Sagano of Clarkston — Restaurant in Independence Charter Township

I have visited Sagano's many of times, but our experience last night was nothing less than awful. On a Wednesday night, there has never been more than a 10-min wait, last night the wait for a table was an hour and they were not even busy. There were many customers that left due to the wait times and when they asked "why such a long wait time, is there something going on" the hostesses replied "no, were just busy"....which was a lie! During our wait, there was a gentleman that came in to pick up his carry out, which was not ready when he arrived. He literally waited for about 15-min for his carry out, which was called in ahead of time. When he finally received his order, he had told the hostesses at the front desk that he wanted to buy six mixed cocktails to the adults that he pointed out. The hostesses were a bit confused! The one hostess kept walking around (with his credit card) asking questions to fulfill the gentleman's request...when she came back she informed him that they didn't have a bartender on staff. At this point, he says, "then buy them whatever they want"...she still was confused. Needless to say, there was nobody in that restaurant (not even a manager) that would help this nice gentleman out that wanted to pay it forward...which in turn was turned away because they were short staffed. But, earlier, the hostesses were lying to the customers that asked if there was something going on due to the long wait times. The bad experience didn't stop there! When we got to our table, our waitress was nothing more than forgetful - she couldn't remember what everyone at the table ordered for drinks (btw...you could order drinks with dinner even with no bartender). As I placed my daughters order, I asked for some teriyaki sauce so she could receive it with her meal. The meals were served, we were all eating, and guess what our waitress is nowhere to be found to bring the teriyaki sauce, refill our drinks, ask if anyone needed anything, etc. In turn, I asked the waitress three times to bring the teriyaki sauce, my daughter didn't receive it until she was boxing up the rest of her meal to take home. My question is - does this restaurant even have a manager?? If so, the management is far beyond than awful and should look into rehiring someone that has some management skills and knows how to operate a business when...

Recently went there at around 8:30 pm, so part of this may have been a night issue (sushi only, did not try the hibachi):

Firstly, I have no idea who thought that a bright mint green toothpaste-looking sauce was a good idea. It was probably the most unappetizing sauce I've ever seen on sushi- and I really love sushi and have gone to many sushi restaurants from high-end to low-end. And you might say- Well, it doesn't matter what it looks like, only that it tastes good! It was probably the most horrible tasting sauce ever put on sushi that I've ever experienced. It had this dry, sweet taste. I really can't describe it. Like chocolate powder or something. It was inedible to me and only edible with heavily added wasabi by my boyfriend.

Secondly, I don't know how anyone thought that large globs of mayo-consistency sauce on sushi was appetizing-looking either. It looked as if someone had taken a squeeze bottle of mayo, squeezed as hard as possible, and just drenched the sushi in it. The sauce would've been fine mixed in, or even maybe a tablespoon on top. But really, it was just too much. Not to mention it didn't have much flavor at all.

And the part that I think might have been a nighttime-only issue was that the fish was absolutely old. We got the yum-yum roll, I think it was called, and it tasted like old nothing with a fishy aftertaste. It really was inedible. The outside had this stale, cold consistency despite supposedly being fried. The white fish and salmon, which were on our other 3 rolls raw, had such a fishy aftertaste that I thought maybe they were actually bad. The crab in one of the rolls was dried up and horrible.

We ended up being unable to eat the yum-yum roll, and I could only eat the one roll we got without the mint-green sauce. The fish was old, but it didn't taste rotten or anything, so I figured I'd just eat it. I really hate sending food back and wasting food/screwing the restaurant out of money. But I definitely won't be returning.

The service staff was very nice, we only asked to take the yum-yum roll off because neither of us could eat it and they happily obliged. But this is probably the worst sushi I've ever had, and definitely some of the most expensive. I've eaten Meijer-sushi that better than even the best roll we got...

We got there at 8: 20 and told the host , table of two. She told us about 20 to 25 minutes, I thought that rather odd seeing that there was a bunch of open tables. I turned around and I said there's only two of us and we're just ordering sushi, and she said oh. In that case, give us about 5 minutes. My wife and I sat at some high tops near the bar, the bar scene was pretty empty and nobody was there, the bartender offered us a drink. To be seated in 5 minutes, there were plates not cleaned up at the bar, dirty napkins on a table at one of the high tops and two other tables that were not cleaned off in the bar area. 20 minutes went by and I grabbed another individual that worked there and said can you ask the host if she forgot about us, after she had already offered us a table at the hibachi table which we said we didn't need the first time and then she said oh yeah, sure, I'm sorry, so she forgot about us. Us. When we were finally seeded in a pretty much empty room, there was only one other party in there we put in our order with the waiter whom was very nice. The menu said five spring rolls but came out with three, the waiter was very kind when he acknowledged and realized the error on the menu and brought us the five that was stated on the menu. The Flint location was closing early tonight so my wife and I made a trip 30 minutes to Clarkston based on hearing. How great the sushi was. When we got the sushi. It was no better than something we could make at our house, and we should have just stayed locally and got takeout from our local sushi place, this sushi here was no better than you get at the hibachi buffet, and the all you can eat can eat buffet sushi in Lansing is 10 times better quality than this and better looking and tasting. Granted they were down three hoses and one server. The place was fairly empty except for the hibachi tables they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off and the food was extremely lackluster and the high tops at the bar were dirty and not cleaned off yet. I would definitely not recommend this place at all, maybe if they had better staffing, and I tried the hibachi maybe that was better but their sushi was nothing better than you could get in a...