Tokyo Joe’s – Japanese Cuisine to Go

When in Denver you don’t typically think – “Hey! I got an idea! Let’s get some sushi in Denver, because they should have some great local seafood to offer.” Well, I did. Well, it didn’t really happen like that. I actually found some restaurants nearby my location in downtown Denver and found Tokyo Joe’s filtering towards the top of the list. Google Maps places this in categories of Japanese Restaurants and Fast Food Restaurants. Isn’t that an oxymoron? Whenever I have sushi, it’s never considered fast food. Well, consider this. I ordered an 8-piece sushi roll and it was at my table in less than 5 minutes. That’s some fast sushi. Joe’s was an easy walk away from my client site down through the 16^th street mall.

I had the Joe’s Roll – Shrimp, Avocado, Cream Cheese, and Cucumber wrapped in seaweed and finally in rice with sesame seeds. Presentation was typical of something related to fast food. I got my wasabi and ginger on the plastic black plate, but my soy sauce cup was a small plastic cup covering my wasabi and ginger. So far, this is nothing exciting and nothing I would call home about. Well, I probably would call home, I would just make sure to have something else to talk about, since the conversation night last about 18 seconds. The roll looked pretty good and tight. Everything looked fresh and smelled good. The wasabi was pretty potent. It’s kinda hard to screw that up, though. So I take my first piece and dip it into the sauce, carefully mixed with some wasabi, and my roll began to fall apart as soon as it hit the sauce. Man, that sucked. The sticky rice was not soy proof. My pretty soy sauce cup with wasabi now has floating pieces of rice and sesame seeds. Oh, well… I scooped up what I could and hoped this was just a one off. It tasted pretty good so that encouraged me to try again with another piece and it was better. It held steadfast and I didn’t lose anything this time. That bite was pretty tasty. I mowed through the rest of remaining pieces having to utilize my chopstick martial arts to get out some portions that broke up in the soy sauce.

Overall, I liked the sushi. I didn’t like having to use ancient Japanese chopstick martial arts to get at the pieces that broke up easily in the soy sauce. I didn’t like that fact that they were out 2 of the 4 Black Tea options when it was just barely past 1pm. I did like the fact I was able to enjoy some pretty good tasting sushi for less than $10. I would probably return, but I might get there a little earlier since anytime after 12:30pm seems to be problematic for getting what you want to drink. I found out about another sushi place nearby that is not considered fast food and is supposed to be better. For under $10 I can’t really complain too much. If it stuck together better I’d gladly pay a few dollars more.

This has been a traveling review brought to you by the Nomad Consultant. I review all kinds of places wherever I stay during my travels. Stay tuned for more travel reviews.