sushi and have eaten a great deal of it in my time... We came here for an early dinner over a weekend. The waitress was rude and only came to our table when she had a roll ready for us, which made it difficult to ask for another drink. She also never smiled or gave her name or welcomed us. The area we sat was away from anyone else, and they have these wall/dividers all around, making it feel private, which I liked. The food, however, was not good. Every roll tasted bland and similar. So many had tempora shrimp on them even when we tried to order a large variety of rolls. The tempora shrimp was cold, rubbery, and frankly, and it seemed like it was cooked days beforehand. None of the rolls tasted crisp or fresh. I couldn't even eat more than one piece of each roll because I disliked them all, and so did our entire table of people. A meal that should have taken an hour took more than 2 hours! It took a long time between rolls for us to get another roll, and since we were so privately trucked away, we couldn't flag down anyone to get anything. We were forced to awkwardly sit and wait a lot. I was disappointed as was our whole table. The one highlight of our experience was an older woman who worked there. She smiled at us as we left and said hi to the children who were in our party. She even gave each child a package of cookies free of charge. Her personality was lovely and her smile contageous. If I could give her 5 stars I would. Aside from that last 30 second experience with her, this place is just not for us.

The experience was incredibly slow and the food wasn't great. It took 20mins for a server to drop off menus, another 20 before they came back to get our order, 20 more minutes to get drinks, then 30 minutes before we got any food. In total, 1.5hrs after sitting down before any food was served. Outside of that, the food wasn't bad but wasn't great considering the price. Won't be going back.

The variety of the menu is astounding. The freshness of the fish is great;the salmon melts in your mouth. The gyoza is okay, it was a little more crunchy than I cared for. The takoyaki is delicious. The food is made quickly and is super hot. We got a free dessert with a strawberry topping with a brownie. The richness of the brownie was very good and balanced out the tartness of the strawberry. The reason for the 4 out of 5 stars was the service. The service was slower and not at the bar one would expect for a sushi place. The one server was very new, and tonight was swamped so I can't blame them, but there were times we were just sitting for 10 to 20 minutes trying to get the servers attention. I'm sure it'll get better over time; we plan on coming back out in 6 months time to see how it goes. The tea is delicious! The staff is super friendly and the ambiance is lovely- casual and eclectic yet very driven towards one theme.