Sushi Sasabune — Restaurant in Los Angeles

I've had much better sushi at a typical department store/chain restaurant in Japan. I would give it a 3 but the actual dining experience was unpleasant. The nigiris were OK, except the shari (rice) was soaked with soy/sauce for some of them, to the point where the grains fell apart onto the little plastic plates. The tamago was totally disappointing. We went without a reservation. At the front, a waitress came and asked whether we had a reservation and when I said “we do not”, she started laughing. I said, "Does this mean that we can get a table or are you fully booked?" She said, "we are booked with reservations." As the reviews were good and we were visiting town, I decided to give it one more try and said: "if it makes a difference, we can eat fairly quickly." She responded by saying "Quickly? One hour?" to which we said, "OK". She then pointed to the sign at the front saying "We only do à la carte order. NO California Roll, NO Spicy Tuna Roll NO Teriyaki/Tempura. Please read this sign (see photo). Are you OK with this?" We said "Yes." Once seated at our table for 6, we quickly ordered sake, plum wine and beers and I asked for the menu. The waitress said "We don't have menus, only a list of sushi." I said "OK, can we please see that list of the fish that you had at the front entrance so that we can order the ones we want to eat?" She then pulls out “the list” from her apron pocket and asks us to write down how many we want to order beside each item, with a pen. This “list” has the name of the nigiri, the rolls and the price - isn’t this called…a “menu”? We were asked to order a minimum of 4 pieces per person, and we looked for choices for rolls for the kids. As we were looking at the menu, another waitress comes by and says to me "So do you have the order yet?". I told her we are still deciding. She huffs and says "Oh no! You don't have much time.". So we focused on ordering the rolls first, then once done, called the waitress and said "we can order the rolls first and we will mark up the nigiris shortly.” The waitress says, "No, you must order everything at once." I was getting a annoyed by this so I said "You told us we have an hour so we are trying to place the order as soon as we can, given the limited time. Do you want us to still order everything at once?" She mumbles something and scurries away. I guess that meant yes…? Once we decided, we called her back right away. The nigiris arrived within 5 minutes, but the rolls followed a good 30-40 minutes after. As I looked around the restaurant, I thought to myself – why did we push to dine here all to feel so unpleasant? But I should have known, that a restaurant that prints a big sign at the entrance saying "NO California Rolls! NO Tempura! (No this and that)...Seriously!" (again, refer to photo) is a 'wanna-be-high-end sushi establishment' that is in fact, unnecessarily pretentious...

The sushi was excellent but the staff expecting 32% tip kind of ruined it for me and my friends last night. We all ordered omakase and our total dinner bill was $900+. After tax bill this ended up being $1000+ (this will be important a little later). As our group was leaving the waitress came after us, and asked if anything was wrong with the service, saying we only tipped 10%. We felt really confused, so we gave them another $100 so we can leave without being hassled and make a scene at what was supposed to be a really upscale restaurant.

When I got home, I was still confused about why the tip would be low (10%?) and re-did my math. The pretax bill was $900+, with the tips our total payment was 121.4% of the pretax bill amount, but 110.89% the post-tax bill. So that's where the waitress came up with the 10% tip figure! She expected us to pay tip on the post-tax amount of $1000+ instead of tipping on the pre-tax $900+! In a less expensive restaurant the pre-tax/post-tax wouldn't be a big difference, but at an expensive Japanese Omakase restaurant pre-tax/post-tax makes a large difference on tip calculations! With the extra $100 we gave we ended up paying 132.2% of the pretax bill and 120.79% of the post tax amount. But we should have only paid tip based on the pre-tax amount as the restaurant is not providing any service on the tax portion. Expecting tips on the post-tax bill just rubs me the wrong way so I'll probably never return to this...

First things first, the fish is great. The rice is warm. There might be too much emphasis on saucing their nigiri but I’m not going to argue with the chef. My biggest takeaway and the reason I’d never go back is that the service is bad in the worst way that service can fail a customer and that is by being purposefully obtuse.

Came in for lunch. Greeted immediately by a server who proudly pointed out their very visible signage about not making tempura or California rolls, which love the policy, but I don’t need you to point out the giant sign. Being made to feel like rube isn’t a great start. Then you’re told there’s a lunch special and a chef special. Cool. Get seated. No menu. Water comes and then the question “are you ready to order?” No, because I have no idea what’s going on. My wife asks what the difference between the chef special and the lunch special is and is told “the lunch special is a special for lunch” and at this point I want to walk into the ocean and catch my own fish.

You’re a sushi restaurant that is open for lunch on a Monday on Wilshire Blvd in West Los Angeles. Meet the customer halfway and just give them a piece of paper with their...