Sake - Santa Cruz

Omg I can 't believe they opened a Teppanyaki grill in Santa Cruz! A few days ago, I was randomly looking at the hot new businesses tab and stumbled upon this restaurant. After going to ucsc for the past 3 years, I 've always kept an eye out for a restaurant that I could use for a special occasion or point my friends to if they were in the area. Just to get started, this restaurant has AMAZING customer service. As soon as I entered the door, I was greeted by one of the girls at the counter and she asked if we wanted to eat at the sushi bar or the hibachi grill. Of course we had to choose the hibachi grill, that 's why we came in the first place (even though the sushi bar was filed with people)! Me and my friend both ordered the ny steak that came with soup and salad. Not gonna lie, the salad wasn 't my favorite but the soup was decent (wasn 't miso soup). After a while, our chef comes out and greets us. The man was super polite and super friendly with me and my friend. Honestly, while I was waiting for him, I was really worried that he wouldn 't be able to The service here is okay, most of the workers have minimum English vocabulary but it 's enough to get by. put on a good show for my roommate (his first time at a teppanyaki grill and I didn 't want it to disappoint). The show had everything you could ask for, the onion volcano, the knife flips and a lot of good humor from the talented man. He prepared our fried rice first and it was surprisingly not as dry as I expected. After that, he prepared our steaks which were cut out into be sized pieces for us and cooked to our desired levels (I wanted medium rare and my roommate wanted medium well). Lastly he finished the veggies and they were cooked very well and had a nice Japanese coca cola flavor. Throughout the meal and show, our waiter occassionally stopped by our table to check if everything is okay and refill our water. I 've driven by this location many times and I 've seen a few businesses give up at this location. Since it is a big restaurant, I hope this place gets popular soon because I 'd be really sad if it disappeared like the rest. PS. prices are cheaper during lunch!!

Great food! Terrible service! Messed up checks, overcharging, slow, messed up orders... Avoid! Sadly

Drove down the coast from Washington to California and landed in Santa Cruz. Of course I had to stop at a Japanese steak house and it was amazing. The waitress was nice and very easy to talk to. Food was good and proportion was on point and they didn't make us pay extra for fried rice.

We were the only customers on a Saturday around 12.15 pm. Later joined by another person eating alone and another couple at the grill. This place is huge and has a section for Hibachi and a bar counter. Great for large parties, so it felt really empty on Saturday. Also, coming in from a bright sunny day, the restaurant was really dark to my liking, so I wished there was more lighting. The food was good but not great. The lunch deals were good, especially the 3 rolls for $9.99. The bento boxes were decent, especially the tempura, which tasted really fresh and crispy. with regards to the raw fish, it was good but have had better. Overall a good place for lunch, not sure about the Hibachi, which I may try one day. The menu has a lot of items and can be overwhelming, if you are new to Japanese food. May return for the Hibachi grill.

Don't come here for sushi. Well, maybe just don't come here if you want a good experience. The waitress has good intentions but was dimwitted at best. She didn't know her own menu, I had to explain that my order had options, then what option I wanted. She got the order completely wrong for the table next to us, and we never received one of our items at all. There were flies inside, landing on our food... that's never a good sign. I know we came in late on an off night but the place was nearly empty when we arrived. This makes more sense after eating here. I boldly ordered the sushi dinner, I may regret this choice tomorrow but hey I got some horrendously salty miso soup, and bag salad covered in too much dressing to start. The sushi was not fantastic, the tuna was the only item that actually tasted good, that and the tempura shrimp appetizer. The rest of the fish was meh at best, and after seeing all these flies I hope im not sick later. By far the best part of the meal was the sake and beer, luckily they couldn't fuck that up and alcohol makes any food better let's be honest. Yeah, I'd probably not recommend this place to a friend lol. Attempt at you own risk.