text: As a served buffet sushi restaurant, Kanda would be a rare bird on the west coast, but is surprisingly a common style over here. For your $15-25 (depending on when you go) the result is very much dependent on the ebb and flow of the restaurant.\n\nWhy? Because you literally order from a list. Each table has a sheet that you fill out with a pencil - maybe you want 1 roll here, 1 gyoza there - in an all-you-can-eat format. Some food is going to be cooked specifically for you, while others might come as part of a larger batch. (There's a price penalty for uneaten food.)\n\nIn theory, this is great. You could order one from everything on the menu if you have the stomach for it! In practice, this means there is batch cooking, which means you might get something piping fresh one minute and something from the waiting line the next. (The busy nature of the place seems to ensure your food is mostly fresh, though.) For better or worse, the chaos spills over to the waiting too; while food delivery is almost always prompt, drinks/orders/bills may take some chasing to make happen.\n\nI think the Kanda experience is best described as a search for \"surprise\". The menu is build to have you hunting outside your comfort zone, trying out various items you may have not tried before. As a group experience, that's great. As a seasoned sushi-connoisseur experience, you may want to look elsewhere.