Bistro Sakana Vancouver — Restaurant in Vancouver

I went here in December with 7 other friends and was embarrassed with my decision on suggesting this restaurant to my girl friend from Japan. She hosted the table and invited all her other out of town friends on my suggestion, as she did not know what Vancouver was like at all. But the night was pretty bad with terrible customer service, and I felt so embarrassed for getting them to come here. I could tell my friend felt bad. She didn't want to complain about this, so I will complain instead. This is how bad the night was:

1. Our table of 8 was put outside. They never told us we'd all be pushed outside. Granted, they have heated patios, but we wanted to be indoors during the cold December, lol. Out of courtesy, shouldn't the hostess on the phone say "Would you like to be seated indoors or outdoors" when we make our reservation? If she had said "Sorry, your table of 8 must be outdoors." then we could have replied politely, "Oh no thank you" and booked elsewhere. It's not that hard to tell your customer that!

2. The waitress forgot to offer everyone their glasses of water in the beginning. I worked at several restaurants before and I was always taught by my restaurant managers to serve water at the table before anything else. The waitress came to our table 20 minutes later and asked to take our orders. One of our table members asked her if she could bring water. She replied she would bring water after she takes our orders... Uhhh ok. But then, the waitress never came back, so I guess she forgot. So my guy friend had to call another waitress and ask for 8 glasses of water.

3. They forgot to give a dinner to one of my girl friend's husband. After all our dinners were halfway done, they came with his dinner after one of us reminded the waitress TWICE.

4. We were almost all finished our dinners except for 1 girl, who was having her hotpot and was only halfway done. A male waiter came to us and said it was time for us to wrap up and if we wanted our bills separately or together. Holy crap, that was so blatantly rude when it was obvious 1 girl was eating her meal. You never go up to a table and tell them if they're leaving and want receipts just blindly. Youu go up, observe how they're doing, who's eating, and then offer dessert or drinks, not just ask them if they're leaving and want the bills. She was upset about that and one of our guy friends at the table told the waiter, "She's still EATING, could you please wait?" The waiter just shrugs and goes "Oh ok" and walks off. How do they train these people at this bistro!? Seriously I see such good reviews on here, were the waiters and waitresses having a bad day on the evening we came?

5. At the end of the night, one boy suggested to us not to tip. My friends were embarrassed about that and didn't want to do that, but I voiced that the service was so rude and terrible that we should tell the manager. 3 of my friends went up to the manager to talk to him. I should have gone up too and said something but I figured 3 people was already overkill. Plus I tend to be really blunt when I want to voice myself so I didn't want to start a fight. However, I WILL write this on Yelp.

6. I asked my friends if they got any apology from the manager. They said that the manager (a Caucasian man) gave them all a weak apology and only said perhaps the waiter wasn't the right person for the job. What kind of an apology is that? Blaming your staff and not owning up to not training your staff right? If things went bad at my restaurant, my manager would give a free dessert or offer a free meal or something to compensate.

Overall, bad customer service. I give the restaurant 1 star. Food was great but the service far from it. Wish the manager had owned up to my...

Came for the dine out menu. Overall it was ok. Tasted good but compared to the price, was sorely lacking. Service was horrible. When we arrived we were seated a few mins after but things went downhill from there. After waiting 10 mins no one came to ask or take our order. We had to flag a server down to let them know we were ready to order. We did the dine out menu with the sake paring. Overall the sake paring wasn’t worth it. Better off ordering a bottle on the side. But even then it’s very over priced. Not completely worth it. After ordering the the first thing that was brought was the sake. Nothing else just the sake. No explanation or anything. Am I suppose to drink it first? Or wait for the first course to come out? After a long while the first course arrived. For what it’s suppose to be it was decent enough. Tasty but found that portion size was a bit small. But again as an appetizer it’s ok. The second course took a while to come out as well. By then we ordered extra bottle of sake. The second course again was tasty but as with the first course was slightly lacking. After what felt like a very long time later the final entree course came out. As with the first two dishes was very tasty and the presentation was good. Again the food tasted good but overall was slightly lacking. While waiting for our dessert to come out one of the waiters decided to “help” by pouring out the sake that was ordered in the side. But he made a mistake and mixed the sake that came out as part of the pairing. Once he realized what had Happened he brought over a extra serving of the sake which was nice of him. But considering how most of the time we were there it felt like we were being ignored, not intentionally, this misunderstanding could have been avoided. The dessert finally came out and it was good.

Overall the reasoning for the low rating was due mostly to the service and value compared to pricing. Each time the dishes were brought out the waitress tried to explain what was being brought out but in the end we couldn’t hear what she was saying. She spoke very softly and the background noise overpowered her. Anytime we needed anything we would have to flag down a server to ask for things. Generally any other place it was usual for the servers to come and ask if we needed anything else or how we were enjoying our meals etc. we found none of that here. Bang for buck it’s not worth it. Compared to other similar places, quality and portion size wise you’ll find better options elsewhere but they do somewhat make up for it in taste. Maybe their regular menu is better and much more fair. But looking over their menu on their website I don’t have very high hopes. Maybe my expectations were too high. Or there’s too many similar...

By its reputation, we thought Bistro Sakana would be great but we ended up very disappointed by the food. We started with 3 pieces of sashimi of toro and hamachi and they were excellent. It was some of the best sashimi we have ever had. But, unfortunately, the rest of the meal was below average. We ordered the Caprese Roll and the catepillar roll. The Caprese was undewhelming, the flavors dont work well together at all, despite the attempt to create something special. The Catepilar roll also was far below average, the dungeness crab had a too-fishy taste. (We regularly enjoy dungenss crab and know what it should taste like; this was simply not good.) Note: after we ordered we asked do you think we ordered well? and the server said yes. we would absolutely have changed to anythinng recommend. I notice in the review the owner has a habit of leaving nasty replies to people who didn't like the food. So, no matter what the reply to this review is, the meal started great and then was way below average. The service was also terrible, with two different servers who didn't know what the other one had done. After our first course of sashimi, the second server came over and said "are you ready for dessert?" We replied that we were waiting for two rolls. Then the first server came out with one roll. We asked where is the other and she looked very confused. A few minutes later the server returned with both rolls. It was almost funny, except that we were paying to watch this self-important restaurant (read how they describe themselves) deliver an experience that needs to be forgotten. OWNER RESPONDED: As you can see below, management responded to these comments. Bizarrely he seemed to downplay the presence of rolls, sushi and sashimi on his menu as "pedestrian" food. Quite strange considering that makes up what appears to be at least 80% of his menu! As for the Asian fusion concept he mentions, yes we enjoy that, but when a menu is mainly sushi rolls, nigiri and sashimi it's reasonable to expect a quality product. We certainly didn't get that. In general as you see management respond negatively to bad reviews and insult customers, we have found that when this happens by any business it's better...