Wakaba

This is my favorite sushi place. It’s near my office, so I’ve been here often. The food is great — Lake Michigan Maki and Spicy Tuna Maki are my favorites. The décor is a bit dated, but it’s clean. The service is attentive. Wakaba is the bar I use to measure other sushi places.

I don’t write reviews for restaurants I go to but my experience was so terrible I thought I’d start with my experience tonite. I like to try new restaurants especially sushi restaurants. My family and I ordered several of the sushi combos but when the orders came out… OMG! The pieces were so small I couldn’t believe it especially with the prices for the combo specials. 1 small piece was sliced into 2 even smaller pieces. I was looking at the platter that came out in disbelief. We left quite hungry and decided to stop and pick up a pizza on the way home to satisfy our hunger. If you want to eat here to grab an expensive snack before a main course then this is the place for you!

Delicious!!! A great family owned restaurant! Their spicy sushi sauce is mouth watering! A great family providing great food!

The fish and overall taste was good. Service was polite. Rolls were very inconsistent. Some had significant protein while others had less than a minuscule amount. I love spicy mayo but the heavy usage inside rolls was not ideal to me.

This place is a total dive, but absolutely delish! My friend and I wound up stopping in here randomly after finding out that the place we wanted to grab lunch at was closed. What a pleasant surprise! The hostess was more than gracious, attentive, and courteous, and the food presentation was on point. Rolls are small, but more than filling with a small salad or some soup. Can’t wait to return.

Fish is not fresh.

I had been meaning to try this place out and finally just decided to get something. I ordered steamed rice, bulgogi and pot stickers. All three came to roughly $ 14.
the Bulgogi tasted so good. The marination and the way it was cooked was so tasty, I wanted more of it. It wasn’t too salty or too sweet, just right. As for the pot stickers, it could have been cooked a little better with a little crisper shell. But, still the taste of this was better than most pot stickers I have had. Dip it in their sauce and it’s like being in Japan eating in one of their restaurants. Well, it a how I’d imagine it since I’ve never been.
The cashier was so delightful and friendly, and most especially patient. I really enjoyed her personality.
I have it 5 because the food paired with the service was just perfect for me.

Wakaba was the first sushi place I’ve ever been too, and they we sorta forgot about it as more places opened in the area. Recently, we started to go there again and now it is definitely our go-​to place for when you want super fast service and fresh sushi!
Even though there may be a slight language barrier, the staff is so friendly and always have smiles on their faces — huge plus! No matter what roll we try, everything is prepared so fresh — for carryout too!
The prices are great and slightly less than other sushi restaurants in the area, which obviously doesn’t hurt. We highly recommend you give this place a shot — you wont regret it :)
Some our favorite rolls here are the Michigan roll, the Futo roll, and the Spicy White Tuna roll. And, their sushi combinations are perfect as well!

Great carry out sushi place. Inexpensive, good sushi. My wife and I order out from here almost weekly.

Sushi is below average, slices are very small and not fresh at all. Ginger salad was far too runny. Miso soup very bland. Edamame was very good though, right amount of salt!
Worst part was the service. Perhaps we caught an off night, but we will not be back

Huge menu selection, honestly a bit too much and overwhelming. The server suggested the ginger chicken wings, combo plate and chili calamari. The wings were great. They sushi combo was nice. We ordered some nigiri pieces which were also okay. The tako seemed tougher than how I normally have it prepared. The larger issue was midway through our meal (Saturday night 7:30) service stopped. There were only 3 people working– hostess, chef and server. There seemed to be a huge takeout order they were preparing. But nobody mentioned the delay or brought out the chili calamari. I was disappointed in the service.

Average service, average sushi, horrible ambiance… not the best sushi around.
Location and Ambiance:
Location is ok, ambiance is quite awful. The experience was boring and dull overall.
Food:
Got about 5 rolls. All of them were average to below average. Nothing seemed unique or great. We asked the waiter to bring out a random roll he recommended, and it was A-​ok but nothing amazing (I don’t recall which rolls we tried).
Staff:
Really average /​uninterested in serving us.
In summary, much better options in the area. Check out some of my reviews if you would like. :)
Thanks,
Connor Brady

Great Sushi! The restaurant is kinda dark and the service is a little snow but the food is amazing. The rolls are very good and miso soup is yummy. Will be back again.

My wife and I ate here many times and always enjoyed our meals, then service slipped and we found other places to satisfy our sushi fix. With the closing of our nearby sushi favorite we decided to try Wakaba again. We have been back twice in the last few weeks and have settled back in with one of our old favorites. The service and the food have been great. I’ve enjoyed the spicy sushi plate among many other rolls and negiri. My wife enjoys their chicken teriyaki and says it’s the best around. Basic food but fresh and delicious.

So, we’ve been coming here for years … time for a review! Context for this review is that we probably eat sushi about 3 – 5 times a month, sometimes as a couple (whee!), sometimes with the whole family (three kids), and have been doing so for a couple decades, as residents in Chicago and the Netherlands, and tourists globally, including Japan. My point being: we are not «ooh, once a year Ravinia Rolls!» diners.
Wakaba is our definite «come here for comfort and good food» selection of all the sushi joints in Chicago, and from among the 4 – 5 decent places within striking distance of Wakaba. You can get fancier in other places, and you can get o toro in other places (rare, for obvious reasons, at Wakaba) … but you can’t get better service or better consistency in the quality of what you’re eating.
The service is friendly, attentive, personable and thorough. IMO, if you’ve had a bad experience here, then you just happened to hit a point where they were overwhelmed briefly. That’s happened to us maybe twice out of … sixty? many more? … meals here.
Appetizers are all right on target in terms of appealing taste. Our usuals are edamame (good, crisp, right level of salt), shumai, tempura (neither here nor there — which is probably the hallmark of decent tempura), gyoza (they have, oddly, our favorite gyoza *anywhere* … no idea why it’s so good, but it is) and wakame su (crisp, clean).
The miso is good, and the udon is very good (to be fair, I don’t think we regularly order udon anywhere else).
The fish is always very good. Well cut to favor each individual fish, with generous portions, and a very pleasant presentation. We tend to favor sashimi over nigiri, but both presentations are generous and well cut. The selection of fish and cuts is what you’d expect from a «family/​comfort» restaurant — e.g., no (or very rare) toro, no thin-​sliced or whole-​fish preparations. But on the other hand, they (almost) always have uni, they don’t have super-​white (good thing), and they always have hirame (one cut) — so I guess what I’m saying is that the fish is very good overall!
Can’t really speak to the maki or rolls, as we’re not really rolls people.
The sake list is pretty good, with some nice selections and a nice pour. But there are no bottles (small or 750ml), so you’re by the (generous) glass.
Highly recommended.

I’ve never seen fish sliced this thin for sushi. No wonder this place was a morgue on a Saturday night at 6. Good joints let the people eat!

Great food, amazing ambience, excellent service
Try scallops in butter sauce. It’s to die for!

I went here with my family for a birthday dinner with my wife and family and we had a wonderful time.
The sushi was delicious and fresh. I spoke to the sushi man and they said all their seafood was fresh and shipped directly from sources safe to eat no radioactive fish.
The interior was very Japanese traditional and very spacious. The waiter was very knowledgable and approachable. He was very polite and refilled our water about 5 times however not too disruptive to our meal. We even received some special sampler chef’s favorites appetizer for free to try them out. The bill came out and it was very affordable. Not too expensive for sushi. When I’m in the area in the suburbs I would recommend and come back here again.

I’ve been here so many times, that a review update is in order! I absolutely love Wakaba — the sushi is always fresh and on par, I’ve never had a bad experience, and the service is consistently great. I usually come here for takeout, but I know the service dining in is just as great. The prices are much cheaper than most restaurants I go to and they have a good fish to rice ratio. Every time I am here, they seem to be fairly busy, which is always a good sign.
It’s in a great location in Deerfield, which is why it makes it so easy for me to pickup dinner anytime of the week. I will continue coming here and bringing my business to the really nice owners, who have been here for a long time already.

Wakaba is definitely a better alternative to Blue Fish down the road in Deerfield, and much less expensive. However, I ordered the Phila Maki roll and I’m pretty sure that I ate an entire block of cream cheese. I love cream cheese and typically, the more, the better. NOT in this case. I was disappointed with my roll, but it was also the only thing I tried there.
I’ll write an update as soon as I return, but for now, I’d recommend staying away from the Phila Maki roll.