Little Island Sushi

So today is my birthday, but it kind of snuck up on me this year.  Where did July go?!  How come I feel like it was just beginning of July and now it's over??  Hmmm... well I don't get excited about my birthday anymore.  I even turned down an invitation for a free Vegas trip from my mom.  I must be getting old!  Last year this time I was partying it up at Rain and Ghost Bar at the Palms in Vegas!  This year I just wanted to chill, and I didn't plan anything.  But some of my friends decided to come over anyway, and we went out to dinner.  My boyfriend found Little Island Sushi on Yelp, and we decided to try it out even though none of us had ever been there before.

This place is turned out to be such a winner!  Upon first impression, it was really little but cute, and because we arrived so late at around 9 pm, there was only one other group there.  We hoped that the emptiness didn't equal bad food, but Yelp doesn't usually disappoint!

As soon as we sat down, the freebies started arriving!  We got edamame, spicy tuna on crispy wonton crisp thing which was really good, and small salads.  Then we ordered pretty much everything on the menu, from good old spicy tuna, spicy yellowtail rolls, to specialty rolls they had.  And everything was amazing!  The presentation was great and the waitresses were super nice.  Some of my favorite things were sauteed shrimp roll served on a bed of garlic oil - sounds weird but YUM!  This Treasure Box roll which had tuna, salmon, crab, and tempura shrimp altogether wrapped in thin rice paper - super YUM, and the crunchiness of the tempura shrimp mixed with the rest of the fish was amazing.  We also ordered things like cucumber wrapped crab rolls, tuna wrapped crab/salmon/tuna/white fish rolls, spicy tuna on crispy rice cake, etc. etc.  I can't even remember because we ordered so much!  But every time they came out, the portions were great, and we were all woo-ing and oh-ing at the inventiveness and presentation.  They had carved vegetables and even the oranges they brought out at the end of the meal was carved out of the skin and into pieces, then laid on top of the skin like little boats.  We were impressed!

Some pics I stole from Yelp:

This is the Green Island Roll with tuna, salmon and crab wrapped in cucumber

Treasure Box roll

One of my friends' boyfriend brought a cake, and they turned out the light and sang happy birthday to me while they brought it out at the end of the meal, and then they gave me a nicely wrapped present!  I have never received a wrapped gift from a restaurant before!  Normally I think restaurants give you free dessert or something, but this is such a good idea!  They gave me a box of iced green tea mix, which is just very cute and smart of them to do.  The box probably costs $2-3 only, but makes a customer feel special!  Oh yeah, they also bought out sake on the house for us to take shots as well.  Hehe.

So it turned out to be a really good time with good friends!  Sometimes perfect nights happen when you don't plan at all.  Today I'm off to my other favorite sushi restaurant SugarFish for my free birthday meal and some traditional sashimi vs. rolls.  I can never have enough sushi!