NOW OPEN
Akame Sushi — Rancho Cordova, California.
Akame Sushi opened Sept. 16 at 12251 Folsom Blvd., giving the Sacramento-area all-you-can-eat sushi concept a second restaurant alongside its original Roseville location. The company remains a small regional operation — two locations — but the menu is ambitious for that footprint: roughly 50 rolls plus nigiri, sashimi, dim sum, hibachi and appetizers. The Rancho Cordova menu lists AYCE options from about $28.99 to $38.99, depending on the level selected.
The address comes with its own sushi history. Akame replaced Narumi Sushi, which opened there in January 2025 and lasted roughly a year; before that, Samurai Sushi operated from the same storefront for decades. In other words, Akame is not trying to teach the neighborhood what belongs at 12251 Folsom Blvd. It is stepping into a location that has been associated with sushi for years and betting that its larger AYCE format can give the address another long run.
UMI Hotpot Sushi & Seafood Buffet — Cary, North Carolina.
UMI opened Aug. 21 at 1805 Walnut St. in Cary’s Cross Roads Plaza, bringing its large-format seafood, sushi and hot-pot buffet to the Triangle. The company now advertises more than 30 locations nationwide and more than 200 menu items, with a format that combines seafood, sushi and sashimi, hot pot, ramen, grilled dishes and desserts. Cary joins an existing North Carolina location in Winston-Salem and gives UMI its first Triangle restaurant.
The new UMI occupies a former Red Lobster, one of the Cary locations caught in that chain’s 2024 round of restaurant closures. That kind of second-generation restaurant real estate fits UMI particularly well: the concept needs a large dining room, extensive food stations and enough infrastructure to support an unusually broad AYCE operation. The result is a very different use for a familiar seafood address — less one menu and one kitchen line, more an entire edible ecosystem under one roof.
UMI Hotpot Sushi & Seafood Buffet — Rancho Cucamonga, California.
One day after Cary, UMI opened Aug. 22 at 12499 Foothill Blvd. in Rancho Cucamonga. The approximately 11,500-square-foot restaurant brings the same 200-plus-item seafood, sushi, sashimi, hot-pot, ramen and grill model to the Inland Empire, joining UMI’s City of Industry restaurant in Southern California. The back-to-back openings also underline how quickly the brand has moved beyond its earlier East Coast concentration into a genuinely national footprint.
Rancho Cucamonga is another large-box conversion, but on an especially substantial scale. UMI signed a 10-year lease for the freestanding former Claim Jumper at Foothill Marketplace, a shopping center of more than 550,000 square feet near Interstate 15. The 11,500-square-foot shell was built for the oversized casual-dining era; UMI is reusing that capacity for a newer kind of abundance, one that needs room for hot pot, seafood displays, sushi production and a buffet line that seems determined to keep going.
COMING SOON
Izumi Sushi & Hibachi — Wichita, Kansas.
Wichita diners have been waiting on Izumi for nearly a year, and the latest target is now around Thanksgiving. The North Dakota-based AYCE Japanese chain first confirmed the Greenwich Place project in November 2025, initially aiming for an early-2026 debut before successive delays pushed the opening into summer, then early fall and now late November. The company currently lists 10 operating restaurants across North Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Mississippi and Florida, including 2026 openings in Omaha, Gulfport and Pensacola.
Izumi is all-you-can-eat, but it is not a traditional walk-up buffet. Guests order from paper sheets and can keep requesting sushi, hibachi dishes, teriyaki meats and appetizers for a flat lunch or dinner price. The Wichita restaurant is taking over the former Buffalo Wings & Rings at 2636 N. Greenwich Court, which has been vacant since 2023. A second Kansas Izumi is also under development in the former Old Chicago at 1231 SW Wanamaker Road in Topeka, and that project is likewise aiming for roughly Thanksgiving. The turkey may have competition this year, but both dates remain targets rather than firm opening announcements.
CLOSED
ElChino Mexican-Chinese Buffet — Tyler, Texas.
One of the more unusual buffet experiments of the past year has already ended. ElChino soft-opened in November 2025 at 1500 W. Southwest Loop 323, combining Chinese and Tex-Mex dishes with a buffet, made-to-order specialties and a build-your-own taco-and-burrito component. The concept came from the same local restaurant group behind Ohayo Sushi, but ElChino itself remained a single-location experiment. Local reporting confirmed by Aug. 25 that it had closed sometime during the preceding months, giving the concept a run of less than a year.
The restaurant occupied a former Red Lobster and even adjusted its prices almost immediately after opening in response to customer feedback. Its mix — fried rice and lo mein alongside fajitas, tacos, queso and fusion dishes — was unusual enough to stand out in a crowded buffet field, but the concept was short-lived. The building is already headed for another restaurant life: Joamia’s Kitchen has announced plans for a new Japanese family-restaurant-style operation there, with baked goods, soufflé pancakes, seasonal desserts and a menu distinct from its existing Tyler location.
