Sakura Garden — Restaurant in South Windsor

I have reached out to management regarding this incident, but they chose not to respond, so therefore, I am posting this honest review of Sakura:

We visited Sakura's new location Sunday evening, 11/13, and we were pretty upset with the service. While our waitress Rachel was phenomenal (who we have had before at the old location) the people who are host/hostessing were absolutely subpar, and probably shouldn't be forward-facing employees when guest first walk in. Their disinterest in their jobs and blatant rudeness set a very uncomfortable tone for the whole evening... Walking through the door, three people standing behind the desk, not one of them said hello to us until we approached a young man and said hello first. He said "she will help you" and pointed to a young woman to his right. We requested a booth, due to recent spinal surgery which make hard chairs unpleasant to sit in. The young man who was attempting to seat us told us we would have to "wait for someone to clean the table", as the only booth available was still dirty from prior guests. We said no worries, we didn't mind waiting for the accommodation. After that, rather than maybe asking someone to clean the table (or clean it himself) he just went back over to the front desk and stood there. Several minutes later, we heard him mention our request for a booth to the young lady who was at the desk. She was visibly annoyed with us, and rolled her eyes several times. This also could have been an opportunity to find someone to clean the table, or of course, clean it. We waited a few more minutes before someone eventually came out of the back to clean the table, and then the young woman told us to follow her, still visibly annoyed. As we were getting into our booth, she rolled her eyes again, essentially threw the menus down, didn't say another word and walked away. Extremely rude and unpleasant, and made us very uncomfortable to even want to sit there and eat. If it weren't for Rachel, we probably would have just gotten up to leave- It shouldn't be a cause for rudeness when someone requests their preferred seating- It was uncomfortable to feel like I had to explain a personal medical condition in the middle of a restaurant because someone just assumes I'm being picky, and is annoyed by the request. I understand it was a busy night, and I'm sure I am not the only one to ever make this request, so after spending $120 on food at a nice restaurant, it's frustrating to feel like I never want to go back there. Overall the food quality has gone down a bit (in my opinion), but it is this experience that will hinder loyal customers from returning to an...

I will start by saying the sushi and the tuna steak dinner were delicious! Unfortunately, the waitress we had was in the weeds and was unable to take care of us. It was my birthday and I love sushi but my husband hates it and in over 9 years together he has never taken me to a sushi restaurant. Last night was the first. I ordered edamame as an appetizer and a sushi roll for my entree. My husband ordered the tuna steak dinner. His salad came and I waited for the edamame. He finished his salad and at that point I was trying to get our waitresses attention to ask about the edamame. She was moving around so fast and never looked our way it was impossible. His tuna steak came out, she put it in front of him and quickly turned and hurried off. A few minutes later she came back with my sushi roll. I said to her that I did not want the edamame at that point, as it was to be my appetizer. She said it's back there I just forgot to bring it out. If the edamame had been sitting back there that entire time, I most certainly did not want it now. She appeared upset and walked away not asking if we needed anything else, she was practically running through the place. She never came back to ask how everything was. I was trying to get her attention but she would not even look our way. I was not given any wasabi with my sushi and for me that is a requirement. I got up twice and tried to find someone to get it for me with no luck. Finally, I got the attention of the host who had just sat a table. I asked him for wasabi and he came back with wasabi mayonnaise. Finally, several more minutes passed when I got up again and found our waitress at the server station and requested the wasabi. I was drinking water and it was not refilled at all. It was an extremely disappointing first experience. It was supposed to be a special birthday but turned out to be anything but special, more frustrating than...

Wish we would’ve had the opportunity to dine, but we didn’t make it past the front door. We entered and requested hibachi, the hostess proceeded to pick a table and bring us to the dinning room, I stopped her and said we were here for hibachi. She stated oh well that’ll be a few minutes and we sat to the side and waited. Another group came in and said hibachi, I watched as they grabbed the menus and started to walk them to the table. It wasn’t until one of the hostess saw me watching did she say oh take them too. At that point the server walked over to the other group and told them to follow him and mentioned I could follow as well as he walked passed. I didn’t move. I was perplexed. I looked at my family and said I think we should go elsewhere. One of the hostess came over and said you can sit with the other group we just sat. I told her we were going to leave. She stated oh it’s because we have reservations, and that I can sit with that group or wait until 3:30. I reiterated we were leaving. To which condescendingly said have a nice day rest of your day.

I want to point out the other group that walked in did not have a reservation.

I would implore this owner to retrain his staff. While I can’t say this was racially motivated, there was definitely an underlying undertone. In this political climate, there is no room for discrimination, we need to all be in this together not divided. This is the 2nd time this has happened to me here, but sadly the last time I’ll be back.

I used to love this place visited at the other location often before it became a Whole Foods. It’s sad to see that it is only trying to retain a certain...