✨ Dining Experience at Gone Fishing – Tuesday, 8/4
Gone Fishing, the Japanese-style seafood rice bowl spot in Mira Mesa, recently reopened after a brief closure. My friend and I had been looking forward to trying it for quite a while, so we made plans to come check it out.
We arrived just before 5 PM, and there was already a long line outside. They were taking handwritten names for the waitlist. We didn’t dare go too far in case we missed our name being called. My friend even joked that it would be much more convenient if they could take down our phone number and text us when our table was ready. We finally got seated at around 6:30 PM — over an hour of waiting.
The restaurant itself is pretty small, which honestly isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There were about five or six people working in the kitchen, plus two servers, but the overall food service was still quite slow.
Once we sat down, we ordered right away. The menu is very simple, with only three seafood rice bowl options. A few of us all chose the second option, which had the widest variety of seafood, and we also added a bowl of uni noodles.
6:36 PM — Ordered
6:56 PM — Food arrived
⏰ 20-minute wait
🙋♀️ A little hiccup along the way
One of my friends doesn’t eat shrimp, so we asked if the shrimp could be replaced with another seafood item of equal value. The server checked with the kitchen and confirmed that it was possible, so they replaced the shrimp with an equivalent amount of uni.
However, when the bowl arrived, there was almost no sashimi in it — just one extra piece of uni. We also weren’t informed beforehand that the substitution would be handled this way, and the receipt showed an additional $6 charge.
We had to go back and forth with the staff to get the issue sorted out, which definitely took away from the overall dining experience.
I guess this is one of the downsides of the soft-opening stage — when the staff is overwhelmed, little mistakes and miscommunications can easily happen.
🍣 Overall taste
The seafood was fresh, and the combination of fresh seafood rice wrapped in seaweed was definitely enjoyable when eaten in big bites. But honestly, it wasn’t particularly impressive or mind-blowing.
After waiting that long, I probably won’t be coming back anytime soon. If you’re craving seafood, you can definitely find some good alternatives at poke bowl spots or other restaurants without having to wait nearly as long.
I got there before they opened and it was a small wait. The server was really nice. I got my food fairly quick. The fish was delicious and fresh. I also ordered the gyoza and it was kinda underwhelming I wish they pan fried the gyoza too make it crispy. But overall it was pretty good and I would come back.
5
soft opening! my very first meal in japan was kaisendon, i believe it is the first one in town.
(+) ordered the best ($35), expected the best.
(+) side order salmon curry rice = flavorful.com
(+) aesthetics + service: felt like i was back in kyoto. thank you rogelio!
(-) none yet. looking forward to the full menu
2
Five of my friends shared an Instagram reel that this new restaurant Don Maguro had opened up in Mira Mesa. It was from the same owners of Tora Tora (the sushi roll restaurant) but it rebranded and pivoted to Uni and Ikura Sashimi Bowls (Donburi). I was extremely excited for it so I immediately made plans to have an early dinner here on a Friday night during soft opening. We got there at 4:35pm (mind you they just opened at 4pm) and put our names down for a party of 3. Since it didn't look like the tables were moving quickly we took a slow stroll to Target to kill time. Came back and there was still a wait. It was about 45 minutes until we were seated at the high bars which is understandable since there was a lot of hype around this grand opening. We all ordered the same thing, the Uni and Ikura bowl with Sashimi, and one Coke. The Coke came out promptly, it's actually a Coke Zero which supposedly tastes different than Coke (if that matters to you). My party caught up and kept ourselves busy while we excitedly waited for our food. Quite some time passed and I was looking around the restaurant, I saw parties who were seated after us...FINISH THEIR ENTIRE DONBURI MEALS before we ever received ours!! This was concerning so I mentioned this to the hostess because our server was nowhere to be seen, and she said she would look into it. We saw there were 2 Donburi bowls sitting on the counter for at least 5 minutes now, so assuming they'd just need one more to complete our order we watched the server pickup one of the available Donburi bowls AND SERVE THE PARTY OF 13 THAT ARRIVED 35 MINUTES AFTER WE DID!!!! I was LIVID by this point because we had been waiting for our food FOR AN HOUR NOW, it's literally 6:20pm so total time running is 1 HOUR 45 MINUTES. After I audibly call this out, because let's face it, it's a small restaurant and our voices travel easily to the kitchen, we didn't have to wait much more until the 3 Donburi bowls we ordered came out to us. The food was delicious, but the service was pretty trash because the server literally forgot about us. I want to clarify that the hostess was doing great, I saw her running back and forth from the kitchen trying to get a reasonable guestimate of how long the wait would be for the massive group of bystanders waiting to eat here. She even noticed that we were still waiting for our food and checked in with us ~45minutes into our wait. Because my boyfriend and I had prior engagements, and we really didn't think it would take 2 hours for dinner, we left and our friend stayed behind to close the bill. He let me know that there was no acknowledgement from the staff of their mistake.
Pro tip to Don Maguro: A simple "Sorry for overlooking your order" to take accountability for what happened would go a long way. Also hire more servers or at least a busser to be able to handle a consistent cadence to taking orders and serving/bussing tables. This would make your operations more efficient
TLDR
Food: 5/5 for quality and taste
Service: 2/5 because the server forgot about us
Time spent at restaurant: 1/5 because we spent a total of 2 hours there, I could have gone across the street to Little Sakana, had 3 rounds of AYCE sushi for the same price and time spent
5
Soft opening with a smaller menu! Amazing food, service and atmosphere! 10/10 would recommend! Super excited to try their full menu in 2 weeks!
