Umi Hot Pot, Sushi & Seafood Buffet opened last Friday in Rockville and has been drawing huge crowds with waits often exceeding an hour for dinner service. The highly anticipated restaurant has taken the space that was recently home to Miller’s Ale House and previously home to Hooters and Shakey’s at 1471 Rockville Pike in Rockville. A first look is available below.
We stopped by on Monday evening, usually a slower night when it comes to dining out, to find a wait of over an hour just to be seated. We asked a few diners exiting the restaurant what they thought of their experience and received mostly positive feedback about the new buffet. Richard C. of Rockville told us he has been patiently waiting for months and really enjoyed the experience. “It’s more expensive than most buffets you will see but here in this area you will not find a buffet of this quality.” Richard said.
Christina Wu of Baltimore let us know that she met friends from the area at Umi because she has heard of other locations. “It was insanely busy inside” Christina said, “but we all ate so much and they had great seafood options that I’ve only seen at New York buffets.” The Li family of Potomac was waiting for a table for an hour and told us that they didn’t mind because it gives them an opportunity to hang out together and talk about how excited they were to try the restaurant. The automated system called them in as we were speaking.
A video we shared on Taste MoCo of the wait on Monday night has been viewed over 140K times, with one commenter leaving a more mixed review, “it was okay, I would give it a 3.5 out of 5 service just because the service was terrible. The food was okay I wouldn’t go back, it was alright, but $40 per person is a bit much for only dinner.”
We decided not to wait on Monday night, but returned on Wednesday for lunch. The lunch buffet was $22.99 (adult price), considerably less than the $39.99 adult dinner price. There was no wait at 2:30pm, but the restaurant was still relatively full. We were told the restaurant remained busy Wednesday night, continuing the streak of long wait times. A video of what was offered and our experience at lunch on Wednesday can be seen below:
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