Sacramento: Raku Sushi

Back in July, my friends and I did a little trip up to the American River for some whitewater rafting. Since the meeting time was at 7:30 in the morning, we opted to spend the entire weekend up in Auburn.  

There wasn't much to choose from in Auburn besides fast food chains, but after a full day of rafting, we decided to treat ourselves to Raku Sushi in nearby Roseville: 

We were a party of seven, so we had to wait a bit before we could be seated:

For dinner on a weekend, the all you can eat was $27.95 per person.  Everything came made to order.  We started off with some fried oysters (four pieces in an order): 

Then came the array of nigiri.  Each order came with two pieces.  We got the hamachi:

Saba (my favorite):

Salmon, of course:

Unagi:

And a couple of us wanted tamago and inari:

Not me though.  That's filler food in my opinion.  A no-no for buffets.

Of course we also got a lot of sushi rolls.  Most orders came with four pieces, which I appreciated because it meant we could order items that not everyone wanted to try and not risk getting KO'd by a huge sushi roll.  

This is where I had to compare my photos with the menu descriptions and hope that I'm identifying them correctly.  I'm pretty sure this is the Howie, which is a fried roll with spicy tuna and cream cheese:

Here are the phoenix (shrimp tempura, softshell crab, and masago) and the salmon lover (salmon and cucumber topped with salmon and masago):

The caterpillar (unagi and cucumber topped with avocado) and the king's (softshell crab, cucumber, and crab salad topped with unagi):

Here's two orders of the wasabi hamachi (seared albacore with cucumber topped with avocado, hamachi, masago, and wasabi sauce):

Also two orders of the princess (spicy tuna with cucumber topped with seared tilapia, jalapenos, and a spicy sauce):

Check out the lion king (California roll topped with seared salmon, masago, and spicy sauce):

And the spicy scallop (spicy crab salad and mango topped with spicy scallop and tobiko):

The Travis (spicy tuna and cucumber topped with seared white tuna, jalapeno, and ponzu sauce):

The red heart (spicy tuna and avocado topped with tuna):

I'm a basic B that enjoys Philly rolls (smoked salmon, cream cheese, and avocado):

But I also love a dragon roll (shrimp tempura and cucumber topped with unagi and avocado) as much as the next person:

We might have judged DK a bit for getting a yakitori roll (grilled chicken, cucumber, and cream cheese):

Then tried to offset it by getting a salmon skin roll (fried salmon skin, cucumber, pickled radish, and masago)

To finish off the meal, we each ordered a miso soup:

And from the dessert menu, we got the sesame balls and the fried bananas:

As well as the donuts:

Was it the best qualify fish I've ever had?  No.  Was it a lot of cucumber in some of the rolls?  Yes.  But do I care when it comes to a sushi buffet?  Not really.

What I do care about is the fact that Raku Sushi has a respectably sized menu, the food is decent, and most importantly, they don't try to overload you with rice.  For $27.95 ($18.95 for dinner Monday through Thursday and $1 less for lunch), I would certainly be back.

Except it's so darn far away.  But since it seems all our local sushi buffets have tragically closed during the pandemic, we may just need to make the drive to get our fix.

Completely unrelated, but if any of you are curious about whitewater rafting, I highly recommend it!  It's such a blast.  Especially when you have a friend like CK who gasps/screams like she's been betrayed each time she gets splashed...which is very often.

Raku Sushi

6726 Stanford Ranch Rd

Roseville, CA 95678

(916) 786-2800

http://rakurestaurant.com/