Sakura Cuisine — Restaurant in Cork

I have been going to Sakura on and off for a few years and I have always loved it and recommended it to others who were looking for good Japanese food in the city. I unfortunately will not be recommending Sakura again to people due to the experience myself and my partner had there last week.

We had a booking for 7pm and we were seated for then, all good. It took staff 25 minutes to get to our table to take our order, when we were sitting with our menus down and trying to get the attention of a waitress for a number of minutes. Eventually we got our order taken and it came relatively quickly, about 15 minutes. Between a little after we sat down and a little after we finished our food (around 45 mins), there was a table of 6 people who had left the restaurant and the table was not touched for that entire length of time. It didn't directly affect us, but we noticed how slow the service was when something like a table being cleaned took upwards of half an hour to get done.

Once we finished our food, the waitresses did not notice us for around 20 minutes. We had empty plates and put them at the edge of the table, but none of the staff noticed at all for far too long. We were tempted to get up and go up to the counter to ask it be taken away, but someone came just as we were about to do so.

As the plates were taken, we asked if we could get the dessert menu, as we saw it on the previously mentioned table of 6 and wanted to have a look. It took the waitress 10 whole minutes to hand us the menu, which is frankly ridiculous. When she gave it to us, she said that she had forgotten about it.

We waited ANOTHER 15 minutes for her to come back to take our order, but once again we were forgotten about. My partner went up to the counter to ask for our order and then sat back down. Another 15 minutes pass and we decide we had enough and we asked for the bill. The dessert was not even on the bill, so it had been forgotten about as well. The food we had was lovely, but the service was genuinely some of the worst I have ever had in a restaurant.

This was my first time back in Sakura in about a year, so I was really excited to have my birthday meal there. This experience has led me to not wanting to go back to the restaurant, and I will be telling friends and family that the food is good but the service is...

Opposite Cork city stalwart Shelbourne Bar, Sakura brings its very own distinctive form of relaxing and friendly vibe to the Mac Curtin street neighbourhood. Its cosy beergarden-esque feel creates a warm atmosphere in abundance and steers well and truly away from any overtures of the traditional, Japanese restaurant environment that is often accused of being coldly minimalistic

From the outset, the Sakura menu is far from having anything minimal about it, quite the opposite in fact, it is quite extensive and gives a guaranteed ‘revisit invite’ feeling before even any options are selected. ….And of our selections, the Philadelphia sushi rolls were a generous, two if not three or four people-sharing course. All the tempura dishes we tried, the ebi, vegetable and shimeji mushroom (the latter albeit a little oily) were perfectly warmed, not overly crisp and were modest to good size in nature as options. One of the noodle dishes did suffer slightly from a pedantic, imbalance in its component ingredients. However, the chicken katsu curry, egg fried rice and sea bass teriyaki didn’t struggle from any such imbalances or risks of dryness and the beef ramen was equally well received on the taste buds as well.

Of those in our group who had belly capacity to sample desert, their curiosity was rewarded positively, by the white/ pistachio ice cream infusion outing and the unusually ‘fondanty in texture’ pecan brownie selection. ‘Deellishhh’.

Our group were completely satisfied by the whole culinary experience Sakura offered. Interestingly, while there is, as to be expected, a Japanese chef in-situ, a Brazilian chef was in charge of the kitchen the night we visited, to give even another twist of interest to this eatery. Special kudos to the prompt, attentive, kind and sweet staff who were integral to creating such a positive experience for us. So definitely we will be back, with a takeaway menu on offer, in the interim, to keep us appeased if desired...

Absolutely disgraceful experience. Avoid. Ate here this evening. It took 15 mins to take our order on a quiet Tuesday evening and the young waitress apologised for the delay, seemed like she forgot we were there. We shared the vegetarian sushi which was only ok, not much filling at all even as sushi goes and then I got the chicken katsu curry and my wife had a chicken noodle dish. What I got was a crumbed chicken breast from frozen which was just covered in a chip shop curry sauce, raw cabbage and rice. Menu described it as a Japanese curry sauce. Honestly would get better in some chippers. Completely unhappy with my dish I called the waitress over and explained why and she took the dish away. Moments later she comes back with the dish and explained that basically its there take on Japanese curry and that she doesn't care about my opinion on the food and that I have no option but to pay for it, I refused to but said I'll pay for everything else. So after repeating myself a couple of times she then had to go and check with the kitchen again as her boss/manager was away. She came back with the same answer that I have to pay for it because no-one else has a problem with the food etc etc. Eventually she took the plate back but still demand I pay for it. I was quite annoyed at this stage so I went up to pay 2 minutes later and I see the curry still on the bill and I said to remove it and she said I have to pay for it, then the chef came out and told her to take it off, probably because I started to raise my voice due to the complete lack in professionalism and utter rudeness from the waitress. Again, avoid...