Sakura Bana Restaurant — Restaurant in Ridgewood

For those of you who do not know me, I have been a waitress at Sakura Bana for over three and a half years. Normally, I do not really care about the negative reviews on here because most of the time they do not pertain to things I can control, but our most recent review from January 23rd is something I could not keep to myself.

This review had some remarks about our price and quality of our food, which I cannot comment on. I have nothing to do with our pricing or the quality of our fish, so it is not my place to argue with a customer’s review. However, I was truly disgusted by the treatment of my good friend at the sushi bar.

For those of you who come eat with us often, you are probably aware that one of our sushi chef’s is not Japanese. He is a very nice man who has been making sushi and serving it to customers longer than I have been alive. He is always efficient, fast, and kind to everyone around him. If any of us waiting staff forget to put an order in, he will make it within a few minutes at the highest of quality because he is just that good.

This review referred to him as the “take-out chef” and said he was not a real sushi man. When the customer had asked me who makes the sushi, I had said this gentleman makes the sushi rolls and these gentleman (the Japanese sushi men during this night) made the sushi pieces. It was obvious with this customer’s tone that she was not interested in our sushi chef who made the sushi rolls this particular evening.

In addition, when we continued to ask this customer if everything was okay or if she needed anything, it was very clear she did not want us to really talk to her. Our sushi chefs are attentive and kind to our sushi bar customers and all customers in general. We try to have conversation because as many of our reviews say, we try to keep this place a family friend, kind environment.

I could see the sadness from my friend when he noticed the dissatisfaction of his sushi rolls that he made. I also noticed how upset he got when he understood that this woman was not going to give him a chance to prove himself. Her disgust for his sushi happened before he even had a chance to prove himself.

I understand that sometimes customers just want to be left alone and enjoy their meals in a nice, peaceful manner, but after reading her review, I was truly disgusted to see my friend being treated as if he did not have the skill or the experience to serve customers sushi.

I get that people have bad nights, and maybe this was one of them. I apologize if this woman feels as if we treated her differently because she was out by herself at our restaurant, that was never our intention. We always want everyone to feel welcomed and have a great experience.

However, I do not care if my manager or anyone sees this and gets upset, I am not going to sit here and tolerate my friend being bashed and referred to as a fake sushi chef when he has been satisfying customers and making these delicious rolls for years. He has always been kind to customers, treated them like family, and always makes the experience for everyone there special. I do not appreciate him being referred to anything less than what he is by someone who did not even give him a chance. I truly do not tolerate any sort of disrespect to my sushi chefs the way he was disrespected tonight. The sushi chefs at Sakura Bana are friends to everyone, and the level of disrespect I witnessed tonight was horrific to say the least.

To my friend, all your daughters and sons of Sakura Bana want you to know we see you as one of the bests. You always make sure we serve top notch food and really save us when we need to during busy nights when we forget some things or a customer needs something to go quickly. I hope when you read this, you know that we all love you and appreciate your hard work at...

I wanted very much to like this place. I was excited for this experience. I ordered $77 worth of sushi for 1 person at a BYOB! However I was amazed by the size of the 2 rolls I ordered which totalled $40. Then I looked at the table behind me( a couple with their young children) and their rolls were twice the size of mine! I have not paid 22.95 for a roll in New Jersey except at the River Palm or at Lefke's, which totally are worth it! Not very good quality.This is not a top level sushi restaurant.The photos say it all. The food was poorly presented and these photos were enlarged for detail. Was a terrible dining experience. Top roll was 17.95$ Bottom was 22.95$ which was the Wycoff roll ( which had spicy tuna and the tuna had no heat at all.) My instinct told me they had the gentleman that does the take out orders prepare my order and they had the real sushi chefs doing everybody else's dishes-which really is disturbing. Just because I am a professional woman over 50 and dining alone, doesn't give you the right to give me a lower quality meal! Wow that is shameful! I spent over $80 for a C rated meal. Really was hoping the reviews were correct but they are not. I was ripped off. I just hope I will not get sick tonight. See...

Let's start from the beginning,

This place was suggested to us by a friend as a pretty decent sushi place in Ridgewood. I have to agree with him on this but then again I had expected a little better in terms of quality of the food.

But first things first. Came here on Tuesday night for dinner. The place was packed, so the level of expectation became sky high even though the place is right next to the train station. So we sat down expecting great food and great service. Gotta mention that service was actually great, fast, polite, no nonsense. But food seemed somewhat mediocre considering the number of people that are passing through the place given a full house on a Tuesday night. Me and my wife both ordered Sashimi B (16 pcs) of Sashimi with no white tuna but it seems that Tuna is the fish of choice, where as I would have expected more variety like Mackerel instead of Albacore. And the fish seemed to have that "frozen aftertaste" though it wasn't as prominent as some of the other places I had a chance to visit.

Overall I would say this is a good place to visit and I think after the renovations that they were closing for it may be better but it still needs a little bit of...