Sakitumi Grill and Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Columbia

I’ve been to Saki Tumi before and had a great experience. Last night, my friends and I came to Saki Tumi for dinner. The food was great, however, our service and dining experience was not pleasurable. The waitress, Alana (name shown on the ticket), was not attentive, not a great communicator or listener.

With several empty tables and booths, the restaurant was not packed with patrons or busy. My party had to keep asking another waitress (who was courteous) to bring straws and to check on our drink orders we were waiting on. Alana kept telling us that her manager’s friend was present at the restaurant and that she needed to take care of him. However, we constantly saw her talking to a man at the bar. I’m not sure if that was her manager’s friend. The fact of the manner is she had other customers in the restaurant. It seemed that Alana was paying more attention to the manager’s friend and wanting to please him instead of serving other customers.

After we placed our entree orders with her, she walked off. She never took our menus from the table. The menus were in a hard plastic sign holder, and were in the way. So, we just moved them out of the way and placed them towards the end of the table. When we finished eating appetizers, she didn’t remove the dirty dishes from the table. I placed a to-go order of the King Roll for my husband. Alana brought the to-go order to the table and tried to give it to one of my friends. I had to remind her that I was the one that placed the order. She apologized and said that she wasn’t paying attention.

Also, I placed an order of the stir crazy hibachi entree and asked the waitress if she could see if the chef could add more vegetables for an extra charge. She said that she wasn’t sure but would check with the chef and let me know. She brought out the entree without communicating with me. I noticed there were no extra vegetables. I asked her if there was reason why she didn’t communicate with me that he couldn’t give me extra vegetables for an extra charge. She said he wouldn’t. I expressed to her that she should’ve communicated with me as soon as she found out about the hibachi entree from the chef. When I expressed that the service wasn't good, she showed no genuine concern, nor did she proactively escalate my concern to management.

When she brought out the checks, we noticed that she automatically charged us a 20% tip. She said since the original reservation was for 8 people that she had to charge us a 20% tip. Five of the eight friends showed up and we sat at a regular dining room table. It was not in a private dining room or for a large special event. We didn’t see anywhere on the website that it says a party is charged 20% even if the entire party doesn’t show up. Is this your policy? Three of my friends originally said they were coming but then cancelled. The waitress didn’t provide excellent customer service. We didn’t think she deserved a 20% tip because she didn’t do her job effectively.

Customer service is very important because it can determine the overall success of a business and customer retention. Customers have a lot of options when choosing where to dine. My friends and I chose this establishment. With a declining economy, we expect to receive an acceptable level of service when we spend our hard earned dollars. Perhaps additional service training is needed to ensure your servers understand how to properly attend to guests (pre-bussing tables, not having guests ask for the same things over again, checking in regularly, listening and communicating with customers, etc.) outside of simply taking the order and bringing out their food.

It should not matter if a manager’s friend or a CEO is at the restaurant. Every customer should still be treated with the same respect and level of service that you would give to those particular individuals mentioned above. Unfortunately, we did not receive that last night and were forced to tip 20%. This is...

Went here for brunch on Father's Day and it was absolutely a disaster. We waited on our food for over an hour and a half, but the restaurant was not even super crowded. We thought our table was the only one who was waiting a long time for our food, but when we looked around the restaurant, no one had their food! When we asked our sever about this, she said, "we have a small kitchen". The owner of the restaurant was sitting at the bar completely unaware of the situation, and when approached by someone from my table, he said "he had no clue". Didn't get up to see what was going on in the back, didn't apologize... Just "I had no clue". We even waited over 20 minutes to get waters to the tables, and don't even ask how long it took to get the bloody mary my dad ordered... When our order was taken and put in the back, our server came back and said they were out of chorizo sausage, but offered bacon as a sub, which was fine! However, when our food FINALLY came out (an hour and a half later), our server THEN told us they were also out of bacon, which was supposed to a substitute for the chorizo. Not to mention, the food was cold and below average. They ended up giving us a discount, but it was only removing one of the bloody mary's my dad ordered from the bill. Definitely not enough to make up for this brunch. Overall, horrible experience especially on Father's Day. The management is very poor, and they should not have their doors open if they cannot accommodate to the 8 tables that were there. Definitely would not...

Sushi was dry and not fresh. We complained but they said we never had unsatisfied customers before. You’re the first who complained. And the owner was sitting right there but did not care about our complaint. It was really waste of money.

Reply to owner’s answer: dry in my definition means overdone or been sitting for too long. And the meat steak was not fresh and served with a lot of rice. And yes, we went there last few months but it was so bad experience that I had to give this review even after a long time (because it reminded me when we went to Columbia again). When we complained, the server said she would bring the owner over, he was sitting just right there, few tables away. But he didn’t even come. I came from Asian country where we eat Japanese food a lot and great Japanese restaurants are all over country. I never expect good Japanese food in US after living here for 5 years but I didn’t expect this kind of food from a good looking restaurant like Sakitumi either. We could have said that we didn’t want to pay for our meal because we were not satisfied but we didn’t do that. And all these comments from the owner could have been mentioned to us while we were sitting right there, not when we’re giving low rating and try to defense our comment to look good on google. And as everyone can see here, not a single word to say sorry. This was how they treated us at their restaurant too. It obviously shows the attitude of how you do...