If you are a sushi fiend like I am, the main barrier keeping you from eating it for literally every meal is the price…aaaand maybe the desire to ~keep it regular~ as it were. But beyond that, y’all already know I could live off just raw fish and rice for the rest of my life and never once look back. And it seems now at least one of the barriers between me and weekly sushi has just been lifted, because Costco locations all over the country are about to start getting Costco sushi counters. And the sushi they make looks legit.
What’s going on? Is Costco catfishing us? Is it real sushi? Do I need to buy a second fridge?
Nothing fishy here. Looks like this is actually happening, people. Since the Costco location in Issaquah, Washington, got their sushi counter back in June 2023, the hype has been nonstop. They had lines of people for the entire week after the launch. Why? Because each of the high quality giant sushi rolls, nigiri, sashimi, and poke bowls averaging a little over $16/lb per pound, with offerings like salmon poke bowls with rice and avocado ($8.99/lb), nigiri with salmon, tuna, and shrimp ($16.99/lb), California rolls with crab ($14.99/lb), spicy tuna rolls(14.99/lb), salmon rolls with spicy mayo($14.99/lb), sashimi trays with salmon, tuna, and scallops ($29.99/lb), spicy ahi poke ($20.99/lb), and ahi wasabi poke ($21.99/lb) (via @costcoaisles Instagram page). Now, this is just the pricing for the store in Washington back when it first started selling the stuff—we have no way of knowing if these prices will remain constant across the full U.S. launch. What we do know is that these will be coming primarily to Costcos with larger footprints (that have the space for a sushi-making room, and we also happen to know that two new sushi counter locations are supposed to open “in the very near future,” according to Costco CFO Richard Galanti (via Food & Wine).
Costco sushi counters outside the contiguous 48 aren’t actually that rare; in fact, Costco stores in Japan and Hawaii have had sushi counters for a while now. Not only that, but the Costco R&D team apparently flew to Japan back in October 2022 to “study with ‘rice masters’” and then tested a bunch of recipes in their headquarters which are, you guessed it, also in Issaquah, Washington. All of that is to say, Costco has done their homework and I have high expectations for these soon-to-be sushi sources. You know what they say: “You can lead a Jessica to sushi and you don’t have to ask her twice to buy some.” Or something like that. Y’all get it…I am stoked!
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!