San Diego Reader

• Restaurant

Meijo Japanese Restaurant

• 600 Palm Avenue, Suite 300, Imperial Beach, CA 91932 | Directions
• 619-429-4373

In this location, they have no right to succeed. It’s the graveyard of a bunch of previous brave wannabe eateries. But Meijo Sushi, the Vietnamese-owned Japanese place on the edge of I.B., is a wild success. Something about the owners’ fun-loving personalities has endeared them to locals.

Like, they have masu, wooden sake boxes, dangling, each with the name of a customer. Guy comes back from a WestPac, first thing he does is fill his personal masu with sake and down it. Then he’s really home.

Yes, main dishes can get up there, but the place has daily specials, such as sushi mix, fried gyoza (dumpling), tiger eyes (calamari stuffed with salmon), or dream rolls (with tempura shrimp, avocado, and cream cheese inside, and tuna, shrimp, and spicy crab outside) — all falling between $5 and $9.

And they don’t skimp. The sushi mix has five different kinds of fish on rice, plus nine sushi rolls. And it comes on china with a beautiful Japanese motif. And yet, somehow they keep it lighthearted and down to earth.

They even have tacos — except they spell it with a k. Tako in Japanese means octopus. Tako salad is chopped and seasoned octopus with vegetables.

— Ed Bedford