Recently I went to Akita Sushi and Hibachi in Woodbury for a birthday with a group 10 people. First they told us that they do not accept reservations for all you can eat. So we decided to arrive early for a table. In that time the server came over twice and the manager once to ask if our party was bound to arrive shortly or not. When our party arrived the server acted overbearing and pushy. Despite her attentiveness she stood in the corner like a vulture. We had no privacy. After we paid our bill (that was almost $400.00 (gratuity and tip included)) she asked us to leave because it was prom season and they needed the seating. This was within 5 minutes after she collected the signed receipt. I'm extremely disappointed that it has come to this. Needless to say I don't think we'll be going back.

I tried out this place for the first time back in November with my sisters. We opted for the dinner sushi buffet ($25/person and I think the lunch sushi buffet is $20/person) even though it was around lunch time because we wanted the most selection. Basically, we were each given the dinner sushi buffet menu in which we could order what ever we liked. After a round of our first order, the waiter took away all menus except for one for us to refer to as we order along. The green tea came and it was luke warm rather than hot and I like hot beverages to be HOT. However, this was corrected when the waiter brought our group a tea kettle filled with hot green tea a little later on. Our first order from the dinner buffet menu consisted of miso soup (you can’t have japanese food without miso soup!), sushi, sashimi, gyoza and assorted tempura. The miso soup was good. The sushi was average. Not the best I’ve ever had and that’s because it isn’t as fresh (and I’ve had A LOT of sushi so I was able to tell right away). The sashimi was average too. However, after reading all the complaints/negative remarks about this place all over the Internet, I was surprised to find the gyoza and tempura to be superb! Especially the large tempura shrimp (with the delicous dipping sauce) was very memorable. I’ve had a lot of gyoza from various places but I’ve never tasted GREAT gyoza until I tried the ones from here. We did order two or three more rounds of different dishes (definitely more gyoza and tempura shrimp) and wanted to try out more things but trust me, these foods fill you up fast and there is a 15% charge for wasting the food so go figure. Other highlight dishes of this restaurant is their beef udon noodles (great broth!) as well as the to-die-for green tea ice cream (if you like green tea as much as we do!). Other not-so-good dishes we tried were the eel fried rice (not worth eating when you could be eating something tastier) and the seafood udon noodles (for some reason this didn’t taste good like the beef udon noodles did). Overall, the service we received was pretty good. No one was rude to us and the waiter checked on us in good intervals. I was shocked when we walked out that we had stayed for almost 2 hours but we weren’t in a rush and the place wasn’t very busy that day. So, I’d say try out the restaurant if you want to and then form your own opinion. I’d go back because I liked the gyoza, tempura, green tea ice cream, beef udon noodles, etc. but I wouldn’t go back for the sushi alone because there are better places out there (or I could make my own since I know how to!).

I have been eating there about 2 or 3 times a month since december. The food is very good and it is the best value for sushi that I have found. The only bad thing is that sometimes the service can be very slow.