Little Tokyo — Restaurant in Pasadena

I was excited to try Little Tokyo after many friends recommended their dishes. I was extremely disappointed and will never go back. Management is entirely to blame. There are plenty of high-school servers available, but none of them seem to have a clue how to efficiently run a restaurant or provide customer service. The hostesses don't know how to manage table placements or how to accommodate guests when there is seating at the sushi bar but no actual tables available.

The food (tempura shrimp and vegetables over rice) was cold and soggy. When I told my waiter he refused to acknowledge my concern by telling me the chefs pour a sauce over tempura after it is done frying. Firstly, that's not true- and secondly, again he had no understanding of customer service.

We waited for twenty minutes after finishing our food for the bill. My husband stood up at one point thinking we would get the waiter's attention. Eventually he came over (without the check) and asked if we wanted anything else. AGAIN- this is bad management.

The floor manager never once walked the small over-crowded restaurant to check in with customers about service or food. Even after I had to send back my cold, soggy tempura the manager didn't so much as glance our way, let alone come to make sure it was made right.

Lastly, the dirty sushi bar conditions made this place unbearable. Old caked-on fish smeared all over the bar, the tip jar, in crevices that are obviously not cleaned regularly. This...

I really can't figure out why anyone loves this place, people have talked me in to giving this place several tries since I moved to deer park and every time the impression remains the same. Terrible quality, terrible presentation, ridiculous menu and mediocre service. My gripe with the menu is that they pretend to have extensive options but if you really look at it it's just all the same junk with one or two ingredients swapped out so in reality they offer maybe 15-20 rolls with the option to order them under a different name with a different sauce or say cucumber instead of jalapeño for instance. To me that's more confusing than helpful. The cuts of sushi are generally not any better than grocery store sushi and not better at all if you find the store bought freshly boxed that day. The sauces are cheap and unbalanced plus applied with a heavy hand almost always. Most of the fish is not pliable and does not fall like a blanket over the rice as it should and the flavor is only reminiscent of what should be there were the fish even kept properly to say the least. Now most of you will say "but it's good for the price" I guess if you stick to the most simple rolls here I might agree with that so it gets 2 stars from me. Those of you who appreciate the finer details that truly brings food together and makes it worth going out and paying for will not like this place. MATSU and TORO are almost always on point and michiru in clear lake is fairly...

My husband and I have been here twice and on both occasions quality and consistency of the food has been on point. I'm a big lover of sushi and general and I usually get roll and this time we got the fried squid and the tuna tartare along with our main courses. the fried squid is not calamari as you might think, it is cut into squares and there is a lovely ponzu type dipping sauce that it really goes well with it. if we're all being honest I was a little disappointed in the tuna tartare appetizer. It tasted really good but it seemed like I had to really dig to find pieces of tuna, the majority was made up of avocado and pico de gallo. Let me stress, it was still very tasty just not very tuna like. my husband got some kind of bed Curry and he liked it but he said it was a little too sweet for his taste and probably wouldn't order it again. I got the Angel roll this time and was not disappointed in the least. It was packed with flavor and put together on a beautiful presentation.

the service at Little Tokyo is really good! very friendly and efficient... we didn't have to wait too long for anything and it seems like the food came out in a decent time proportion to the appetizers.

We'll go here again for sure and recommend it to anyone that enjoys...