Akebono 515 — Restaurant in Des Moines

I wish I could rate this place higher, however we were very disappointed with the service and how our server duped us into paying more than we expected. Upon receiving the menu, he immediately stated we didn’t even need to look, and that he could just order for us. My coworker decided to take him up on that, and she received far more sashimi than she bargained for. This includes a piece of salmon that, according to her, tasted horrible. Guess what? She got food poisoning and was up all night throwing up, having to take the following day off of work.

For myself, I stuck with sushi and while I did thoroughly enjoy the california and shrimp tempura rolls, the server again soured the experience. He shamed me for getting the shrimp tempura, sarcastically saying how adventurous I was, as well as saying I could’ve done better if I had just listened to him. No, what you really mean is you wanted to get me a roll that cost more. Oh, and he convinced me to add avocado to the tempura roll, and guess what? I got charged for that, and he did not state that I would be charged.

When it comes to the final bill, due to my coworker letting him order, she paid over double what she was expecting. In addition, as a “treat”, our server brought sake bombs to our table, unprompted, before we left. We were charged for those as well. Just very disappointing in how he tried to trick us, and nickel and dime us into buying more things without knowing what we were getting. Overall, a disappointing end to what we originally thought was a...

I was with a group of four people and it took 20 minutes to get our sake after we ordered it and another 20 minutes after we received the sake to get our order taken then it took 30 minutes for one out of 5 orders to arrive ,then slowly are orders arrived 15 minutes apart from each other literally. To include the horrible service my daughter orders shrimp tempura and out of the 4 pieces, 4 of them were not deveined properly or they just did NOT clean the shrimp at all and for those that don't know, Its the shrimps fecal matter. My nine year old daughter is a better chef in the kitchen and called it when she saw it. The waitress took it off my bill but looking at the chef he completely dismissed it. I am proud of my daughter! She knows a clean kitchen produces good food. Needless to say the majority of the plates we ordered had shrimp tempura as part of the sushi roll, so we all ate fecal matter. I was here for 2.5 hours and not because it was a great place, the sushi didn't make me want to order more. I was disappointed that the sushi was tasteless, upset that my daughter was served poop. I wouldn't recommend this place. Just because its in downtown and looks hip. Its not good!! Keep this in mind if they are to LAZY to clean shrimp what else are they not doing?

I am leaving this review as a Sushi Lover from the great Northwest. I know my fish! In conclusion we may live in Iowa, but that doesn't mean sushi has to be...

I have been here a couple times on a recommendation, and I can't say I'd rate it highly - especially after my last visit. Everything is overly expensive, the fish isn't really as fresh as it should be for sushi in several of the things we ordered (yellowtail was borderline going bad), the sushi was not prepared well or in good proportions last time.

The server last time also went out of her way to avoid providing good service, and was overall pretty unpleasant to deal with. They used flat soda for the (also expensive) mixed drinks we got, which is pretty bad.

That being said, they have a couple things on the menu that are pretty solid and the other server we had the first time was awesome at his job. Not worth the price of admission though. I don't want to pay $50 a head for mediocre food and then leave hungry still. I mean, if it was amazing food then I'd be less inclined to complain about the price. Don't tell me I'm paying for freshness or something either, because it wasn't.

Skip and go somewhere else. Chances are you'll either find lower prices or better food, if not both.

Shows when a place isn't even remotely busy during dinner...