Sakura Sushi & Hibachi — Restaurant in Council Bluffs

We decided to stop here for dinner on Black Friday during our cross country road trip. The restaurant is located in the corner of a shopping center in council bluffs.

The restaurant looks small at first glance but is actually quite large inside. Upon entering they ask if you are there for regular dining or hibachi. Regular dining is in front where there are tables and booths while hibachi is done in the back. We chose regular dining as the theatrics of the hibachi might’ve been a bit too noisy for our baby. Seems like the vibe of the hibachi area was very lively and fun from what I overheard though!

We ordered the soft shell crab appetizer, love boat sushi for 2, shrimp fried rice, and seafood udon. Overall, the food was good. Being Japanese American and from California where good Asian food is everywhere, I was pleasantly surprised because while not the best, everything was better than I expected. The soft shell crab appetizer is 2 crabs cut in half (4 pieces) fried in a katsu style with katsu sauce and was good. Love boat sushi did not come in an actual boat (to my disappointment, lol) but there was significant effort put into the presentation. All of the items were decent. Wasabi was neon green colored but surprisingly packed a bit of a punch whereas most fake wasabi tends to be quite weak. Shrimp fried rice was pretty good with a garlic flavor and came with some sort of mayo based sauce on the side (we tried it and it wasn’t bad but didn’t eat it with our rice). Seafood udon was tasty and came with shrimp, scallops, fish cakes, and imitation crab. Not sure why they added the imitation crab as it brought the dish down and there’s already sufficient seafood. Overall the dish was tasty but a bit too salty. The entrees come with either a side of soup or salad. Since we ordered a lot, we were able to get 2 soups and 2 salads. Was expecting miso soup but it was a clear broth with some mushrooms, green onion, and those fried French onions. Not sure if they usually put those in or if they were just left over from thanksgiving green bean casserole lol. I’ll just say that it was interesting. Ginger salad dressing was good.

Service was decent except at the end the waiter kept asking us if we wanted boxes when we were still eating which gave the impression that they were trying to get us out of there. I get it if you are about to close but there was still time left before closing and people were still getting seated so we weren’t holding them up. Noticed a good amount of baby high chairs and booster seats but no baby changing table in the restroom. Just FYI if you have a...

Terrible service & ran out of food ON A SATURDAY! This was our 3rd visit. Although both of our first visits were mediocre at best, we opted here for a company dinner. Drinks, fun and hibachi dinner, perfect right?! Nope. Our reservation was for 6pm. Our entire party arrived by 10 minutes till. We weren't seated until almost 640. Understandable, sometimes there is a wait ar restaurants. Fine, let's get a drink from the bar since there is very limited seating in the "waiting area". We waited 25 minutes for someone the "be right back" to get drink orders from the bar. She never returned. The gal who seats you, and checks you in is very standoffish borderline rude. It's been this way since our first encounter. Finally, we are seated. They take our drink orders, the drinks don't arrive for another 20 minutes, our appetizers came faster... Ridiculous! Waiter returns to take our food order. Many many minutes later the hibachi cook returns telling us that they are out of filet-5 of the 8 in our party ordered the filet combo. Mind you, it's now only 730 pm on a Saturday night. They only take hibachi seating by reservation, so they knew how many people would be dining that night, not to mention, being open for 3.5 more hours that night. We alter our orders, he prepares the food, it was good. As we are all picking at the remnants of our food and enjoying our drinks, the rude check in gal comes over and starts taking away plates that people are grazing on...ok, fine, we get it you're trying to be efficient. Not even 2 minutes after they clear the table, and we've paid, she asked us to move from the table so they can seat more people. Seriously! Is this for real!?!? We will not be returning. Kobe, in Omaha, is where we would prefer. They're always friendly, never out of food, bar service and wait staff are superb. Disappointed to say the least. It's a shame too, I thought this restaraunt would be...

The girlfriend and I decided to have a lunch date. 1st we sat at the hibachi grill, now we don't eat a whole lot so we decided to split lunch. We was told that we couldn't sit at the grill because we weren't ordering 2 plates. Now we had only sat there for maybe 10 mins, so we were moved to a booth. The waiter that took our order didn't write anything down, no big deal right!? Well our appetizer and they were ice cold, had them sent back and got fresh ones. We had ordered 2 rolls and when the sushi was brought out only 1 roll came and not even how I had asked them to make it. We had asked about the second roll and the waiter said ok and walked away. We now got our main order from the grill..... steak and chicken. The steak and chicken had no seasoning and asked for the steak to be cooked medium rare and it was well done. We then waited a little longer and our second sushi roll still hadn't come out. The girlfriend asked another waitress to check on the roll for us, she came back and said I'm sorry their are only 2 sushi chefs on duty today and they are trying to keep up with the grill side and thw booth side. Now let me ask you this, how in the world are you gonna send 1 roll out to the table that ordered 2? Maybe because you forgot to place the order because you didn't write anything down? Will not be coming back...