Aki Samurai Japanese Restaurant

best food for price and nice service. great for dieters and healthy. best unsweetened green bubble tea around! ¹⁰⁄₁₀! awesome selections but they needed to add the urchin. It waas neveer stocked when i went,

My boyfriend and I stopped in on a whim while on a day trip in Ithaca hoping for some delicious sushi. I see other reviews say the sushi was not good but that was not our experience. We found the sushi to be quite good and flavorful.
Our only complaint is regarding service. The waitress was frazzled and told everyone in the restaurant about how slammed she was. She was heard by the entire dining room to reprimand the chef for having people seat themselves. And finally, I overheard her give one customer two wine choices offering that a third choice was available but would take too long to open and the restaurant was very busy. She did offer free miso or salad for those of us waiting for our meals, but the overall service did not make for a relaxing atmosphere.
Three stars for great food but unfortunate dining atmosphere.

Honestly, I am not super picky when it comes to sushi – especially in Ithaca. I usually just order from whatever place as I don’t feel strongly positive to one over another. I have eaten here several times and usually everything was fine – until I ordered something with raw fish (sashimi). This is no exaggeration, I opened the container and some of the raw fish was slimy and some even smelled. I threw it all out. I did eat the California roll though, it seemed perfectly fine and I was already aggravated from being hungry and wasting money. I am from now on avoiding this place. Also, the miso soup and house salad wasn’t anything special.

Pro’s: My friend’s Vietnamese dish was okay but not worth the price. Gluten-​free soy sauce is available upon request
Con’s: Avocado milkshake was the worst I’ve ever had — they clearly didn’t know how to make it so why was it on the menu? The sushi was not rolled well and upset my stomach.
Not worth a try when there are far better places around town.

I wanted to like this place. The ambiance is nice and it’s located in the middle of the commons. Cuisine is Japanese, Thai, Korean etc which I am typically skeptical of but is the norm in Ithaca. My friend ordered the pad Thai which had no veggies (except for bean sprouts) and a mound of soggy noodles. I had a Korean soup with sausage, beef, and various noodles. The «sausage» was literally cut up hot dog and while it was okay, I would recommend Asia cuisine instead. Prices are high, quantities are large, but quality is poor.

I’ve been there a number of times for bubble tea and smoothies. Very good.
Decided to try dinner the other night. Barely anyone there when the two of us arrived, except for one large group having dinner. Then it started getting busier. Without going into great detail, it was a 2-​hour long service bus wreck that ended up with my partner and I having to get our forgotten order and lukewarm dinner to go. The only waitress literally on the verge of tears, the owner’s family (I’m guessing; I’ve seen them there before) randomly doing everything else. And no apology from anyone for the awful experience.
Don’t think we’ll be doing that again.

This was the most disgusting sushi I have ever eaten

I really have disliked almost all the sushi I have tried at this place. Their monster roll actually tasted like some sort of cleaning solvent. All the other rolls were either not very fresh, or came in so much sauce it was hard to tell what it even was. Some of the too saucy rolls were OK such as the Godzilla roll, which was deep fried and then topped in a wisabi honey sauce. It was way too sweet but being deep fried cooked the fish and made it harder to notice the lack of freshness.
While I have yet to enjoy any sushi from this place. Their pad Thai surprisingly is quite edible (worse than the Thai places in town but at least better than their sushi), If dragged here (probably for their cool karaōke machine) go for cooked items.
For Karaōke, this place has a sketchy policy. You must order at least $ 20 worth of food per person (before tax and tip) to use the machine. This includes people who just show up at your table for a few minutes to sing have a beer and leave. They will tack anyone who visits your table to your party. So if 8 people reserve the machine, sit down and eat, but through out the night 12 additional people stopped by to say hi, sing a song, and then leave, you must pay $ 400 dollars plus tax and tip (which will be forced at 18%). This would work out to about $ 65 a person for those who reserved the machine and ate. A flat fee for the machine that could be waved for those who order a lot of food, would be more fair in my opinion

I would give this place 4 – 5 stars for its lunch bento boxes, and 1 star for its mediocre to terrible everything else, hence the 2-​star rating. All of their battered chicken is 95% batter, and 5% fat. Literally, none of it is actual good chicken, just fat from chicken. They use way too much sauce, and it gave me a headache. Service in the restaurant is not good at all. The waitress only came by to take our order (after ignoring us for 10 minutes), and we had to call out for her to give us the check after she ignored us through the whole meal. And when she did throw the check down on our table and run off without a word, the items hadn’t even been totaled up. We had to total everything ourselves. AND WE WERE THE ONLY ONES IN THE RESTAURANT. She had absolutely no excuse to ignore us. We’re not even grubby-​looking college students. When she did serve us, she was friendly, but it can’t be very emotionally taxing to be friendly for the 10 seconds you serve people. I can’t think of many times I’ve been more displeased with a restaurant experience. This is also one of the pricier Asian cuisines in Ithaca. Not at all worth it, unless you’re getting lunch bento boxes.

Ordered the shaumai appetizer (shrimp dumplings). Included were six bite-​size pieces and a generous container of soy sauce. Flavor was delicious and the dumplings tasted fresh.
Ordered the Out of Control sushi roll, and well… it was very under control. Yellowtail, spicy tuna, avocado, and scallions were in this roll. The flavor was average – not amazing, but certainly not bad at all.
I’ll take my NYC sushi any day.

We ate there last night. They were a little in the weeds with take-​out orders, but I didn’t feel like things took too long. We only got sushi, and were very pleased. Their tuna was great in every form, as were the other items, like surf clam. Our only complaint, and this is a purely personal one, is that their tempura is more of a beer batter, and we did not like the thickness. But we don’t like beer batter things, so if you do, you’ll probably really like their softshell crab roll, etc.
We will be back for sure. Prices were realistic, on par for most places in upstate ny. 4.50 for 2 pc al la carte sushi, $ 6-​$ 8 for rolls, and then $ 8-​$ 15 for the wild specialty rolls.

I really like this place. I used to take friends here often and I’ve ordered delivery several times.
The service is good and the sushi is fresh. This is probably my favorite sushi place in town, though Sushi O Sake is a very close second.

I just have high standards for what a Japanese restaurant should be okay? So I apologize. It’s not bad if you are looking for something filling. The Yakisoba we ordered was flavorful and more than enough for me and two little ones. The miso soup that came with it was bland.
My daughter ordered an Ikura roll (salmon roe) and it was nice for our server to ask what specifically she wanted in it, just in case it was prepared with wasabi or other spices that the little one didn’t care for. It came served in those stands especially made for rolls. But when my daughter decided to order a second roll, they served it flat on a saucer, even though they took away the stand. I thought that was kind of rude serving. A $ 5 roll deserves a $ 5 presentation.

Their tea is disappointing. I ordered a pot. It was bad enough that they served it with the tea bag and worse when I found it hasn’t seeped through yet. Like I said, I have high standards.
And FYI for singing aficionados: They have Karaōke rooms!

I went to Samurai recently because I’ve tried every other Japanese restaurant in Ithaca and have yet to find good noodles. I had never been in there — I suppose it seemed sketchy to me, mostly because of the very weird diner that was in that space before (before the other Japanese restaurant was there — but after Conkies). Don’t get me wrong — that diner had great pancakes. but it was pretty strange. but anyway.
I loved everything I ate at Samurai. I had a spicy crunchy scallop roll, a sweet potato roll, and a plate of yaki soba. The noodles were just what I was looking for — I scarfed them down so fast my husband was looking at me like I was nuts. Now I’m looking forward to trying their noodle soups — that will be the real test. Oh, and everything was so yummy I even got dessert — your usual tempura banana. Yum!
The people there were also super nice. They were very friendly and welcoming — and service was quick and attentive.
Everything about my meal here made me want to return. So don’t be turned off by their funny signs out front or their sake bomb promotions, and give this little place a try. Oh, and they deliver, and on Fridays and Saturdays they’re open until 1am! I can’t imagine wanting sushi after midnight, but at least I know that it’s still a possibility — just in case.