Sakana Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Daytona Beach

Time to give an update. 7 months ago came to this restaurant and had an amazing experience rated them 5 stars. Let's go into how things have changed. Arrived and asked for hibachi was scolded by the "hostest" (later found out it is the manager) that we needed to make a reservation advised I tried calling but that the line went to voice-mail was called a liar. We were going to leave but we were offered a seat in the general dining room and informed we could order hibachi their. For me that works perfectly since I don't really prefer the pageantry anyway. Seated at the sushi boat bar which looks very nice though considering there were only 2 groups of diners at 7pm why it was filled with sushi seemed a bit unsanitary the two large flies that kept flying around didn't help (no worries the food was covered with little plastic lids but still probably above safe temperatures for sushi). We had a lovely waitress who seemed supper stressed running back and forth between the dinning area and hibachi area. Our order was taken fairly quickly and food delivered promptly but that was the last we saw of our waitress no refills on drinks no check in on meal and no check after eating and waiting and waiting 32mins total for a check we went out to the front and the hostess/manager said go wait for your waitress so we listened she must of yelled at the waitress beacuse she came running and apologized. We had a coupon for our visit and the waitress said oh the manager needs your phone to run it so she wisked my phone and CC away. Thinking this would be quick and we be on our way shortly we waited and waited the group behind us made two rotations to the restroom and still we waited approximately 22 minutes of waiting how do I know beacuse my phones screen recorder had been recording the entire time (so yeah I have what the manager said and the evidence she went through my phone) we went up to see where my cc and phone were and the manager had it at the front desk her response "I don't bring these back to customers" when advised this was horrible service (as a manager help your waitress) and that I would be writing a review I asked for her the managers name she said she didn't have to give it to me so I asked for the owners name to which she said that I could look them up online (would love to hear from the owner). When the manager found out that my phones screen recorder had been on she became enraged threatened to sue me and use my information off of my credit card receipt to get back at me (owner please provide her information in case anything happens to me since she threatened me and has my name and address she may need to be contacted as a person of interest). A lot of businesses have suffered due to covid and many things can be forgiven but when a restaurant like this has management like her there's only so much one can forgive and by reading recent reviews I think the future may be dim for this once gem of an...

5/31/21 - Update - Response to the Manager: I am so glad you responded to my review! Your poor and abrasive attitude shows everyone reading your reviews that you are just as, if not more, incompetent than the staff that was working that night. Clearly based on what you wrote you did not understand the situation that evening. Your staff performed poorly, not due to covid, but because they ignored us. I would have had NO PROBLEM paying the “service charge” as you called it (even though the bill clearly said gratuity) if your staff actually did their jobs and provided us good service. I understand there is a pandemic. All of us who were there that night work in the restaurant industry. We know how it works. That is why we were so upset with how we were taken care of. I was never even given a receipt at the end of my meal after I finally paid. I’ll mention it again just to be clear. David the sushi chef is amazing! He should not be grouped with the other rude, unprofessional, and ignorant employees who work here. I wish you the best! Your business will continue to do well. Hopefully for your sake the owners will pay for you to take some management courses so you can learn how to handle guests and learn who to talk to people. Also, your chef never remade my food. He took off what I was allergic to and then SERVED IT TO YOUR OTHER GUESTS VIA THE MOVING BOATS. I watched him do it. He then gave me the food from the same contaminated plate. Please pull the security footage from the camera you have that is located near the entrance to the kitchen if you don’t believe me.

5/30/21 - My family and I have been coming here for 5 years for every major family event. Tonight might be the last. The wait staff was terrible. I’m pretty sure our server quit in the middle of her shift. The sushi guy was good but had an attitude problem. The server sent the wrong items for my order to the sushi bar so the sushi chef made me food that I was allergic to. This experience was very very disappointing not to mention it looks way dirtier inside than usual. The sushi chef that we are used to seeing during our visits is names DAVID. Don’t get it confused, we love David. He is a fantastic employee. However they had him working in the back which resulted in our family receiving a terrible experience. Our drinks were never filled and we were overcharged on our check. Management and ownership please take note. I’d give you our servers name but she never gave it and then we never...

This is not a good place to eat.. Top 5 worst places.. First they tried to tell my wife and I that you had to have more than 2 people to do the share cost. We literally had to argue with the waitress who then talked to the manager. Of which they let us do it. This is crazy. Then the amount of food for 40+ dollars us ridiculous. Teeny tiny steak hardly any vegetables. We basically got 1 meal and split it. The only "extra" we got was the soup and salad and the soup was disgusting. The music sucked the food sucked.... all around sucked! Well I don't know how to reply to your reply, but thus is the only place I have ever heard of that you have to order more than two meals to get the share cost. But no I completely understand sharing. And it's ALWAYS a little bit more than 1 serving hence the extra charge. If not your charging me to eat off another person's plate that already paid for the meal. That makes no sense. The rice was blan, the shrimo sauce didn't taste like shrimp sauce and I didn't say anything because as you said I gave that por waitress a hard time and didn't want to further ruin the night. Anyways we don't live here so you don't have to worry about us ever coming back. No wonder you were completely dead at 630pm on a Saturday night. Never ever seen a hibachi place that dead in my life on a...