Shimogamo Japanese Restaurant

Second time eating here, I liked it even better. This is the only place where I feel the sushi tastes like how I am familiar with. They are good with their fish, either raw or cooked. I rarely like eel nigiri or just eel in general (like unagi don) unless it’s cooked alright but tonight it was my favorite. It was absolutely delicious so was everything else. By far the best Japanese restaurant I’ve been to in AZ. Will def go back😋

My son, wife and I enjoyed an excellent sushi dinner, last night. Shimogamo Restaurant is a modern Japanese restaurant with a sushi bar big enough for four chefs. It also has a drink bar and tables for sit-down dining. When you sit at the sushi bar, you have a server for drinks and dishes from the kitchen, and you order sushi directly from the chef. We started off with a new, to us, junmai sake that was recommended by our server. We all really enjoyed it and, of course, we shared it with the chefs. I was surprised that there's a Japanese restaurant in the desert with more than the usual selection of pink, red, orange and white fish. Although Shimogamo Restaurant offers omekase, which must be pre-ordered with a reservation, we opted to order a la carte at the sushi bar, because it had a waaaay better than normal selection of fish, much of which is imported from Japan. We started with a hot appetizer of agedashi tofu, which was very good because of the excellent dashi (broth). But then, the nigiri sushi (fish on rice) started coming over the sushi bar. The chef said that the selection wasn't as extensive as usual, but it was still impressive. We had hotate (sea scallop), shima aji (striped jack), madai (sea bream), kurodai (black sea bream), saba (mackerel), chutoro (medium fatty bluefin tuna), ama ebi (sweet shrimp) with the heads deep fried, umi masu (ocean trout) and sumi ika (cuttlefish). All of the fish was appropriately dressed with nikiri (sauce) and condiments (e.g., umeboshi, torched nikiri, yuzu kosho, green onion, ikura [salmon roe]). The chefs at Shimogamo Restaurant really know what they're doing! The only disappointments were 1) no uni; 2) no toro; and 3) no aged fish (you know, like a steak). However, I'm confident that they'll all appear on the specials board at some point in the future. From now on, every trip I take to the Phoenix area will include at least one visit to Shimogamo Restaurant. I'm already looking forward to my next one!

Husband and i picked this place to dine in for our date night. We just saw it on google and saw good reviews and decided to try it and its even better than what we were expecting. We sat on the “cocktail” bar. Cocktails are good, we ordered couple of rolls but the crispy salmon skin roll was my favorite. Also tried their Udon and oh my it was so good. The Sake Cheesecake was delicious, so good it made me emotional 😅. Definitely most authentic sushi place i have tried so far here in AZ. The bartenders were super cool and service is top notch. Do yourself a favor and bring your loved ones here