Sakura Sushi & Teppanyaki — Restaurant in Flagstaff

I'm giving this experience a low score and I suspect it's due to a pretty inexperienced or untalented Teppanyaki chef, but this restaurant put them out there so I think it's fair game. I could nitpick about a lot of things so I'll put those at the end. We'll just put the big ones first

1. They charge a $4 up charge for fried rice, which is a bit non-standard to begin with, but our chef came out, slapped some steamed rice with some pre-chopped veggies on the cook top, sprinkled some salt and pepper, and then soy sauce, then served it up. No garlic, no butter, but most importantly no fried eggs. He had eggs on his cart. He just never used them... To the credit of the wait staff they refunded my fried rice up charge after I brought this to their attention. If you're going to have a non-standard upcharge for fried rice, maybe put chefs on the floor who know how to make fried rice.
2. Undercooked vegetables. The carrots on the vegetables were on the verge of raw. The onions were just a little more done than that. Veggies saw nothing much in the way of seasoning beyond salt and pepper (no butter or garlic). Several in my party didn't even bother finishing the carrots.
3. Have your chef sharpen his knife. He was using what looked like a butterfly knife, which I guess is cool, whatever. But he's dragging meat across the cook top because he can't get a clean cut. Its a real bad look, and the the customer gets served these ragged chopped pieces of protein they pay this high price for.
4. Our chef on multiple occasions messed up a trick and then retried, once, twice, three times without success. I usually don't stress about the Teppanyaki chef tricks too much, but feeling like I'm part of a practice session and my food is languishing on the grill, then I get a subpar product I pay good money for is just not the experience I think you want a customer to have.
5. The waitstaff explained that there would be a choice of several sauces to cook our food in along with being given the standard ginger and some other sauce (I think the creamy sweet one). We never saw the ginger or cream sauce come out. Just were offered what to cook our protein in and were not served sauce for dipping veggies or anything.

And the nitpicks (honestly some of this I wouldn't even mention on a 2 star review but if I'm paying over 45 a head, I'm going to list it all):

1. Food was pretty underseasoned. Scallops, although cooked to the right doneness, were relatively bland, even with butter and garlic added. Just not salted enough. This was true of the veggies too and the fried rice, but we've already covered that. They offer like 5 different sauces and it seems to me if you want something seasoned decent you just have to choose a sauce, which kind of sucks if you just like your expensive protein with butter salt and pepper to the appropriate level. We'll put it down to preference but to me it was
2. The doneness on the filet seemed just right, but the NY Strip which was left on the cooler part of the grill quite a bit longer felt like it ended up over.
3. Despite having a reservation for 5pm (and having seen reservations available for even earlier like 4pm and 430pm) it seemed like they were not ready to even open the restaurant when we showed up a little early. Despite a completely empty dining room, we had to wait almost 15 minutes for them to prepare for us.
4. Gritty scallops. As mentioned before, the doneness was OK, but this was just one other thing adding to the poor experience.
5. Salad dressing is too sweet for a ginger dressing in my opinion. Miso soup too strong of an onion taste. This is a common issue I see at these types of restaurants though so I would put this down to preference.
6. Had to ask for a sake/Japanese beer menu as they only had one at our table and gave it to the other party we were seated with.

It's sad because I fell in love with this place (not at this location) as my first Teppanyaki experience, and maybe the years have just exposed me to higher quality, but I can't see myself...

Food was delicious, but service was questionable at best. When we walked in, there was a woman yelling at the hostess & manager because her order had apparently not been made after nearly 2 hours, and this went on for several minutes while we waited for the hostess to seat us. We asked to be seated at the sushi section of the restaurant and the hostess did not know whether we could sit there, and had to walk around to ask someone else. After the hostess seated us, she did not explain to us that we had to fill out an ordering sheet and give that to the chef (there wasn’t a pen provided), so we waited 5-10 minutes until a waitress came with glasses of water and asked us what appetizers we wanted (there weren’t any appetizers on the menu), and finally gave us a pen to fill out our ordering sheet. We also weren’t given plates individually until we asked (the only plate was the one the sushi came on). There were also dirty dishes right next to us on either side at the sushi bar during our entire meal that weren’t taken away by anyone, while we watched several waiters stand idle next to the chefs. The chef also grabbed our ordering sheet with the same gloves that he later made our sushi with, and didn’t wash his hands/change gloves in between. At the end of our meal, the chef asked us if we wanted any desserts (there also weren’t any desserts on the menu, or a dessert menu). We also had to wait nearly 5 minutes for our bill to come, after we asked, and had to wait another 10 minutes for the waitress to collect the bill and bring us the bill with tips. Everything felt like it was managed poorly, despite the manager walking around constantly (and seemingly doing nothing to manage the restaurant). If you can stand poor service for some great food, this is exactly that kind of...

Seriously, this was a sad experience. Let me first start off by saying the food was good. Eddie was our chef and he was entertaining. But. But..... The service was horrible. We had a 730 reservation. Came in at 715 got checked in, And then didnt get sat until after 8pm. We watched multiple couples get sat who came in after us, and finally the second host said "oh u had a reservation right" ... Eventually we got sat but had to wait over 20 min for WATER. At that point I had to walk up to the host stand and ask if we could get just that. Another 30 min past and finally our cheif came out did his thing. Again Eddie was awesome. After eddie...Almost anther hour went by and no Server, at all. At 945 my entire table was just staring at each other in disbelief that we were just neglected. I walked up to the host stand and had to ask if we could just pay BC our server was who knows where. At that exact moment our server ran up to the host stand and said 'I'm here what table where u?' I was a server I know how the restaurant industry works.... Seriously it was like a buffet where they just bring ur drinks. Idk why we pay so much for this type of food with the worse service. Honestly I have better service at Denny's. On a side note. We got dessert somewhere else for my bf birthday. I mean it would of probably taken another hour for our server to be available...