The Cowfish at Universal CityWalk - The Florida Travel Girl

There was a wait for the inside so we sat on the patio, which was very warm on this September day, but gave a fun view of the scene. I would definitely get a reservation if you don’t want to wait or potentially get stuck in the heat. I got the Hokkaido Nights to drink, a concoction of 44 North Nectarine vodka, lemongrass syrup, fresh basil and mint, cucumber. It was the perfect drink for keeping cool and I really enjoyed their rendition of this drink, especially the addition of the lemongrass syrup.

The restaurant has a menu that includes sushi rolls, burgers with all sorts of toppings, sushi with beef, and bento boxes with sushi and burger. There are a bunch of other options as well, but if you are coming here, I would suggest going with sushi or a burger since that’s what they are known for. They also had all sorts of typical bar food appetizers but many with a sushi twist. We debated between the Crab Rangoon dip or the Blackened Tuna Nachos which was described as crab rangoon dip, avocado salsa and tuna on top of wonton chips. We figured that would be like getting the wonton chips and more so went for the nachos. Unfortunately, for once, I found this to be too many toppings. The crab rangoon dip and tuna would have been plenty for these little wonton chips, but the addition of the avocado made it so that no flavors really stood out. It is very rare for me to not want to add avocado to something, but I think they went a bit over the top with this dish.

This was our experience with the sushi as well, everything just felt like it was a little too much. We love sushi so much that we each just got sushi rolls. I wish we had given one of their burger combinations a try or possibly the bento box, but we just couldn’t resist sushi. I got the Firecracker roll, a mix of tempura shrimp and kani inside with yellowtail, salmon, masago and tobiko on top. I liked all the different type of fish and the crunch on the inside with the fresh fish on top. I did feel though that the quality wasn’t there with the shrimp tempura and other components compared to local sushi restaurants or Splitsville. It was still very tasty, but I would always choose the Super Tuna at Splitsville over this.

My sister got Mark’s Roll which was a flash fried roll with tuna, jalapeno, cream cheese and kani on the inside. We found the flavors of this roll to be perfect with all the ingredients fitting well. However we did have an issue with the size. It’s hard to tell from the picture but the rolls were almost as big as the dipping bowls, and they weren’t that small! It was near impossible to fit one in your mouth without almost choking. My sister ended up having to cut them in half, which is definitely not how sushi is intended to be eaten.Andrew got Jen’s Fresh Find, which had tuna and cucumber on the inside and avocado and salmon on the outside. It also came with a side of spicy poke. He was very excited for the spicy poke, but it ended up being a let down. It was just a small amount of tuna, avocado and seaweed mixed. We have had much better poke. The roll had a pretty good balance of flavors and was one of the better put together ones, probably because of the simplicity.I wish we had tried the burgers, as maybe they would have helped boost this highly praised restaurant for us. But as far as sushi went, we were not super impressed. It was still a fun restaurant that has options to appeal to most people whether you like raw fish or a loaded hamburger. Call me a snob, but I have always found that compared to Disney World, Universal falls a bit short on execution while still charging the same price. I need to try out more of their newer options to test this theory more, but with the required paid parking at their downtown area, I probably won’t get around to doing so quickly.

Are there any Universal Citywalk restaurants that I need to try? Let me know in the comments!