Oue Sushi, in SP, is terrible and makes bland and even inedible sushi

After spending about two minutes describing each of the nine pairs of “special sushi” while being filmed by the customer, the waiter announced: “now comes the most Instagrammable part.”

He opened a box that spread a cloud of dry ice over the pieces, creating a beautiful cascade of smoke. The video must have been interesting, and soon became a hit on social media. And that must have been the only good thing about the entire meal at the famous Oue Sushi, in São Paulo.

The Japanese restaurant is often acclaimed by digital influencers, is successful and already has four locations in the city, but offers a poor experience.

Called omakasseê, in reference to the menu in which the customer places themselves in the hands of the chef, the meal costs R$192 per person and includes dozens of small dishes to eat as much as you want. But nothing there is good. The experience is reminiscent of the most mediocre sushi all-you-can-eat, and everything served varies between the minimally acceptable, the bland and even inedible.

Despite being described as a sequential tasting, the series of errors begins with the service. As soon as the meal begins with a small cold salad, 13 different dishes arrive at the table at once in a confusing distribution of cold and hot preparations. To make matters worse, the entire table is completely filled with the smell of truffle oil, an ingredient that appears in several of the dishes.

In this first batch there is a fried roll that claims to be made from king crab, a rare and expensive ingredient. The piece has a heavy dough with no crunch, and the filling looks like low-quality crab meat, shredded and without much flavor. The menu continues with tiny scallops served in a sweet and sour sauce that makes the shellfish disappear. The breaded shrimp arrives crispy, but is covered in an excessively sweet sauce without the promised spiciness.

A pretentious “perfect egg” has no delicacy and is dominated by the smell of artificial truffle. The Kobe robata with cheese and teriyaki has tender meat, but the flavor of the special Japanese beef goes a long way. And the buttered salmon from Normandy is so sickly that it wasn’t completely eaten.

The meal continues with an even worse step with the special sushi. The two-story platform designed for social media photos draws attention to the pink tone of almost all the pieces. Salmon dominates the scene formed by nine pairs of very low quality.

The fish is served in thin cuts, with no texture and no feeling of freshness, and the rice is absolutely devoid of seasoning and flavor. Almost everyone is given some kind of sauce to disguise the questionable ingredients. Dyo tartufo is the worst example: it comes with salmon, quail egg yolk and more truffle oil, and has such an unpleasant texture and flavor that it makes you want to leave.

But the sequence continues with more traditional preparations, such as unlimited temakis, tuna sushi and sashimi. Again, practically nothing works. The gyozas are poorly made (the steamed one is soft, and the fried one is dipped in a sauce that takes away the crunchy texture).

The hossomakis are tasteless, the tuna nigiri is as thin as a little finger and has no structure, while the raw fish pieces look like they have just been thawed and have no consistency or flavor.

To top it off, they are served on top of lemon slices that end up giving off acidity and a slight bitterness. The only dish that came close to being good was the vegetable tempura, which arrived hot and very crispy.

To finish the meal, Oue also offers desserts that are not at all Japanese: crème brûlée and pavlova are not bad, but they are nothing more than mediocre.

The menu seems to have no end to dozens of options to be ordered at will. Every time they pass by the table, the waiters ask if the customers want anything else. Upon hearing that no, and that the meal already had a lot of food, one of them replied: “that’s our strength.” At least he was sincere.

In order not to confuse disappointment with the low quality of Oue’s Japanese food with a snobbish attitude, we decided to give it a test run. After the meal, we went to a chain supermarket to compare what we had eaten with sushi that sits on the shelves for hours and is sold for around R$30 per 500 g. And, if the experience wasn’t good either, at least the rice had some flavor and already surpassed Oue’s.