SAKURA Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Winter Haven

There a bunch of restaurants in this area. The thing that drove me to this restaurant was the google reviews. To set the table … a.k.a premise, for the last few years I’ve had a tough time finding a restaurant where the food was great, the server was astounding, and the ambiance staged an amazing meal, away from the boring day-to-day stuff we eat just to keep going. A tall order, but when your dropping one to three days of net pay to entertain someone, and to be entertained as part of the ticket, this is what we should all expect.

Sakura Japanese Steak House and Sushi Bar will be added to my disappointments. When I walked in and asked for a table for four, they led me to their side dining tables instead of their hibachi tables in another dining room. No one even offered me the choice of sitting at the other tables. The waitress must have been having a bad night because she kept forgetting our order, and we had to reminder her to bring our drinks. When my son order General Tso’s Chicken, she asked if he wanted broccoli or mixed vegetables, which this dish doesn’t offer. You can imagine my son’s disappointment when the plate was flush with his least favorite green. This was an opportunity for the waitress to take the plate away and specialize it with mixed veggies. Instead she returned with the menu and pointed out that it only came with broccoli, as if to say: it’s in the contract.

Food was delivered piece meal, instead of a complete order. So, as my wife and daughter were finishing, my son and I were just being served. Prices here are slightly above average; not out of line considering the entertainment value of the chef preparing the food in front of you, which we didn’t get to see. To add such an amateurish performance by restaurant staff made me question my choice for the night.

On the good side (bet’cha thought I’d never get to one), the food was delicious. I’m a vegetarian, another reason I don’t like to go to restaurants; however, colors of the food were bright, and plated with love and dedication and worth the indignant attention my family and I received from the staff. You should skip lunch before coming to this place because of the large quantity of dinner you’ll be served. They close between 2:30p to 4:30p, I guess to switch over from lunch to dinner, a little out of the ordinary. But if this is to give the chef a chance to pray for a good dinner service, it’s worth it. If I return here for dinner in the future, they will have their...

We have been here twice in three months. The first time we came in without a reservation and they sat us literally behind the chef. We had no view of the grill. Kind of a necessity with a hibachi dinner experience. We requested to be moved and we waited for a new seating. We were asked to follow the hostess again to be reseated only to be sat with the same view, behind the chef. We are very familiar with hibachi. Side views are more than acceptable. Views from behind the chef are not! We left.

Fast forward to today. We called ahead to try to get call ahead seating. They said they were not accepting call aheads. We arrived to hear a hostess that was taking a call ahead request for a table tonight.

They took down a party of 10 to their table and then stared at my husband. Didn’t welcome/greet us. It was very awkward. Literally turned toward us and expected me to start with my party size. We told them we were a party of three. We were seated at a new table. They sat a party of four after us. It was a party with children that were a bit unruly. We had our daughter with us, but she is well behaved and I didn’t want to listen to screaming during a nice time out. We picked up our belongings and went to the front to express our concerns. I said we didn’t want to have an unpleasant meal due the party nearby. I offered to pay for my drink (a coke for my daughter that she took a sip out of), but they declined. They said we were good to go and said no more. Didn’t offer us a new table, didn’t say anything else.

I called after to let a manger know and he pretended that he didn’t know who we were. He finally revealed that he was in fact a part of the group at the front door and said that I seemed “upset”. I asked him if I screamed, yelled or was rude to anyone. He said no. I asked how I could seem so upset by using a regular tone and while wearing a mask and he had nothing to say except to offer the information that there are over 300 restaurants in the area. I asked if he offered that information because he didn’t think he could adequately service customers and he said they can, but I asked where his customer service was.

Do yourself a favor a favor and try another hibachi place. Not going to lie, the food is exceptional, but the customer...

Save you money and go to KOBES!

This place is going downhill like Osakas did.

Tonight was the worst experience I’ve had in the many years me , my family and friends have been coming. I NEVER leave reviews for places but every time the experience seems to get just a little worse and tonight was the final straw and we no longer come here.

We will make the drive to Kobe’s for a better show, better experience, better service, better food. There was no AC. No one mentioned it before sitting our party. We had multiple kids with us, everyone was burning up. Me and a friend shared a dinner for two meal which includes chicken, filet , scallops , shrimp and lobster. I’ve had this option in the past with much better quality/portion size. However I normally get the Steak and Scallops. Any how, we got the dinner for two because we thought it was a better bang for our buck and it’s a become a complete rip off. You get two scallops a piece of which they are cut in half and given to you, the steak was a low grade Filet, we asked for MR it might as well been well done, also, everyone who ordered steak, theirs was also overcooked. There is small overcooked lobster in there and each person gets 3 small pieces of that after it’s cooked to nothing. The portion sizes are a joke. With gratuity added $96 was our total bill.

We would have been better off each getting a meal with 2 options for example. Steak and scallops & then Shrimp and Chicken and we could have split that and had more of each than what we did for the dinner for 2. We certainly could’ve lived without the Lobster.

While asking the cook about the portion sizes he started screaming to another coworker over top of my entire plate of food.

The manager did come and let me know it’s 3 scallops per person when you get the dinner for 2 and the scallops are cut in half prior to them giving them to you. He offered to go cook another 2 scallops for us since we were both missing one. At this point we were all ready to go as it was disgusting hot and humid in there.

Will not go back. Save your money , drive to Kobe’s unless you don’t care about having subpar...