Haiku Japanese Bistro — Restaurant in Mendota Heights

This is probably actually a 4 1/2 star rating... 5 is pretty high praise and we have only ordered from here once so far. My wife and I were wanting to get some sushi and happen to live in South St Paul. We came across Haiku during a google maps search, it was nearby, the reviews all seemed positive, and their menu had some nice variety. We ordered a spicy salmon roll, spicy tuna roll, and 2 chef specials for take out (a service we really appreciated). The rolls were ready in 20 minutes, it was about 7:30pm on a Saturday night and the restaurant seemed energetic and bustling. The service was polite and informative, albeit busy, and the prices were fair. Upon opening up our stapled brown bag of underwater delicacies, we were immediately impressed with the freshness of the sushi and the vibrancy of the bluefin tuna atop one of the chef special rolls. My wife stated "this might be the best sushi I've ever had". It was a very nice variety of rolls and all were very tasty with balanced flavors.

This is a great place to check out, especially if you live just south of the Cities. The take-out option is wonderful if you want some freshly prepared high quality sushi for a night in, or to bring to a party, or sneak into a movie theater. The prices are similar to what you might find at a grocery store, but the quality and flavor are a huge upgrade from that fare. Check it out, it is a hidden Gem...

If I could give them any less than one star, I would. Right from the beginning, nobody greeted us at the door until I walked up to the people behind the sushi bar. They told us to sit wherever...okay that’s fine. A girl that brought the menu over was literally dead silent. She just set the menus down and walked away and never came back. After waiting for 10-15 minutes, someone finally came to take our order. After the appetizers arrived ,it was just going downhill from there. The miso soup was so plain I had to add soy sauce into it to put at least a hint of flavor in the soup. The tofu was cut soo small. It was as if tofu the size of a dice was cut into 10,000,000 pieces. The calamari came out and it was obviously over cooked. The fact that they tried to send it out like that boggles my mind. They did remake it for us, but it wasn’t that good anyway. The slices were so thin and it would just break and you couldn’t even chew on it. The scallop dynamite was an absolute disaster. I was trying so hard to search for a piece of scallop under all of the cheese and onions. It wasn’t even worth $10. The presentation was nice, but maybe they should focus more on the quality of their food rather than their...

Had dinner in a group of 8 for a birthday/ Mother’s Day celebration. We had 2 sushi experts (1 that travels to Japan regularly) 2 sushi novices and 4 that don’t like sushi. This restaurant solved all of our likings. We ordered sushi nigiri and a collective group, the sushi special was fresh oysters, which one person loved, yellow tail and another tuna. We ordered 3 pieces each as nigiri and it was excellent. We ordered 2 sets of a nigiri California roll combo and a dragon roll, which was excellent. Others ordered tempura sets and they also were excellent. The sauces that accompanied the eel nigiri was the table’s favorite, along with the tempura sauce and the fussiest eater had a Pablo crust chicken with a sauce that had flavor from Japan. The Sapporo beer on tap was an added treat. The decor was a little tired, but the sushi chef was Japanese and we all greatly enjoyed the meal. Sushi in MN is a little expensive, which was in line for...