All-you-can-eat sushi is the bearded lady of the restaurant world, a marketable hook that pulls you in off of the street. But it's also a hook that can easily be disappointing. Once you're inside the sideshow tent (your money firmly in the hand of Mr. Barnum), you might discover that the “bearded” lady's facial hair isn't much thicker than that woman you occasionally see at the grocery store, the one with dark fuzz that makes you debate whether shaving would make her look better or worse. And when it comes to both bearded ladies and sushi, no one wants to pay a premium for something they could've gotten at the grocery store.

Of course, there are some legitimately good bearded ladies out there: Women with luscious, full whiskers who can wax the ends of their mustaches and accidently dip their Rip van Winkle beards into bowls of soup. This is why the Philadelphia food media rightly lit up with excitement when Stephen Starr's, Pod recently offered limited-time, all-you-can-eat sushi on Tuesday nights. Pod isn't the best sushi restaurant in Philadelphia, but it's a nice place that serves quality sushi. All-you-can-eat sushi at Pod is, in effect, a good bearded lady.

But people got so excited about Pod's offer that I started to wonder if Philly's other all-you-can-eat sushi joints are really that bad. Sure, all-you-can-eat sushi can be seen as a hack metaphor for Things That are Wrong with America: Instead of providing a smaller amount of high-quality sushi for an equal price, all-you-can-eat sushi has the stigma of catering to corpulent people shoving their faces with maki roll after maki roll, the triumph of quantity over quality. And this abundance comes with strict rules — steep a la carte charges for leftover food, stern warnings about sharing, and time limits.

Curiosity might not kill the cat, but it will stretch its stomach. Over the course of a week, I decided to visit the three Philadelphia restaurants that offer all-you-can-eat sushi every day: Mixx in Chinatown, Ajia in University City, and Aki at 12th and Walnut. On the surface level, the three are remarkably similar. For prices ranging between $23.95 and $24.95, all offer a choice between soup and salad (all with a version of the same carrot-based dressing) and a menu of maki rolls and nigiri. The rules are also the same at all three, promising steep charges if you leave any pieces of sushi behind, or if someone you're dining with, who isn't participating in the all-you-can-eat option, even tries just a piece.

Mixx, adhered to so many negative all-you-can-eat sushi stereotypes that I had to wonder if I was being filmed for some food-based prank show. My friend and I were subjected to a clownish approximation of sushi rolls that fell apart and nigiri that consisted of mediocre-quality fish perched atop larger-than-necessary mounds of rice. Several of the rolls were “fine” – the spicy tuna, for example, tasted like the spicy sauce. Fine. The most hilarious thing we received was the last roll – an eel cucumber maki where the eel could best be described as “ceremonial,” with cucumber comprising 90% of the roll. If you add a mere 10% to that number, it makes Mixx 100% not worth it.

While I might have felt like I was being played a fool at Mixx, Ajia made a straightforward claim that cameras were being pointed at me while I dined. That, the menu says, is how they ensure all-you-can-eat patrons do not share with people who did not pay for all-you-can-eat food. I had a bad lunch at Ajia a couple of years ago (heavily mayoed sushi is not for me), and that memory, combined with the camera threat, was an inauspicious start to dinner. I was, however, pleasantly surprised that Ajia was better than Mixx. The salad was sadder – a mix of translucent lettuces without the obligatory cucumber and tomato slice, but the sushi had more self-respect. The nigiri were still served on too much rice, but the maki rolls stayed together well, like a couple that just renewed its vows. The dragon roll and spicy crunchy tuna roll were my favorites here; the dragon had a bit of artistry to it, with thin slices of soft avocado laid out nicely on top, and the spicy crunchy tuna was a solid workhorse of a roll, with a good balance between the spice and crunch. Moreover, the cucumber eel roll was only about 70% cucumber. While Ajia is better, though, I still wouldn't recommend it.

Thus at the end of the week, I entered Aki with a heavy heart and stomach, sick of wasting money and calories only to feel like Hansel, fattened up by the witch (yes, in this example, I am also the witch). So, I could go on and on about how pleasantly surprised I was by Aki: the full bar, the nice interior, the freshness of the fish, the crisp baby greens that made up the appetizer salad. But here is one tidbit that symbolizes it all: In the absence of a cucumber eel roll, I ordered a cucumber tuna roll. And not only was this roll lovely, well-prepared and fresh-tasting, but it also had a 50/50 ratio of cucumber to fish.

No, Aki doesn't serve the best sushi I've ever had, but it serves pleasant sushi, sushi with good-quality fish that isn't over-pumped with rice or crumbling at the touch of a chopstick. If you want to do the all-you-can-eat sushi thing without being at the whim of Pod’s occasional Tuesday night specials, do it at Aki. And in the world of sideshow sushi, you'll be able to leave the suckers to the octopus.

Article photo by author, Eat Drink Philly" photograph from suvodeb, via Flickr (Creative Commons), "Philly" photograph from camardella, via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Meg Favreau is a writer and comedian living in Philadelphia. Check out her website, www.megfavreau.com.