Sushi in Albany

In one of our trips down to visit some relatives in the US, we stopped over in Albany, NY over might to break up our drive. We had a craving for sushi or Japanese, so when we got to the hotel, we looked up for ideas. One of the places that came up close to the hotel was Koto. This was a habatchi and sushi place just off the highway.  It took us a little while to find it due to my lack of trusting my GPS, but we eventually made it there.  It was late, around 8pm, but it was still pretty busy there.  There was a nice Koi pond to greet you, with a very nice Japanese atmosphere.  We got seated at the back and the service was good.  It was what I would expect anywhere, but nothing special.  Looking at the menu, and it being so late, we ended up ordering a lot of sushi.

We wanted to try out things we did not have back home, so we ended up ordering rolls like the "fool's gold", "black out roll" which involved fish like Chilean sea bass, or combinations of crab, shrimp, avocado, tuna and black tobiko.  As you can see below the presentation was very well done.  I was a little sad not to see the wooden boat, but they did make an effort on this plate to make it look extra special.  As you can also see, there was a lot of food here.  We thought we would get 6 small pieces of sushi, but when it arrived, they were HUGE rolls.  The sushi was very fresh, and the combination of the "chef's special rolls" we ordered was very well put together.  Nothing really came out that we did not like.

We did not try out their habatchi section as we did have our craving for sushi, so I cannot speak of it at all.

Overall, even with the atmosphere, the good size of the rolls and the decent quality, nothing jumped out to wow us.  Why that matters is the price.  We felt that the price was very high for what we did end up getting. I do understand that getting fresh fish in Albany may not be the easiest, it still does have an effect the overall meal when you know what you're ordering is so expensive.  If you can get a deal, discount, or coupon to go here, it can be very worth it, but for us, we did not feel the price matched the food and we will probablly not be going back.

Review (out of 5):

Food: * * * 1/2

Value: * * 1/2

Atmosphere: * * * 1/2

Service: * * * 1/2

Price Range: $8 - $25

Website: http://www.kotoalbany.com/