Sakura Sushi — Restaurant in Phoenix

The host was friendly when we walked in. We were seated immediately. The waitress had a hard time communicating and misunderstood us numerous times. My son wanted to pay extra for some items and she told us that he could order them and then she didn't want to serve them to him later or maybe she was confused and said she understood when she really didn't. Idk. We repeated it back to her numerous times to double check. She repeated the order back to us best she could. The couple of items she had recommended to us shortly after were the only foods we didn't eat because it was so bad. Which technically is the cooks fault but obviously these dishes were not some of their specialty items like she had previously stated. The wasabi and ginger was super old and discolored it looked like it was preplated or possibly reused. The food was just put down on the table and not in front of who ordered it since the waitress didn't know who ordered what or what the dishes were called. The fried appetizers were good. The sushi and rolls were not so fresh ingredients( you couldn't even pick the pieces up with your chop sticks due to it being so limp and flimsy). There were many mishaps. Lack of napkins(1 napkin per person for all you can eat), never refilling our water, never clearing any of our empty stacked plates from the table, etc. Oh yeah, and their specialty foods that the waitress recommended that were super bland, not so fresh ingredients, cold soup or tough as leather pork that we didn't eat.... Well we almost didn't get our dessert since we didn't eat those foods and we were wasting food!?! The host that I thought was so nice, he unexpectedly came over before dessert with the waitress during the end of our main courses to inspect all of the plates that she never cleared once our entire meal. They were concerned about the unfinished food. They were trying to make sure we had ate everything and wanted to know exactly why we hadn't ate all of the one sushi dish and 2 breaded pork and noodle soups. They have a policy of having to eat all of the food since it is all u can eat. Well, I never complained once until that point. I explained to the host (the only one who actually understood and spoke English well) that the fried pork patty wasn't even edible it was so tough that l couldn't even get a bite off of the cutlet(it was tougher than the toughest jerky) ... and the soup underneath the breaded pork was cold and bland and the broth and noodles had no flavor. The one plate of sushi wasn't correct and tasted not so fresh.. I was embarrassed and highly disappointed and have never been through a similar experience in my 43 yrs of eating out. I am not someone that usually complains in person or in a review. This is one of a very few bad posts I've ever made about a business. I just wanted to save others from going through the...

Living within a half mile of the place, we went in hoping to find our convenient go-to sushi place. After making observations that it seemed clean and lively, we were optimistic. Service was moderately quick, totally understandable during dinner hour service and friendly enough. The food: 1 order edamame $3.99, 1 avocado salad $3.99, 1 oshinko roll $4.50, 1 yellowtail anvocado roll $6.00, and 1 sweet potato roll $6.00, arrived and was all quite all right. And then.…..the bill. Total should have been $24.48 plus tax. We were ordering a la cart and NO indication was given that it was charged at All-you-can-eat rate unless otherwise noted. I noticed my boyfriend added a $12.00 gratuity when signing the receipt and I was curious as to how much the total was as I was thinking that sounded like more than I would have expected for a $24.50 order (We are both generous with gratuities when earned, so we would NOT have left a 20% on $24.50, but likely $6 bucks or so. They had charged us for 2 All-You-Can-Eat rates for $67.98. The card had already been run and the server said she would take care of it. As she left the table, my boyfriend asked if she would need the card and she said no. The manager came back a minute later and said, “we assume everyone is ordering All-you-can-eat. You have to tell the server first if you are ordering a la cart (MAYBE the server could ask rather than assume anything). We cannot refund the card because we already ran it and we do not any longer have your credit card information.“ My boyfriend offered her our card once again and she said “We cannot refund this charge, but how about if I give you $5.00 off for your next visit?“. I said “how can you NOT be able to refund the card you literally JUST ran?”. She said “we only have the last 4 digits of the card number”. I said “This does not make sense to me. $5.00 cash does NOT work for me. I will just never come back here”. My boyfriend explained to her that we have both owned and operated not only restaurants, but just plain businesses and we know full well that you can adjust a credit card transaction that was JUST run. The audacity to lie about that to our faces was Just absurd. She can keep the $75.00 for the $25 worth of food we ordered. We had just said it was nice to have found a regular sushi restaurant close to the house. But I work hard for every dollar I earn. I’m happy to pay a premium for quality food and service to support the people who work hard to make their livings providing it. A place that outright steals like that will definitely not be on the list of places I will frequent not recommend to others. Had they not had the opportunity to rectify the situation, I would not post this review, but they made it even worse by not being truthful and I hope this prevents someone else for being taken...

My family literally ate here when the doors opened their first day in business. We ate there every Sunday for basically a couple years. Obviously we like it.

The food is what you expect from a sushi place. I like the Nigiri... Lots of rolls. And there are cooked options if you prefer. I order a mix and enjoy the variety. The chicken yakitori is phenomenal. Tempura of many types, cream cheese wontons... There is something for anyone.

The service is good. Actually compared to the poor service I tend to get a high percentage of the time (elsewhere), their service is phenomenally consistently good. I may have been here 100 times and never once remember bad service.

The atmosphere is great. They have these hand painted Japanese themed murals, apple blossoms, red headed cranes, Japanese garden, bonsai, very feng shui, actually. Mood lighting... They used to play a lot of like studio Ghibli orchestral music in the background, which I miss lately, but it varies. The employees probably need to change it up a little regarding music for their sanity.

Now the ONLY negatives. I have to put this out there... Even though I love the place.... on occasion the food quality, though normally good, varies. I have eaten Sushi probably 1000 times in the last 20 years and you can tell the difference between when a chef sliced it nicely or did a hack job... Or if the fish is just slightly off .. 9 times out of 10 this place is drawing in the lines, but there is a little inconsistency. It has never made me sick, but rarely it seems their supplier quality slipped one day or they had an inexperienced sushi chef that day. If you have one day you think it didn't hit for you, I'd actually give it another chance because it is usually on point and you can leave full.

The other negative is that prices have gone up. This happened everywhere with runaway inflation, so I expect it was necessary, but in general I eat out less because of it.

Finally I also recommend the takeout. Their takeout menu is the same and the takeout portions are generous. Takeout is incredibly reasonable, maybe unbeatable if you want to satisfy the Sushi craving on a cheaper budget.

If you like Sushi, definitely...