Kiyama Sushi & Bar — Restaurant in Lake Stevens

Udon soup and tempura is very good! Almost perfect even, so very thankful for that! (but still please note that there's just something different about it that doesn't taste like the real genuine authentic udon and tempura...maybe their soup is slightly different like more of an onion flavor perhaps? And their tempura batter is just a little bit too thick maybe? Cooking is definitely an exact science so maybe their recipe was a little off the Friday afternoon I ate there.) Also their tempura dipping sauce is definitely off, still tastes good! but just not the authentic japanese flavor for tempura dipping sauce, and they seem to know it because they only give you a very tiny shallow dish of it that isn't even enough for all your tempura to dip in. When I ran out of tempura dipping sauce and still had half my tempura left uneaten, they did not offer to give me more tempura dipping sauce so I just dipped my tempura in the udon soup which was actually much better tasting and almost the right flavor for an udon tempura meal. Maybe they should mix some udon soup into their tempura dipping sauce to get it just right? So not a 5-star experience for the food but a decent 3-star good average on food rating. Hopefully the chef takes these comments into consideration and adjusts the tempura batter, sauce and udon soup recipe to get it just right. And hoping the server pays more attention and refills dipping sauce for free as a courtesy if they continue to give so little of it that the tempura can't even all be dipped into it for the whole meal. I understand they don't want to give too much and waste sauce if some customers don't dip as much but for a regular tempura portion size (no one is drinking the sauce of course), if you give less than enough and some customers need more to finish dipping their tempura, please give more and don't be stingy about it! Looking forward to see if...

Let me start off by saying they might have been understaffed during our dinner time visit. If I remember correctly there were five wait staff in the front of house. Upon arrival we were greeted quickly and taken to our table, we had a reservation and didn't have to wait. Once we sat down it was about ten minutes before we were served water and introduced to our waitress. We ordered an appetizer with our meal and instead of receiving it first it came out with the meal. That's slightly disappointing but not the end of the world. We didn't order any mizo soup but they brought some out for us, we were confused and brought it to our waiters attention. We weren't charged for it but we did eat it. I thought it could have been a lot warmer, seemed like the soup was barely above room temperature. They also tried giving us a roll of sushi that we didn't order. So there was definitely confusion with our order and another parties. Out of the five sushi rolls we ordered we could only tell a difference in taste with one of the rolls. I'm pointing this out because I was expecting each roll to have it's own unique flavors and I didn't experience that. There's no prices on the drink menu so when we got the final bill we were a little shocked at the price of an Old Fationed ($15). Our waters were not being refilled throughout our meal and we had to request that instead of it just being taken care of. I noticed that a party of two came in and they knew the person behind the bar. It seemed like they might be regulars at this establishment and it also seemed like they were waited on promptly and tentatively unlike ourselves. All in all it was a halfway decent experience but I don't think we'll be returning...

I was so excited to see Lake Stevens was finally getting a sushi restaurant, but was let down after just one visit. My family and I came in to order take out. They don’t greet like a typical Japanese restaurant. Every thing about this place is very unauthentic. None of the wait staff seemed to know what was going on. The first girl we spoke with said she didn’t know if they were doing take out. (Even though we were there 20 minutes before they closed for their break between lunch and dinner) She asked another girl who said they could do it. We ordered 2 rolls that came out to over $40! We were told we could sit and wait so we did. They sat us at the table by the door. The seating here is terrible. It’s crammed and every time someone opened the door it would swing in and hit the back of my husband’s chair. We waited for 40 minutes! For 2 sushi rolls! The rolls were tasteless and both had a mushy texture. We will not be coming here ever again. The only good thing about this place is the plating. The food looks beautiful, but it doesn’t make up for the taste and all the other issues this restaurant has. Bad food, bad...