Sakari Sushi — Restaurant in Winter Park

So my girlfriend and I came here because we wanted uni and because it was right next door to our movie theater. We showed up an hour and a half before our movie and decided to take advantage of the pretty sweet happy hour menu that they offer.

Let me just preface this with when we sat down and ordered our first round and then got ready for our second round, they told us that they were out of uni... I don't wanna talk about this.

We decided to sit outside, because the weather was perfect. We ordered a ton of little plates. Sakari Rangoon (Crab, cream cheese, jalapeno, & onion, fried & served with sweet chili sauce), BBQ Calimari (Fried calimari tossed in our sweet chili sauce over a bed or fresh organic field greens), two pieces each of tuna and some salmon nigiri, an Ichiban Roll (Spicy salmon and cucumber wrapped with avocado, tobiko, and tempura flakes, with garlic miso sauce and eel sauce), and a Rock N Roll (Fried soft shell crab, chopped & mixed with mayo, masago, & scallions).

The rangoons were very crisp with a good amount of filling I would have liked to see a little more, though. The filling was a little thinner than I'm used to in a rangoon, but it was still delicious, especially with that sweet chili sauce. Put that stuff on anything and I'll eat it all.

The calimari was even better, though. It was cooked really well and there wasn't too much breading on it. The greens it came on were well dressed and it was basically a calimari salad. It was good for the price, but I certainly wouldn't want to pay full price for the amount on that plate that I ate.

Nigiri is pretty much the way you tell if a place has good sushi. We had two delicious slabs of fresh tuna and salmon right in front of us, and they were actually very good. Dynamite taste, not too goopy of a texture, and I didn't wake up with food poisoning, so, bingo.

The ichiban roll was pretty ok. The spicy salmon wasn't so spicy. That, and the lack of the alleged sauces made the roll actually pretty bland, so I would probably skip this roll next time.

The rock n roll was the star of the show. That soft shell crab was so crispy and so good that even with the paltry amount of sauce, the crab still shined through and made this roll absolutely irresistible. Get it.

We finished the meal with a cheesecake tempura. Unlike other restaurants I've been to, this place intelligently cut their cheesecake into smaller pieces before plopping it in the deep fryer, and the results were phenomenal. Such a good bite of not-too-sweet but oh-so-creamy cheesecake wrapped in fried dough that was flaky and not oily or burnt. Also so get....

The perceived value of a meal is not just judged by your palate, but also by the steps it takes you to get your plate.!!! A restaurant can serve an amazing meal, but when the service to get that meal is below the standard par expected when you pay a premium for the food, that lowers that value considerably. I commend the chef for the awesome plates that more than sated our palate, but our server was less than attentive, only seeing her three times (took our order, walked by our table once - but never asked if we needed anything, and gave us our check after we had to ask another server for the check), we had to ask other servers for everything from our water and drinks, service ware, our appetizer to even our check.!!?! The quality of our service was that poor that we have not been back since. We will continue to haunt Sushi LoLa's in Audubon Park on Corrine (been enjoying the whole experience here for years with never a dissapointment in the quality of the food nor the service from staff and management). We're always up to experiencing a new restaurant, but lately it seems that most of these newer restaurants command thier higher prices to give the customer an idea that they're better than the others, but undercut thier service to increase thier profit. Bottom line... Whats the difference between $8 sushi from Publix and $20 sushi from the "overpriced/underserviced" hipster style sushi houses littering orlando... The plate its served on. Your call, but a premium price should have accompanying complimenting equal service to match the quality of thier food, otherwise it cheapens the quaility of the food by decreasing ones taste through the...

I had made a reservation online but walked in early and it wasn’t too busy on a Saturday night so they sat us down. 15-20 minutes went by and no one had approached us until it seems a manager or floor lead noticed and took our drink order and we asked if he could take our food order because we were ready to order for a while. I don’t think we met our actual waiter until 30+ minutes when our food was ready. We noticed she actually took orders from two tables that sat after us one being a very large table which gave the perception that they were getting the better service because they were obviously going to spend more money. They started getting food before us too. The only positive thing about the service was that my water was never empty and the bartender was very happy/positive from afar and he wasn’t even serving us.

I’m honestly disappointed. I had only ever had this place on Uber eats and had very high expectations because I love the sushi. I was looking forward to finally trying it in person and I probably won’t be going there again. I wasn’t going to write this review but then two people randomly called me from the restaurant yesterday about my reservation from the day before the first girl that called me “about my upcoming reservation” I mentioned my reservation was from the day before and I already went to eat and she abruptly hung up on me. The following gentleman called and asked if I had called the restaurant. Which I haden’t. The service/management...