Sakanaya — Restaurant in Champaign

For a Japanese restaurant in the middle of a small suburban farm town, in a state that has no connection to the ocean, Sakanaya is the oasis of Champaign.

The sashimi and nigiri are fresh, with none of the old "sea" taste you'd find in lower quality pieces of fish. Being an aficionado for the pure flavour of seafood, without all the sauces, Sakanaya holds up to the standard that I would find at home in Vancouver, Canada (where sushi is no joke, and anything less is blasphemy).

The rolls here have good variety, ranging from the basics such as California roll or salmon rolls, to a selection of 15 signature house rolls. Their signature rolls are definitely a step away from traditional palettes, but they serve well as a step towards being more adventurous with your choice in trying various raw fish.

My suggestions for those starting their sushi adventure is to go with the staple, California roll and salmon roll. Trying to explore different flavours? Try the kamikaze roll, Yaya roll, spider roll, or playboy roll. For the experienced, you already know Botan Ebi nigiri (raw sweet shrimp) or ikura nigiri (salmon roe/eggs) are the way to go.

Next, Ramen. You may wonder why anybody would pay $12 for those dried noodles you pick up at Walmart for 50cents. Wrong, what's being served here is the proper form of ramen you would consume in Japan. Not to be fooled with the conventional instant noodle you eat when you're on a college student busget. Give the real ramen noodle a try. Adorned with "chashu" (marinated pork sliced into thin cutlets), placed along bamboo shoots, seaweed, and simmered in a bowl of soup mixed with either miso or shoyu. No other place within at least a 100 mile radius can properly provide you with this foreign dish.

Last but not least, the unsuspected surprise is Sakanaya's chicken wings. There may be restaurants dedicated to only poultry, but they don't hit the spices quite like Sakanaya. The choice of flavours is limited, but I would suggest you try the spicy/hot wings, which I swear tastes like Shin Ramyun seasoning. Only downside to these bad boys, is wings are only available after 9pm.

In terms of the ambience, Sakanaya is a small but modern/chic restaurant. Seating is very limited and fills up immediately. It hurts that there is no way to reserve tables, but understandable since space is tight. Service is quick and friendly, but also understandably becomes rather rushed closer to the end of the night. Perhaps our server had an overly busy/rough day, but he was snappy when taking our orders and also when remarking certain items weren't available anymore for the day. We get it, we can order other things, and we offered to leave since it was close to closing. No need to show attitude, especially when it was your coworker who allowed us to sit a larger group for dinner 15 minutes before the kitchen closed.

Otherwise, all my previous experiences at Sakanaya have been pleasant. Prices are a little higher than what I'm used to, but I'll make do since it's the best in Champaign. Had only one small incident with service that was sour, but it doesn't take away from the quality of the food produced by the chef's behind the counter and in the kitchen.

My only suggestions for the restaurant would be to update their website because as of today, August 7, 2016, it says the restaurant is open til 1am, not the 10 pm we learned when we arrived. Lastly, Sakanaya please pick up Sapporo beer. I gurantee customers will be dropping in just for the Sapporo to...

We had the following for pick-up tonight:

Volcano Roll (Good and fresh! Very good meat! ...but definitely way overkill on the crunchy green topping. It was completely buried in it in a bad way. Whatever sauce was on the roll was absorbed by the green stuff and made the roll feel overly dry. It made me want to reach for some soy sauce which I'd assumed would be included in the bag but there wasn't any. We found ourselves digging through ridiculously excessive piles of green topping to rescue all the delicious pieces of salmon, tuna, and escolar the rolls were topped with)

Shoyu Ramen (Excellent broth, noodles were a little softer than I'd expected but still very good, pork was nice and meaty with not too much fat. Bamboo shoots, scallions, and seaweed tasted very fresh. Almost everything meshed well into an awesome complex flavor but a huge blunder in my opinion was with the egg... Gah the egg... it was just a plain white overcooked hard-boiled egg like at a hospital cafeteria. It stuck out like a sore thumb for me because I look forward to the egg every time with ramen. So disappointing to not get a soft boiled egg, nor for it to have any kind of marinade treatment that I would have enjoyed from a restaurant that is so capable and talented)

Small Chicken Wings, Half & Half (Good, especially if you like very crispy but thick breading on your wings. I prefer a much thinner breading or no breading at all myself but this was still good. They are large wings which is great to see. What it was sorely missing though was some kind of sauce or garnish to compliment the very light sauce coating they were covered with. The subtle flavor of the sauce at times was nice but other times, too often, was like there was just no sauce at all and that can make the wings feel a little shallow. Maybe I got too little sauce by accident, but I will say it definitely needs something to help lighten up the heaviness of the breading. It just had no garnish other than a small piece of lettuce nor anything to dip into. For the price of $8 for 6 wings, I'd expected to see something more substantial for garnish to cut through the greasiness. A good comparison that beats these wings in every way for a similar price is Anju Above's wings in Bloomington)

Gyoza (These were probably our favorite among everything here because they were flawless. The dipping sauce was so good and really complimented the dumplings)

Miso Soup (Excellent broth, easy add-on to the meal for two bucks)

Last note: the staff was very friendly and made ordering and picking up very easy. Our food was ready right at 6:30 when we set our pickup for. Not a lot of restaurants seem to get their order timing down like these folks do so kudos for that!

Overall you can see this was a bit of a mixed bag depending on the item, but we enjoyed the meal and would come back again to try more of the menu. Our order tonight came out to about $50 after tax...

Stopped in fairly late on a weeknight and was seated immediately. I wasn't sure where to park but the staff was very helpful in suggesting parking. (DON'T park in the lot behind them, or you'll likely be towed!)

Got Gyoza appetizer. Pretty standard but certainly worth the $5 price.

Also ordered sushi, where I ran into a small snag that was handled courteously by the staff. I'll get to that a little later in the review.

My sushi order was 1 tamago nigiri, 1 sweet raw shrimp nigiri, and a California Roll.

Tamago - Quite good. I often use tamago as a benchmark for sushi joints, and this one didn't disappoint.

Sweet raw Shrimp (botan ebi) - Good taste, good quality. Served with the shrimp head on the side if that's your thing.

California Roll - Here's where I hit a small snag. The menu describes this roll as "crab, avocado & cucumber", but when it came out the "crab" was actually a mayo-based crab salad of sorts. My waitress dutifully checked with a few other workers, and they said that's the way California rolls are typically done. That's not my experience at all. But more importantly, I pointed out that there was no way someone would know there was anything but crab (or imitation crab) by looking at the menu. I suggested that they at least add mayonnaise to the menu description in case someone had an allergy (or even aversion) to mayo.

To their credit, they listened and seemed to take the feedback constructively. They asked if I'd prefer something else instead, and I asked if the Alaskan had the same mayo preparation, and they confirmed it did not. (it's described as "salmon, avocado & cucumber" - almost identical to the california roll so I didn't want to assume!)

So they replaced my roll with the Alaskan, and I found that to be simple, but fresh and a good value. I also noticed they didn't charge me the $1 price difference between the rolls. Small gesture, but a very nice touch and very considerate that they didn't even make me request the adjustment.

Bottom line: I'm rarely in Urbana-Champaign, but I have a hard time imagining there are better sushi options than Sakanaya in these parts. They very professionally listened to and addressed my concerns. I don't expect restaurants to be mistake-free, I just want them to respond appropriately when issues do arise. Sakanaya certainly did that.

I'd suggest they update their menu with all the ingredients in their rolls, and add some parking info/tips to the website. But those are small suggestions, and I would WHOLEHEARTEDLY recommend Sakanaya to others (and plan to...