Sakura Japanese Cuisine
“My husband and I discovered this gem a few years back when Watawa had a 30 minute wait and we haven't gone anywhere else in Astoria for sushi since.”
“The combo roll meals also come with miso soup and salad, as is pretty standard, but 3 rolls and your apps will run you about $12-15.”
“Warm towel upon sitting down, free edamame, free saki at the end of the meal.”
Sakura Japanese Cuisine
Takes Reservations: Yes
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
8 reviews
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Came here with a friend before 4PM for the lunch special (3 rolls for $10). There fish was fresh and the rolls were well put together. We also had the shumai which was okay (nothing special but still good).
In addition we tried the Godzilla roll. Personally, I thought the sauce they topped this roll with overpowered the salmon and eel. The service was good and for the two of us the bill came to less than $30.
Ambiance is A+ as is service. The people who work here are attentive, very polite, helpful and just otherwise wonderful. The restaurant is beautiful, sexy, and clean.
Please note my comment on the freshness of the sashimi. I posit that "freshness" comment based on rolls, or even sushi itself, may not be giving an accurate assessment. First of all, you can't detect freshness in a roll because the nori invariably overwhelms all else. If a roll tastes unfresh, you should be contacting the health department, not writing a Yelp review. As for sushi, sushi is often prepped ahead of time on the assumption that sushi has a high turnover rate. An assumption that is not always accurate. Sashimi is a good measure of freshness since it's almost always made to order.
A comment about the brown rice. You have a brown rice option at Sakura, and boy is their brown rice great! Normally, brown rice is much too chewy and savory to be eaten along side raw fish. This brown rice is extremely short grain, extremely tender and extremely light. However, make no mistake: it is brown rice. One taste and you'll have that faint brown rice flavor which in no way diminishes the fish.
Chicken Katsu: C+
Chicken was MUCH too dry. Katsu was too sweet for my taste. The breading was flavorless. I was hoping there would be a hint of ginger or something to make it complex. Alas, it was dry and not very savory.
Pork Ramen: C-
An awful, horrible ramen. First off, there's way too much of it, and I've learned time and time again, when a restaurant gives you portions this big, it's always bad. The broth is liquidy and flavorless. It smells like Chinese food. The noodles are too long and tangled to be eaten along side the other ingredients. The whole dish was like throwing lo mein noodles into a flavorless hot broth. The pork was the only good thing about the dish. It was fatty, so when you took a bite of noodle+broth+pork it actually tasted very good, but it should be good without the pork as well. Like Hinomaru, a few blocks down.
Sashimi Regular: A+
Unusually good sashimi. Please do note my comment about the rice. The fish was fresh, and by that I mean the individual flavor of the sushi is detectable. The hamachi tastes like hamachi. The toro tastes like toro. The sake tastes like sake. You get the picture. The fish was obviously not thawed from being frozen in their freezer, nor was the flavor stunted by refrigeration. The fish was obviously not stored thrown on top of each other (which is why you'll sometimes taste yellow tail that tastes like salmon) I was given sake, hamachi, ebi, tuna, and a 5th fish which I didn't recognize.
Fried Ice Cream: B
Your typical fried ice cream. Very good (my wife didn't like it, but I did.)
Next to try: Hamachi Kama and Chilean Sea Bass
Came here for New Year's Eve dinner with my boyfriend and his friends. Was really really pleased with everything from the ambiance to the food. Warm towel upon sitting down, free edamame, free saki at the end of the meal. I tend to not normally eat fish, but will occasionally do so with sushi. I had the spicy tuna roll, the California roll, and a kampyo roll. The spicy tuna was delicious and served tartare style. I would definitely come back here again. Great date spot, really lovely staff.
One of the best Japanese restaurants in the area.
I love how this place offers brown rice option for their sushi rolls and dishes- at no extra charge. They also cater to special requests such as swapping your Cali roll in the bento boxes for another roll of similar price without charge (or a more expensive roll for just a dollar more).
Their service is really good. Their food is even better. I love this resturant.
One of my favorite sushi restaurants! They always have fresh sushi and their service is on point and friendly.
So I love my sushi and this place has great special rolls! We got the dragon roll and wild girl roll. It was delicious. Only thing that made me lower this rating was the attentiveness of the staff. There were hardly 3 other people in the restaurant and they still weren't attentive. I had to wait for water and whenever the waiter came by he wouldn't even ask if we wanted water. It was just not the best dining experience because of the attention but the food is definitely up there.
This is one of the poorer sushi places that I have been to. The service was mediocre, but the food was even worse. I ordered the 3-roll combo with tuna avocado, shrimp avocado and salmon avocado (as you can tell, I really like avocado). The fish was old and slimy and the rolls were not held together well. The salad and miso soup were decent, but the sushi was not. The ambience of the place is nice, but I would not recommend going here for the sushi. I've noticed a lot of positive reviews and maybe we caught them on a bad day, but still it's not really an excuse for poor food.
Tried them again. Spoke with a woman on the phone, as they were out of two types of sushi I wanted. She was very nice and apologetic, offering a substitution for anything I wanted on the menu "within that ballpark price".
They made a point to get me the order quickly.
Rolls still very solid. Good sushi. Gyoza was nice. Beef negimaki was quite good.
Primary reason for this update: avoid the beef fried rice, unless you like your sweet, and with chewy, almost jerky-like beef. Still in the fridge…though still on the possible "chuck it" train.