"What am I missing?"

I have been to a few all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants and the catch at all of them was: it is only Nigiri (not sashimi) and you have to eat the rice.

I can't remember if they simply refused additional servings until the rice was gone or if they charged a la carte for un-eaten rice portions, but one way or another, the goal was you had to fill up on rice ...

Well the word "sushi" actually means the kind of rice they use. It isn't exactly fair to call it a catch since that's the dish. And at the all-you-can-eat sushi chains in California I've been to, it is always against the rules to remove the rice. In fact that seems like a common rule at all asian buffets I go to.

If they start making the fish super-thin that's quite lame though. A buffet chain near me did that as they were trying, unsuccessfully, to survive. I also once went to a regular sushi places that had an all-you-can-eat special and who kept ("oopsie") accidentally bringing way more california rolls than I ordered.

There used to be an all you can eat sushi place here when I was a kid, it didn't last too long, only a few months, but they had all you can eat 'craft your own' sushi, you could choose they type and filling and they'd make it for you, they had a BBQ grill at each table you could get pieces of meat for, they had a noodle bar with a bunch of different noodles and broths, a rice bar with a bunch of different kinds of rice, meat and vegetables for the noodles and rice, and a grill you could get freshly fried up meats and vegetables, all you can eat for everything with no limits for $20 Canadian circa late 90's/early 2000's.

My dad took us there a few times, he still talks about it and how sad he was when it closed down. He figures it just wasn't economically feasible. You got ridiculous amounts of really good, fresh food for fairly cheap. Far cheaper than ordering individually. We usually ended up eating until we all felt sick.

In Helsinki and in Finland more generally, the owners of all-you-can eat Asian buffets are not paying their workers anything close to a normal local wage. The workers are either family members of the owners, or people from the same close-knit region, or even trafficked labour, and they work for a pittance. Since cost of labour is a key reason for high prices in Finnish restaurants, it is no surprise that the Asian buffets are able to offer more food for less money.

Yeah I suspected this as a possibility, but do you have some kind of hard evidence on it? I do remember the case with the Nepalese restaurants last year tho, it was similar.

However, I would like to point out that this is a global phenomenon and I'd bet Finland has some of the least bad cases in this. Compare to some places like London where food is cheaper than Helsinki, but average salaries are higher. It's definitely about skirting regulations.

I'll leave this here and step away 'cause I am supposed to be on a diet. Buffet in Mumbai https://youtu.be/kUosDBUjq5A?t=67

Perhaps the restaurant uses a lot more rice for the rolls and the nigiris, or offer to fill up patrons with green tea or miso soup. Or, they are constantly busy and make their margins by the sheer number of patrons coming in for the incredible deal!

There are also quite a few all-you-can-eat-sushi buffet places in Turku, all with the same price of around 10€ during lunchhours.

A interesting part that was left out from the initial post is that we have these "lunch coupons" in Finland. AFAIK most employers provide these for their employees either as part of the total compensation or allow the employees to buy them tax free. The idea is basically that you get lunch for the coupon, the max valued coupon is currently worth 10,70€. Seeing how more or less all restaurants that serves lunch accepts these coupons I don't think it is possible to charge much more than the max valued coupon.

In Helsinki, most good lunches are more than the 10.80€ maximum. Everyone is paying the overage of 0.5-1€ with their card. For people unfamiliar with the system, the lunch coupons you use are deducted from your salary pre-tax, so it's significantly cheaper.

The largest expense if probably seating and serving you, not the food.

Also what I was thinking. Their minimum wage is double the US and even fast food is quite a bit more expensive there.

On the other hand they must be getting fish dirt cheap. I have heard even the youth hostels serve entire salmon for breakfast.

Yeah I'm leaning on that hypothesis quite a bit. Low amount of staff, high turnover for customers. Also I see they are doing something the autoamtion of making nigri rice piecies as well.

Been wondering the same of how its possible. Wish they could also do it across the bay in Tallinn.

Just take the subway across the bay in 2040.

In Chicago I highly recommend Sushi Tokoro, it has everything you want from a sushi buffet: Great taste, reasonable price, and no food poisoning.

There's a good one in north Atlanta whose name I cannot remember. But it's much more than 10€.

Reconstituted fish product (Surimi). You probably ate a ton of it.

BTW, its really bad for the environment because it encourages overfishing.

I’ve been to a few sushi buffets in Helsinki and I can guarantee it wasn’t surimi after googling to see what that would look like. It was almost entirely salmon and tuna.

That may be the case and I don't doubt your view, but you'd be surprised at how good the Surimi manufacturers are at producing "sushi analogs" these days ..

I doubt surimi can ever approximate a slice of tuna or salmon, even if it's hidden in a maki roll.

California roll 'crab' yes.

I assume crab rolls are a good target for that stuff?

Indeed.