Ni-Kuni Japanese Steak House & Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Sedalia

I am not from the area and was excited to see Japanese cuisine in Sedalia.

The food was subpar. I ordered the shrimp and salmon hibachi. Food drenched in teriyaki sauce. My shrimp was perfect. The salmon? White and the worst fish taste, it took my breath away. Rice was bland and old, broccoli was inedible. I dined with a friend who ordered the Filet and salmon hibachi. Her salmon was the same , white and the worst fish taste, inedible. She ordered the filet medium and was presented with a flat , soggy and blood red piece of something. Definitely not Filet Mignon. My friend never touched the “filet” and only took 1 bite of the expired salmon. They asked us if we wanted them to cook us something else or cook her “filet” longer. The taste of the salmon was enough to lose your appetite. I understand the restaurant industry , in regard to ,patrons ordering , eating an acceptable amount of food and asking for it free. We could tell the staff and manager was thinking this by their demeanor. The waitress came over and I asked for the bill. We ate a roll, the soup and salad and my perfect shrimp. Our server stated the manager took 50% off each of our dinners and that was all he was going to do. I expected to pay at least 50 % of mine, but hers? She took one bite of rancid salmon and was charged 50%. The manager never came back over. The waitress stated that was all they were going to do.

Many of the reviews are positive. I can’t help but to wonder if those reviews are paid, family members or diners who aren’t knowledgeable of true Japanese cuisine?

When the common denominator of negative reviews state , weird tastes, bad smells and stomach aches after eating you would think it would be enough to send the health department in to investigate or wonder how they get by with serving food that puts the public safety at risk.

There are so many great little restaurants in Sedalia that I look forward to patronizing when I come in for my business travels, Ni-Kuni is...

We arrived at around 1:20pm to a full parking lot. It was Mother's Day so I definitely understand being busy. We found a spot and walked into a full waiting area. We were told 15-20 minutes to be seated which we were happy to wait. It took about 35 minutes to be seated. Once we were seated our waiter immediately took our drink orders and appetizer order. This is where things turned for the worse. Apparently the group before us was a very large group and our waiter was tasked with waiting all of their tables and ours. Unfortunately, he spent a majority of his time waiting on them and we seemed to be forgotten. We did have two people ask if we had been taken care of, and to that we said yes because we actually had been. After about 30 minutes we finally received our drinks and I had to remind our waiter that we ordered appetizers. During this time, we watched a few other tables in his section get up and leave because they probably hadn't received their drinks either. Eventually we received our appetizers and ordered our food. During our wait for the appetizers and food we only received one drink refill and that was from the front desk person. Again, our waiter was focused on the large group. In the end, we received our food about an hour after we got seated and finally left the restaurant around 3:30pm. That's a little over two hours which is too long. I think my point here is that they could do a better job managing the wait staff. They were not expecting a large group like that, so assign one guy to do it and have other wait staff cover his section. This was really the only thing wrong with our visit. The food was not the best I've had for the price for either sushi or hibachi, but it was better than some. I've had excellent sushi from hole in the wall restaurants that charge much less. If we would've had great service, I could've definitely overlooked some of the other faults, but that just...

The food is absolutely fantastic! I can't praise them enough. Beautiful presentation and delicious! They do however need to work on their timing and service. We had several issues with the service. Our first waitress was very sweet and seemed great, then another (rude) waitress came over and argued with the first waitress that we were supposed to be her table right in front of us! The first waitress graciously turned us over to waitress #2 and explained to her what drinks we wanted and that we wanted to get an appetizer turned in while we were deciding on what to order. Apparently #2 wasn't listening because she had to ask again and it just went downhill from there. I won't go into every detail but I would like to give them a few tips to help them improve. Appetizer should always come to the table first, then the soup/salad course and then the enrtrees. Its really awkward when one person at the table has food and the others have to wait several minutes. Also strange when the appetizer and salad comes after the entrée. The waitress even asked how everything was and we hadn't even gotten half our food. One person didn't have any food yet! Check on customers to see if they need drink refills or maybe a "to go" box. The waitress should never hover over a guest while they are filling in the tip info and signing the receipt. I did tell waitress #1 that we wished we could have kept her. Waitress #2 has a lot to learn. We will definitely come back. I might wait until they get the kinks worked out though. Best of...