Sakura Bana

Sakura Bana was an amazing experience. The Miso was the best I’ve had anywhere including in Japan. The Orange Ginger salad dressing was sublime. I had the Yakisoba. It wasn’t the same as I had on Okinawa but it was darned close. the Sushi is great and half the price of anywhere else in the area. The ambiance is very comfortable. We have our go to for Japanese. Thanks Tony!

the vibe here is old school Japanese with cool semi-​private eating areas. The sushi is really fresh (Best in town). friendly staff. forget all those other Trendy sushi places in town.

What a great lunch place. Love the options for a quick lunch.
Service is fabulous and starts with a hot moist towel.(how cool is that)
I always get the largest combo I can. Miso soup, Salad with carrot dressing. steamed rice. 5 pieces of sushi, chicken teriyaki, a tempura mushroom, onion and carrot, 2 tempura shrimp. and an orange. Omg is everything great.
A must try :)

Sakura Bana is a sushi gem in Omaha!
This is the very best sushi I have found in the city. The rolls are traditional, delightfully flavorful, high quality and averagely priced. It’s on par with what I’ve tasted in Florida when I lived there for 12 years. They are that good!
If you’re thinking about going, just head over and experience a fabulous sushi meal!

We are regular visitors to Omaha and have eaten here s handful of times. The food and service have been great! For a land-​locked location the sushi is above average. The cooked items have all been tasty and traditionally prepared. Definitely a family favorite!

Great sushi but the service is absolutely horrible!!! I also think the prices are high for what you get. The fish is very fresh and they have some fun rolls. Only giving 2 stars because I am really mad about waiting an hour to even get our sushi and they didn’t even apologize for it!!! Would rather go to a sushi place with better service than this place!!!

When I go to Omaha which is like four or five times a year. I usually make Sakurabana as one of the stops for meal.
I was disappointed about lack of professionalism when I rushed from the airport and saw the closed sign at 8:45pm Tuesday night.
The listed hours is open until 9 pm.
There was a guy counting the till from the day and told me everyone has gone home.
No remaining customer, no one behind the sushi counter.
I swung around the corner and had noodles at the Noodles Company.
Sakurabana, you are the remaining authentic Japanese restaurant in Omaha.
Please do well to survive and keep the hours you claim to be open.

This place was simply ok. My coworkers and I (¾ asian) came here for dinner during a business trip to Omaha. For most of our meals we had been going to American restaurants, so we decided to try something different for our last week. Sakura Bana is located in one of the various strip malls in Omaha and doesn’t look like much from the outside. The interior is a pretty typical, American sushi, wood palette, kind of thing you’d come to expect. I did like the pens with appetizers and cartoons on them.
As for the food, we got a whole variety of sushi, all of which came together on a neat wooden boat. I personally got the new mexico roll, which tasted a whole lot like an actual burrito. I wouldn’t say it was delicious, but it was certainly interesting. As for the other rolls, I was disappointed. Nothing about them was special or notable. They were just normal sushi rolls.
For dessert we got mochi and the tempura ice cream, all of which were good. The tempura ice cream in particular was really large, so I’d recommend splitting that.
Overall, this place is alright considering it’s in Omaha and that there aren’t exactly hundreds of Asian restaurants around.

This place was mediocre at best. I did not begin to have sushi until later in life when I was in Japan and figured I had to actually try it since I was there. Unfortunately, that seems to have tainted my sushi taste buds.
We ordered a huge variety of sushi. Everyone had a little bit of each, I am not sure which ones we ordered, the server was pretty unsure too which was which. It did come out on a boat which I guess was a nice touch, however, the ones that I ordered were stuck amidship and when the ship went down they went down with it…

Yes, this place went through a rough patch like most small businesses do. It didn’t phase me a bit. Growing up in Los Angeles with a huge selection of restaurants to eat at, usually the best places to go were the ones that recovered and came back even better. That’s what Sakura Bana did and everything is not just fine, but also improved. I lived in Japan for 4 years and in my book, this is the only location in Douglas & Sarpy county that comes the closest to being there. I sampled everybody else around here and they were not comparable to this establishment with their authenticity of traditional dishes and sushi. I am definitely a fan of this place and will continue to bring my family here at least once a month. Now with that said, can we increase the menu with Tokyo Ramen, Honshu & Okinawa Soba and some dishes from Nagano please?

Good service, good atmosphere, terrible food. I really wanted to like it, but to no avail. We ordered the soba, King roll, and three types of sashimi.
Basically the broth is flavored soy sauce. The sushi was like tuna from a can. And the sashimi was so bad I have no words.
At least their hot green tea was decent.

Best Sushi In Omaha by far. I constantly search but nowhere else compares. Best pickled ginger I’ve ever had.
I highly recommend the spider and Nebraska rolls.

Great sushi, very friendly and helpful staff! Overall fantastic place highly recommend!

Great food and a lot of options for vegetarians… Great service also.

It is with GREAT sadness that I am writing this. I truly never believed I would have to write a bad review about my favorite restaurant.
As you may or may not know Sakura Bana was recently closed by the health department for failing their inspection. This is when things started to make sense for me.
Let me start by saying I have eaten here for 10 years (even prior to moving buildings) and haven’t had any issues until recently. For the past couple months my husband and I were noticing dried food pieces in our water glasses or plates. We would send them back and they would just bring us another glass like nothing was wrong. I was telling my husband not to be paranoid it happens all the time probably. Having worked in a busy restaurant I can tell you the dish washers don’t always get everything. Okay we let this slide. I would order items containing chicken, like yakitori and it would not be cooked all the way through. I started to tell them to overcook it because I was «paranoid», I thought maybe it was just me. Then we started to order the dream rolls and noticed some of them were premade sitting around waiting for someone to order. If you sit at the sushi bar you will notice they get 4 slices out of the dream rolls and if you only order an order (2pieces) they save the other two. This wouldn’t be an issue if they were being sold quickly but a couple times I’ve ordered the fantasy roll, containing raw tuna, and it was oxidizing and it tasted not good. Not wanting to cause conflict I discarded them or gave them to my husband to eat.
However, several weeks back I ate there and became pretty sick. I tried to convince myself that it was the Starbucks I had and not my sushi, like please all that is good don’t take away my favorite place. (I have a strict policy of not eating somewhere that makes me sick ever again). We ate there a couple times after and have the above mentioned issues.
HOWEVER, 1 week ago they were shut down by the health department. I asked them on Facebook why and they stated «We were closed to repair portions of the restaurant and clean around areas of recent water leaking from an AC unit on our roof. «Obviously dodging the fact they did not close voluntarily. Well WOWT news did a report on them and here are the findings. In addition to what it was the copy of the paper on TV showed something having to do with improper handling of chicken. & something else I wasn’t able to read quick enough.
«THE RESTAURANT STACKED UP 30 VIOLATIONS
13 OF THOSE ARE CRITICAL.
EMPLOYEES WEREN’T WASHING HANDS BETWEEN TASKS
THEY WERE TOLD TO NOT WIPE KNIVES ON CLOTHS — AFTER CUTTING RAW FISH.
MOLD WAS FOUND IN THE ICE MACHINE AND SANITIZER WAS TOO WEAK IN THE DISH MACHINE
THE RESTAURANT COULDN’T PROVIDE DOCUMENTATION THAT RAW FISH FOR SUSHI WAS PROPERLY FROZEN.
AND FOOD WAS STORED ON THE FLOOR IN THE COOLER — WHEN IT SHOULD BE ON A SHELF TO KEEP PESTS FROM GETTING TO IT.
THE RESTAURANT WAS FORCED TO CLOSE.
INSPECTORS DID RETURN A WEEK LATER — NOTICED AN IMPROVEMENT — AND ALLOWED IT TO REOPEN.»
This is disgusting and shameful in my mind and I will not be returning to Sakura Bana to eat. Having spent a huge sum eating there this year this greatly saddens me. I guess I was wrong to hold them to higher standards, you would think the most popular sushi place in Omaha would have good health standards? I guess not.
At the end of the day, I doubt mine or my family’s opinions matter.
The gentlemen who make the sushi are sweeties and MOST of the servers (not all of them) are sweet also but I cannot bring myself to eat here any longer. Goodbye my favorite restaurant =(

Didn’t find anything amazing about this place. A couple girlfriends and I ordered an abundance of sushi and it was good, but nothing that made me go «wow!» I will say that there deep fried avocado roll was really tasty and came with a sauce which everyone liked. I’d come back as the prices were decent.

I never thought I’d find a restaurant in Omaha that is as authentically Japanese as this place! Of course they have sushi but it’s actually good! I love takoyaki and haven’t had anything decent since leaving Japan and these were amazing!
If you’re looking for authentic Japanese food, this is it!

Amazing! They offer such a wide variety of items on the menu, not just a California roll with a different topping. The staff is extremely friendly as well. I wouldn’t say this place is cheap or expensive but priced accurately for the quality of the cuisine.
I did only get take out this visit but I do look forward to a sit down dinner experience very soon.
The ambiance is very cute, on a Thursday night there were a lot of families and a lot of couples enjoying their meal.

I only go to 3 Japanese restaurants in Omaha and this is one of them. I’ve been going here when they were still called Sushi Ichiban. Located on 74^th and Dodge, it’s easy to spot. This is where I first fell in love with sushi.
The sushi chefs here are Japanese and some of the servers too. Excellent service all the time. Although sometimes, there could be a wait but it’s all good. They’re friendly, pleasant and always with a smile on their face.
The rolls and sashimi are great. Fresh fish. I love their lunch/​dinner combinations too — you get an entrée, sushi, rice, salad and soup for less then $ 10 for lunch and about $ 16 for dinner. They have a special dinner combo for less than $ 30 — 2 appetizers, 1 entrée and dessert.
They have a jellyfish appetizer and one of my favorites, takoyaki (battered balls of octopus) ! Their tofu steak is amazing… nice and garlicky. Negimayaki (scallions wrapped in thinly sliced beef in teriyaki sauce) is delicious. Shrimp tempura, udon and katsudon are fantastic.
But my absolute favorite dish here is the beef teriyaki. The BEST I’ve had anywhere (yes, even better than the ones I’ve had in Japan). Sliced tender beef cooked medium rare. It comes on a sizzling plate with carrots and broccoli. The teriyaki sauce isn’t the dominant flavor and you can actually enjoy the taste of meat.
I simply love this place. One of my favorite restaurants in Omaha.

After many great meals here, I have to say this place is a tasty spot in a central location in Omaha. Many family get togethers (mostly consisting of «the cousins» but this time, one of my uncles) center around eating and schmoozing, and sushi and us just go so well together.
Our fabulous server was Teriko (forgive my spelling). We ordered a whole lot of things, but new to us included the ceviche, which ended up being salmon, yellowtail, tuna, and red snapper sliced sashimi style in our choice of spicy lime or spicy ponzu, with jalepeno slices, daikon, and kaiware sprouts. My brother and I also split the chirashi, a classic here with many assorted items (tamago, maguro, hamachi, nama sake, saba, masago, kanpyo, tako, tai, etc). The rest of the group ordered rolls.
We had negi toro (nice and fatty!), the yellowtail special (avocado and smelt roe), Hawaiian (tuna and mango), cancun (yellowtail, jalepeno, avocado, cilantro), rainbow, and one of the eel rolls. Plenty to eat, lots of options, and some pretty great combinations, especially considering I am not much of a rolls person.
The menu has lots of ways to go — ordering individually, sushi and sashimi combos, and even hand roll combos. Always a great time with a pretty presentation, this is a solid sushi bet for Omaha.