Bar Madness
By popular demand, our second mini Bar Madness tournament was for the Sushi Bar crown. Similar to our last tournament with Mexican Bars, there’s the imbalance between authentic, Japanese-owned Sushi joints, and other seafood or Asian fusion places that also serve sushi. We tried to focus on the places with a bar or bar scene (since that’s sort of our thing) while also balancing the best actual sushi.
We have a blast doing these tournaments and this turned out to be one of the closest competitions yet. Check out the results and try to guess who won if you missed it on our Instagram!
Sweet 16
Sushi-Wa started off strong with a nearly 80-20 win over Kings Sushi.
Fuji on upper King Street also won a commanding 68% of the vote over Ichiban.
Snapper Jacks probably isn’t first-to-mind for sushi in Charleston. And they turned out to be no match for CO, who won 70-30.
Locals, who also has somewhat of a cult-following in Charleston, crushed Zen Asian Fusion with nearly 3/4ths of the vote.
SHIKI had the authenticity and downtown advantage over Mill Street Tavern, and won 60-40.
167 Sushi, showed off their own cult-following, winning with a whopping 84% of the vote over Tsunami.
In the closest match of the first round, Kanpai’s reputation wasn’t enough to get past MESU, who won 56% to 44%.
O-Ku easily beat Osaka 75-25 to finish a first round of mostly blow-outs.
Elite 8
As expected, Sushi-Wa vs. Fuji was a close match-up, with the favorite advancing by only 56-44.
We thought CO had serious potential to upset Locals, but they crushed CO 65-35 to continue their momentum.
SHIKI’s fan base wasn’t much of a match against 167 Sushi, who also kept rolling in a 69% to 31% win.
O-Ku absolutely walloped MESU 82-18.
Final 4
We are now down to the clear top 4 sushi bars that have really not yet been threatened by the competition.
Sushi-Wa vs. Locals went back and forth throughout the voting, but Sushi-Wa eventually settled on top by just 4 votes (52%-48%).
167 Sushi vs. O-ku was a match-up that everyone knew would be down to the wire, and it was shockingly tied at the end of voting. We put it to an overtime tie-breaker vote and O-Ku secured their place in the championship by just 1 vote!
Final
Now it was down to 2, and there was no clear sign of who would win. In unprecedented fashion for our Bar Madness tournament, the final ended in a tie! We again put it to a tie-breaker and Sushi-Wa clinched the final by ONE SINGLE VOTE. I couldn’t imagine a closer finish to this tournament, but Sushi-Wa is officially the winner of Sushi Bar Madness this year and crowned Best Sushi Bar in Charleston by the Bartopia community.
Thank you to everyone who was a part of the voting and huge congratulations to Sushi-Wa for winning this tournament. Shout out to the rest of the final four: Locals, 167 Sushi and O-Ku, who are all clearly some of the best sushi bars in Charleston.
Stay tuned for more tournaments like these on our Instagram!
Check out all the sushi bars in Charleston by clicking the logo below or searching “Sushi” on Bartopia! As always, tag us on social media when you hit these great bars. Happy Drinking!
