Mikaku Japanese Cuisine

Hidden gem for sure! This place treats you like royalty! They never forget a name or a face. They have opened their doors (early) for myself and my friends plenty of times. I have never in my life come across a restaurant owner who is so personal, so caring and so thoughtful in my life. Arthur and Dorothy are what makes this place the best around!

Was looking for sushi for lunch, turns out it’s a lot harder to find a restaurant open for lunch on a Monday than we had thought. Came here as an alternative to our first location which was closed and we were pleasantly surprised! The place was empty, but they had only opened 30 minutes prior, so that wasn’t a red flag for us.
I didn’t find it to be pricey as others have suggested, and I thought the sushi was pretty well packed with more than just rice. Best of all, the sushi chef was amazing. He took the time to offer some recommendations and even pointed out a roll that was available by request but not yet on their menu. We got the mermaid roll along with a bunch of apps and I don’t have a single complaint. We also got their ginger ice cream for dessert, which was rich and creamy — a must try! Will definitely be back!

Worst Sushi ever!!! I luv sushi and i wanted to try Mikaku one night… I ordered a lobster salad as well… My lobster salad had a small piece of lobster shell in the salad after it was mixed… The sushi was sub par… There are so many better places in worcester for sushi… The hostess here was extremely rude and could not be bothered to help me out when i went in (mind you the place was dead)
The only reason i am giving this place two stars is because when i called back to complain which i never do i usually just deal with it but i felt like the owner/​manager should know that if it was another person that this happened to they may not take it as easy as i did… She said sorry multiple times and said when i go back she will make me another one on the house.
I won’t ever go back only because the wonderfully lazy hostess turned me completely off.

In my 3 decades years of life, I have NEVER come across a more rude person in my life. Whoever works the front door here (seemed like an owner to be honest) was the rudest person I have ever met. My friend and I were going to get dinner there and I had to use the restroom when we got in. She told me I could not use their restroom until we were seated and had an order placed! I was literally in shock. How someone could run a business this way and disrespect their customers is beyond me. Needless to say, we walked out and went to Osaka and were treated SO much better than we were here. I literally could not wish this place worst luck and I hope they go out of business and the woman owner gets karma for treating people like she did. DO NOT SUPPORT THIS BUSINESS!

A decent alternative to waiting in line a Yama Zakura. The food isn’t as innovative, but the fish is fresh and the food is well portioned. I was pleasantly surprised by the tempura. It was really well done and had a nice crunch. All the rolls we tried were well made. I don’t care for mayo and quite a few had mayo in them, so we were a bit limited. The staff is friendly and attentive and the chef is engaging and friendly. Prices are on the high side.

The sushi here was really good. As others have said, it’s a bit pricey, but I expect that for good sushi. The service was spotty, so I wouldn’t come here if you’re looking to impress on a first date. That said, I enjoyed a nice dinner here with friends. They were accommodating to a food restriction request and the sushi special, the BLT roll was delicious.

Excellent sushi! Not crowded with knowledgeable and friendly staff. The night we went it was a little short staffed but the waitress was very friendly.
Try the «BLT» (bacon, lobster, tuna) maki roll if they have it; it is absolutely awesome. The sushi chef was very nice and very accommodating.

Mikaku is a great restaurant with extremely friendly owners. Their fish is very fresh!!! Arthur, the own and sushi chef makes great rolls and is great to talk to while sitting at the bar. No complaints at all

Food was OK, sushi wasn’t greatest I’ve had. Service wasn’t that great. My card got billed twice. They said its standard procedure and its a fake charge, but regardless the money was taken out of my bank twice. Very unhappy. They were very unhelpful.

Exorbitant prices for so-​so food, with offensively cheap chop sticks, come on man!
One should beware of empty places, i guess, at least it’s reasonably quiet here…

I am reading these good reviews and I am super confused. For the price it was subpar to the sushi that you can get at the grocery store. The rolls were pretty much all rice, super thin and with the smallest amount of fish I think you would need to legally call it sushi. We had the toro, which I grant you is hard to find but I am pretty sure the 3 thin slaps were previously frozen. The vegetable tempura appetizers which took almost 30 mins to get to us and was room temperature which was the same temperature as the soup that we had to remind the waitress we ordered. The check said no-​refunds on take out orders on the bottom, as we where eating there I was tempted to ask for a refund on my 100 dollar check.

Owner was trained in Japan and takes no short cuts. Come here where there is no wait, good prices and great food. The black rice Sushi is off the hook as well as the green tea tiramisu. He even has some super hard to find Japanese whiskey.

Great sushi. Great service.
I have spent some time in NE and this is truly my favorite sushi place from Boston to Worcester.
The amazing service comes from
Dorothy and Arthur, the Japanese Couple who owns it. They both quite attentive and definitely know their food.
Arthur will sit you down at the sushi bar explain the differences between sake qualities.
And he will also cater to your palate, desires, and wishes. Get the black rice as your rice of choice and then let him pick the fish for you.
This may not be the most atmosphere exciting place in the town but the quality of fish and quality of food is great!

we met are good friends there for dinner
at their suggestion and it did not disappoint ~ very friendly staff .
we ordered a wide variety of sushi and at the chefs choice we tried some wonderful
new things excellent selection of sakis as well .
the really neat thing about Mikaku is that they source there sushi fresh from all around
the world and it’s shipped in overnight to ensure he is able to serve only the Best !
definitely a hidden gem, cant wait to go back
Barry B

I’m an out-​of-​towner & came because a patron while dining at ‘the other Japanese’ restaurant recommended Mikaku for Traditional Japanese fare. Mikaku offered excellent Japanese specialties = my favorite cuisine. I’ve been to Japan 3x for weeks at a time. The miso soup was perfectly prepared. Very generous serving of seaweed salad. Rainbow roll & tuna avocado roll with black rice were beautiful. Fish was delicately sliced beautifully thin & with clean flavors that only the freshest ingredients offer. Owner introduced himself as Takako «Arthur» & his lovely wife, Dorothy, who provided excellent service & hospitality. They were out of green tea ice cream, but the ginger suggestion was rich & creamy. Restraint here in authentic Japanese style. Glad I went ~ Try it!

Japanese cuisine served with strong knowledge and intelligence. The owners, husband & wife, put lots of pride into their restaurant and give their guests lots of attention. The food was great, very authentic, with lots of care over ensuring high-​quality ingredients.
Twice, we had the Bento Lunch Sushi, with seaweed salad. The last time we were there, the chef /​owner spent time with us (because we were interested), told us stories about his home in Japan (because we were sharing our stories too), and educated us on some of the health practices of his family and the ingredients he puts into his cooking.
My wife and I have been there twice for lunch, and will be back many times in the future.

I should probably stop comparing New York sushi to the small town of Northborough sushi but I can’t help it. Nothing feels worse than being downgraded.
The presentation of all the dishes and the quality of the sushi/​sashimi is great but the taste of the sushi is on the lower side ESPECIALLY since the prices are so steep. I remember we had ordered some roll with spicy mayo but instead of having the spicy mayo come inside the roll as expected it came outside of it. It just sat there lethargically spelling out the word Mikaku. Sad, now I must take an extra step to ruin this presentation by slathering my expensive roll in a meager portion of lethargic mayo.
It doesn’t stop there. I came here for lunch and my friend and I were literally the only two customers in the restaurant. You’d expect the service to be on point but it wasn’t. It took awhile for the waiter to come by and take my card and even more time for him to come back with it.
I don’t think I’ll be coming back here anytime soon and if I do, I’m not ordering the sushi.

My initial move was to give Mikaku 2 stars because the food is actually great — very fresh sushi and delicious cocktails — but then I remembered how overpriced it is and decided to drop the second star.
Mikaku is right next to my house so it’s truly a shame that I won’t be going back — I went on a Friday night with two girlfriends. Ten minutes after we were seated, the waitress came over and asked us what we’d like to start with (water and a drink menu — she didn’t provide one with the regular menus!). At least another ten minutes later we got the waters, and we put our drink orders in. The bonzai cocktail is amazing — almost cider-​y, very drinkable.
Unfortunately, 15 – 20 minutes later, our drinks arrived but from a DIFFERENT waiter so we couldn’t put our food orders in despite the fact we’d been there for almost an hour. It had to have been an additional ten minutes before our waitress came back to take our order. Meanwhile, we could see she was wandering around and we were her only table! Awful service…
We put in our orders, and about a half hour later they came to the table. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t tuna maki raw? Shouldn’t take THAT long to prepare… makes me wonder how long it was sitting out (yuck)! The waitress NEVER offered to refill our waters (wasabi, hello!?) or bring us a second round of drinks, even though all of our glasses were empty.
As far as flavor, the food was good. Highly recommend the tiger eye and the tuna roll if you wind up here. Overall, I just can’t recommend Mikaku. For $ 30 for two SIMPLE rolls and one drink (by the way — the maki does not include any soup or salad!), I want better service. Plain and simple! Even those who were waiting for takeout had to wait for 10 – 20 minutes, and this was a Friday night with no more than 4 tables occupied the whole time we were there and at least 6 employees working. I’ll be trying other local sushi places rather than coming back.

This place has great sushi and a really nice owner. I went for lunch and the place was almost empty which was surprising since it was really enjoyable.
I’ll start at the beginning. I ordered the Sashimi Bento box. Black tea served with lunch as soon as I sat down. The miso soup came with the meal and was delicious which shouldn’t be hard but a lo of places get it wrong. The bento box was came with 9 pieces of great fish (3 salmon, 3 tuna and 3 white fish) along with ginger salad, rice and 2 pieces of California roll. It was just the right size and wasn’t overly large.
I was the only person in the place so the owner came over and started talking to me. I commented that my food was good and he proceeded to explain to me how he orders all of his fish special and uses different vendors for most of the fish species with most coming from Japan except the salmon which came from Scotland I think. He explained to me how the different water that each species was caught in made a big difference in taste and quality (which showed). He then went on to explain that they have started using black rice which I have never heard of in certain rolls which is a step up in nutrition from brown and used to be reserved only for royalty.
I wish I didn’t like an hour from this place.

We decided last minute to go out to dinner on valentine’s day, and of course all the restaurants in town were booked, except Mikaku, normally this is bad sign number one. We showed up for our appointed time, and the place was empty, but I ignored the bad feeling creeping in as I was too hungry and didn’t want to cook. I am glad my hunger won over my typical warning signs.
We were seated, and served some nice hot tea while we went over the menu, which, had plenty of sushi selections, a little light on the entrees but a nice menu. I started with a glass of the Gekkeikan Plum
which I prefer cold. It was light and sweet with a nice crisp flavor.
We started with the the spicy yellow tail and it was very good, nice and fresh and the spicy mayo had just the right amount of bite for me. Next we had the Philly roll, which was very nice. Cool smoked salmon and cream cheese, very nice after the spicy roll prior.
For dinner we each had Udon, myself the beef and the missus the shrimp. Both were wonderful. The beef tender with big fat noodles and crisp veggies, and a good flavor. Same for the shrimp, a good amount of large shrimp cooked perfectly and crisp veggies. The biggest disappointment was the Miso soup. It tasted like hot water and tofu, but that was no large deal to either of us.
We passed on dessert so I can’t tell you about that. Service was friendly, knowledgeable and prompt. I am slowly getting over my restaurant in a strip mall prejudice. Prices I thought were fair, maybe high for the area, but mom always said, «son never buy discount sushi» so there you have it.
I will definitely be back, I hope more people discover this jewel.