Dragonfish

Neighborhood: Downtown
Address: 722 Pine St. Seattle (map)
Phone: 206-467-7777
Web: www.dragonfishcafe.com
Parking: Street / Paid

Overall Rating: 4.5 / 10pts

ATMOSPHERE:
This slightly upscale restaurant is located in the heart of downtown. It’s often crowded and the food is expensive, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s a good sushi restaurant. The food is over-priced Asian fusion cuisine. Young business people and tourists staying at downtown hotels fill up the restaurant. Unlike many sushi restaurants, Dragonfish has a full bar, but that is one of the few good points of the restaurant. But don’t drink too much at the bar because you have to leave the restaurant and go to the hotel it is connected to, find an elevator and go upstairs to get to the bathroom.

SUSHI:
It’s a good thing they call themselves an Asian Fusion restaurant because they don’t serve any authentic sushi here. The only “sushi” they have here is rolls, and frankly they aren’t very good. The Bossa Nova Roll (ahi tuna, kaiware sprouts, nova salmon) has way too much wasabi for any sane person, leaving only a burning sensation in your mouth. Sesame & Soy Marinated Tuna is really oily and only tastes like sesame oil. Maybe that’s how they cover up the fact that they don’t have any authentic sushi chefs or know where to buy fresh fish.

OTHER DISHES:
Most of the things on the menu sound fancy (is that the fusion part?) but they all taste quite plain. If they charged $5/plate for their food, it would be more understandable, but for chicken yakisoba that is $12.85 and just tastes “okay”, it’s a rip off. You can get much better chicken yakisoba on the Ave for half the price.

SERVICE:
Talk about slow service - the hostess was literally moving in slow motion. She took 82 seconds to put a check mark on her table list, and 47 seconds to grab menus, which were right next to her. Then she took 54 seconds to move out from behind her podium and finally led us to our table. You may be picturing a very large woman or someone with a wooden peg leg, but that was not the case. She was just extremely slow. She wasn’t the only slow one. The place was maybe half full, but it took them 10 minutes to take our drink order and another 10 minutes to bring the drinks.