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Kula Revolving Sushi Bar is now soft open on Convoy, where the 2,600-square-foot eatery shares a parking lot with the newly-expanded Dumpling Inn.
The sushi concept has multiple restaurants in the Los Angeles area and over 300 locations in Japan; the new San Diego outpost is the largest in the U.S. and the first to feature the multi-tiered, high-tech food delivery system of the Japanese stores.
Inside, booths flank a constantly moving conveyor belt, where a long line of plastic-domed pods, dubbed "Mr. Fresh", protect plates of sushi from sneezes. Diners pluck plates from the pods as they roll past each table and deposit empty dishes down a tabletop chute, which tallies the number of plates consumed; most standard nigiri and rolls are $2.25 per plate. When you reach 15 plates, a machine dispenses a plastic ball containing a toy as your prize for gluttony.
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If you don't see what you're craving, you can order anything on the menu, from sushi to ramen and hot appetizers, off a touch screen pad. The dish is ready in minutes and zooms from the kitchen to your table via a second conveyor belt above the main line, its arrival announced over a speaker like a train coming into a station. It's not quite the intimate itamae-crafted traditional sushi experience, but it is great fun.
Kula serves lunch and dinner and offers Japanese beer and cold and hot sake.