Sushi Station

We went to dinner at Sushi Station in Rolling Meadows (there is also a location in Elgin).  We had seen this restaurant on Check Please about a year ago and the concept sounded intriguing.  It is like Japanese fast food and it is different than any other sushi restaurant we have been to.  You sit at either a bar or a table surrounding a conveyor belt filled with different kinds of sushi.  When you see a type of sushi you want you open a door to the conveyor belt in front of you and pick it up. The color of the plate the sushi is sitting on determines the price of that item. (wood = $.50, white = $1.25, pink = $2.25, blue = $3.25, green = $4.25, yellow = $5.25, purple = $6.25) We mostly saw blue, pink and yellow plates and 1 green plate item.

There is a menu and if you don't see an item you want on the belt you can order it. Also there are appetizers and nigiri (sushi pieces) available to order.

We grabbed the following:

Spicy Tuna Roll

Spicy tuna, masago and tempura crumbs - good sweet flavor and crunchy texture, one of Nick's favorites of the night

Scallop nigiri

Scallop - Nick wasn't in the mood for this, so just Natalie tried it.  It was spicier than she had imagined because it wasn't marked as spicy on the belt.  This wasn't a roll so it was just the scallop, rice and apparently something spicy.

Hanako Roll

Hanako roll - crab, cream cheese and green onion.  This was a larger roll, with a sort of flower design to the sauce on top of it. It was hard to get the whole flavor of it in your mouth at once because it was so large - more of a 2 bite sushi.  It's always harder for us to eat the larger pieces because they tend to fall apart.

Philly roll - salmon, cream cheese and avocado.  Good standard combination. The avocado was a nice touch.

Philly Roll

Spider roll - soft shell crab and cucumber, drizzled with unagi sauce - good crunch to the crab, wasn't too chewy

Spider Roll

Lobster salad - with crab and cucumber, one of the 2 least favorites of the night, best thing about it was the spicy mayo

Lobster salad

Paradise Roll

Paradise roll - toasted coconut flakes, shrimp tempura and avocado.  This was a truly unique combination.  We've never had coconut in a sushi roll.  The sweetness of the coconut was nice with the shrimp and avocado.  We liked it enough to get a second serving of this.

Dragon Roll

Dragon roll - eel over a California roll (crab, cucumber and avocado), topped with unagi (eel) sauce.  We actually ordered the dragon roll because we didn't see it on the belt.  It was really the only thing on the menu that had eel in it.  We didn't really enjoy the dragon roll as much though - the eel didn't taste like eel we've had at other places.

Final thoughts on Sushi Station:
Food - tasty and quick; some great rolls and some others we didn't like as much.
Service - there isn't a whole lot with service happening here because you can pick your own sushi off the conveyor yourself. But there is a waitress to get drinks and anything you do order.
Atmosphere - really neat idea (apparently there are places like this all over Japan).  This way you can try more types of sushi than by going to a place where you would get a roll with 6-8 pieces. It is really too bad that this isn't closer to us because it really is a fun concept and we could see going there a lot (especially for lunch).  This restaurant was really busy, especially for a weeknight. We had to wait a few minutes to be seated, but since you can get through a meal pretty quickly there is high turnover at the seats.  We sat facing the conveyor belt which was nice so we both could see the options in front of us.