Sakura — Restaurant in Hickory

Use to be top notch. Started last year unable to make take out order at night. Line was busy or no one picked up. The one time i got through out of 8 to 15 attempts 10 times, the guy at the window said the owner disconnected the second line. I asked why would you make it harder on your customers. Sounds cheap. One night we drove there while calling in and went inside and no one was there and she took my order immediately as we waited in the parking lot. Finally we gave up ordering, being faithful customers, going inside so we could eat there. Not like it was years ago. Tea refill and drink refills didnt happen unless i walked to front. Food came out at separate times. Even my wife whoes been here for three years noticed the horrible change in service. After vowing off them for a year, we tried again. We got through, they didnt take our whole order. Which was written down and recited. They argued with me. The female said my wife didn't order the food correctly. I was right there. That she remembers the conversation. Funny that on speaker phone we spoke to a male. I asked for manager, no manager. Must have got an owner after mass confusion. He argued it was not written on ticket and he was only male there. Scary there was some random dude popping in off the street taking our order? Or the owner lost his cookies? He offered compensation on 3.50 of the meal. Not even spend 20 in gas and 30 mins in my truck and ill get your order correct. So we get take out to not have to cook. Had to run out to get someone their missing meal. He admitted im a long term customer and hed hate to lose me. I spend 30 to 90 a week when they cared. I asked for him to compensate the other 3.50 making up for a 7 to 8 dollar meal. My 10 mpg gas to get there and 30 mins. My business isnt worth 3.50. Ive tipped 20 bucks in there before. If your that cheap, what quality is your sushi. Im starting to rethink the new cheaper, customer is wrong, and lets argue with them, and not serve them all at once or refill drinks, or answer the phone, business practices. You wont last in hickory when this starts to happen. Ill goto nagano. I dont care. Salad was wilted. My steak was overdone. Not worth the hassle to eat. If you have a good experience, dont expect it to be consistent anymore. Your not worth $3.50...

I am new to the area and did a quick search for sushi in Hickory and decided to try Sakura based on its rave reviews. I was very displeased with my whole experience. There are 2 entrances. I chose the one that had the open sign on it and walked right into people dining. The host is kind of in between the 2 entrances but in the back of the restaurant. Not very helpful for first timers. The service was ok. I had 4 people ask me if I was ready to order within a few minutes of me being there and I hadn't even looked over the menu. The sushi menu was unclear. Everything was abbreviated and there was no key to tell what they meant. For example: Sakura roll (avo, cc, crab w/ss) yes that's how it is on the menu. I had to ask what some of them meant and guessed on others. CC is cream cheese when I guessed CuCumber... I ordered Kani salad which is usually julienned carrots, cucumber and crab in a spicy mayo. This one was shredded cucumber and large chunks of imitation crab with sesame seeds and a vinaigrette. The 2 rolls I had were ok in flavor my biggest issue with them were the size. They were huge pieces of sushi rolled big but cut thin so it was difficult to eat. You're not supposed to have to bite a piece is sushi. I sat at the sushi bar and the wait staff started to congregate 3 seats down from me so I got to listen about there school work and the cool things they were doing with Siri and the daughter telling her mom (the sushi chef) how she didn't want to write a paper and how they messed up an order. Not the most ideal things I was expecting from a sushi place that had such high reviews. Maybe I went on an off day? Maybe I have higher expectations for a sushi bar? I don't know but due to my experience it is a...

We are never ones to leave reviews but after such a terrible experience I feel the need to. Having served at multiple different types of restaurants, including 2 sushi/Japanese restaurants I don’t think I’ve ever had such bad service before. The server (who’s name I couldn’t even tell you because she didn’t bother telling us) was extremely rude, lacked any sense of urgency, and overall has made it to where we will no longer come here, she needs some serious retraining or something else. We arrived around 530, so before rush, yet we didn’t get our food until 630 while a 6 top who was sat at-least 20 minutes after us was served, ate and cashed out by the time we got our check finally (I asked for my check as we were finally getting our food, 20 minutes after our sushi rolls were delivered and cold from waiting for the rest). We got 2 rolls and 2 hibachi entrees. Not a big order. The owner or I assume head chef? Not sure is a very nice man and I’m sure he was very busy but the fact of the matter is, teach your servers how to be the slightest bit friendly and maybe customers wouldn’t mind waiting over an hour to...