Mika Japanese Cuisine & Bar

Ok, so we bought a Groupon because my friend and I went shopping and we were very hungry and wanted to try something new. We get to the address but there is no «real sign» to identify the place. We go in and the restaurant is on the 2^nd floor and we notice it only has 2 tables with customers.
The waitress seemed confused when we asked her about the Groupon deal and she asked to speak to what appeared to be «the manager». We inquired about the fishbowl cocktail that was advertised on the Groupon and they both seemed confused. I asked «the manager» for the specific ingredients and he responded: «we just put a bunch of things in it, it’s kind of like a Long Island iced tea or rum punch». It was in fact neither, but it did have a decent level of alcohol. After discussing all the confusion of the menu, Groupon deal, and drinks, we finally placed our order. It took them exactly 52 minutes to bring our order, even though there were only 2 tables with customers who already had their food. My girlfriend liked the place but in all honesty, I don’t think I will return to this restaurant again.

Super good deal from groupon! Or just during their specials. All you can eat with generous sized portions and includes drinks. Sushi was fresh and the appetizers were good. Would definitely come back again

Used Groupon w a friend for dinner. Their sashimi platter and fishbowl cocktails are surprisingly quite good. The fishbowl cocktails are pretty and quite strong. Portion is maybe 2 – 3 shots of hard liquor in 1.25 beer glasses.
Groupon (Small Bites and 2 Fishbowl Cocktails) for 2 ppl) for $ 37.
Please don’t let the outer appearance fool you. It does look way shabby and shady from the outside, but when you start walking up the stairs, it gets better; then the whole restaurant actually looks quite nice when you walk inside. And the full length mirror in the unisex bathrooms are quite nice to do touch-​ups and make sure you’re looking good if you’re on a date.
Definitely a good spot for a date as well.
And had no problems with the staff at all. They were all very friendly.
P. S. They actually close @ 10:30pm instead of 11 like it is posted on Unilocal and the hostess on the phone tells you. And free easy street parking near and right in front at 9pm.

Stopped here for dinner with some friends after purchasing their all you can eat Groupon deal and 4 free beers for each diner.
This place is located on the second floor. The staff seems a bit disorganized. First I had wanted the Buddha beer and asked the hostess for it and she told me they are out of the Buddha beer. I tried again with our waiter and he was happily to given to us. Props to him but not the hostess. I could smell the attitude problem on her.
The food was subpar and not so fresh but the free beer was a good deal!

Rude staff. Mediocre food. The temputure of the main dining area was too hot. They charged an automatic 15% tip on top of the total after tax is included. They refused to let us take our leftovers to go. What kind of place doesn’t let you do that?
The dragon roll was the only decent thing we ordered, but it was also the most expensive roll at $ 22. Needless to say, I won’t be visiting here ever again.

I love this place but the food especially the sushi buffet with fresh ingredients … I recommend

Do not come here and get the sushi all you can eat. As expected they put so much rice on the sushi that after 6 pieces you are full. It’s a scam I tell you. If you like to eat rice only then come here and pay the $ 13.

After reading the reviews, I am glad we didn’t get the Groupon deal as the lunch price is $ 12.95. The service was actually not bad when we went and our server explained the menu to us and marked down how many came with each section (maybe because I’m Asian?) but the lady next to us did not receive proper explanation of the menu and the poor girl had 50 rolls to herself thinking it was 1 piece when she order 1 of 6 different rolls.
The sushi sucks. Miso soup was good but they don’t know how to roll sushi there as they were all falling apart. The fish doesn’t taste super fresh or great and they PACK it with rice so you get full faster. We order 1 (ONE) vegetable tempura but still somehow ended up with 2 broccoli tempura, 2 sweet potato, 2 eggplant, 1 taro… We also had one vegetarian friend with us and his rolls still had salmon stuck to it from them rolling ours… couldn’t even wipe down the mat for a vegetarian roll.
AVOID this place at all costs. You can get way better sushi elsewhere. I would not return again.

What a terrible experience.
We got the groupon deal and it was the exact same price at the restaurant without the deal. We should have checked Unilocal beforehand. With the groupon, reservation is required. My friend called the restaurant beforehand to see if it was ok to have 2 groupon deals for a party of 5 (1 person would just pay without the groupon). They confirmed that it was ok. So we showed up to our reservation at 1pm on a saturday. There was literally 3 other tables with people in the restaurant. When we got there the hostess said we could not sit together since we have 2 groupons. She refused to let us sit together. She wanted us to sit with our backs to each other, when there were separate empty tables next to each other. Since this whole process was annoying and the groupon didnt even provide any benefits, we wanted to just use the actual amount paid in the groupon– she said this was not allowed.
Food wise– it is ok. It’s not particularly good. It’s your average low quality sushi buffet. The rolls weren’t that good and a lot of them were falling apart. Each roll comes with 6 pieces, make sure you can finish everything because they will charge you face value if you cannot finish. The sushi had a lot of rice and they don’t serve just sashimi. The miso soup was a bowl of salt. It was painful finishing it. The shumai was good tho, no lie. And every time our food was brought over, the waiter didn’t say a single word– just placed our food down on the table. We were never checked up on.
Rules, rules, rules. There are so many rules for eating at this place. You can only order 3 things at a time per person. You can only stay for 1.5 hours for lunch buffet.

Customer service is… Well. Bad. If you get the all you can eat sushi you can only have sushi and nothing else.
Why the service sucks? They watch you like a hawk when you eat and encourage you to order more than you can handle. Luckily my friend and I finished all of it.
Also the fish does not taste fresh at all, it tasted overly salty. The rice overpowers the amount of fish in the sushi too. I felt kind ill after eating it.
This place seems like a gimmick for the all you can eat sushi. Don’t do it. You can have better sushi elsewhere.

First, they have a Groupon deal advertising AYCE sushi at the exact same price as listed on their menu. Therefore it is not even a deal at all. This is very deceiving.
Second, there are too many rules with this place. There is a time limit of 1.5 hours on the AYCE sushi lunch option, and you can only order three things at a time. Normally I would be fine with this, but they take about 25 minutes to make your order. This means for the average eater, you can only order six items off the menu before your time is up. This is hardly worth the money, as each roll only gives you about 1 – 6 pieces… most of which is packed with rice: a common tactic of low-​end sushi restaurants whose goal is to fill you up with rice rather than fish.
Third, they are not consistent with their sushi rolls. Attached is a picture of their house sushi roll, which shows a poor presentation of the sushi, and the sushi is falling apart! During our first round when we ordered the house sushi roll, it contained 6 pieces — two of which had salmon. The second round when we ordered the house sushi, the roll contained 5 pieces and only had one piece with salmon.
Fourth, the quality of sushi here is average. It is not terrible in terms of freshness but it is also not at all great. For a restaurant with so many restrictions, I expected more out of it but left feeling highly dissatisfied.
Overall, I would not recommend this place at all — your money is better off somewhere else.

Good groupon deal.
Terrible customer service.
0 communication.
English unfriendly.
ALL YOU CAN EAT SUSHI but holy cow how much rice they added on each roll was unnecessary and disappointing.
DONT ORDER ROLLS THEY GIVE YOU 6 PIECES TO MAKE YOU FULL
Only order sashimi, they come in 2 or 1 piece. So much irony of sushi in this place.

I went with a friend using the groupon that they had a while back, which was a great deal. I’m the kind of person who can eat a lot of sushi, so all-​you-​can-​eat deals tend to be the only way I feel like I can not spend a fortune and actually be satiated at the end of the meal.
The meal started out pretty well. We each got a beer and a little thing of sake, and about 3 rolls each. But from there, when we wanted to order more (as well as get a refill of water), it took us literally 20 minutes to flag down a waiter. And we also had to ask 3 times to get our water refilled. Ultimately we only ordered twice during our time there. And each time, they forgot to bring us something that we ordered as well. Not sure if it was just that night, but it was definitely off.

*My First and Forever My Last Visit” THIS PLACE SHOULD BE SHUTDOWN (IMO)!!!
First Impressions: Convenient location– Just about a block from the Canal St. Station. Entrance is located upstairs, decently spaced, dim lighted (more on the dark side). When seated our table was sticky/​uncleaned so from their that really set the pace for things to come.
Food: Overall the Sushi and even the appetizers tasted so bland and mushy.
It was definitely lacking favor, the rice on the majority of the rolls were gritty, the fried foods like the calamari, tempura were soggy, the grilled salmon was overcooked and stale, the smoked salmon was chewy like a laffy taffy.
Service: The waiter didn’t introduce himself and seemed like it was his first week on the job. He didn’t know the menu very well, basically told us its all their so to read it, our iced waters took forever to come, not to mentioned our refills. Overall he lacked attentiveness and movement when there was about 5 people to serve– That should sum it all.
Extras:
There is a condition that you MUST FINISH EVERYTHING that was ordered, «No rice leftover» and thats a direct quote from the Menu. I rarely ever waste foods but some of these special rolls were nauseously disgusting and I couldn’t stomach to finish. I’ve told the manager this but she could care less about the how a customer felt saying «Then you shouldn’t of ordered it if you can’t finish it but you must pay for every piece uneaten!».
So after a heated back and forth, we were getting no where with her so ended up have to pay for the reminder of the uneaten gross «Special» Rolls.
Oh Yeahhhhh like I knew it would taste horrendous and foul. Discourteous, Heinous, and Baffling is what she is and won’t disappoint with that.
To be clear I wasn’t full and was ready to eat more but not consuming any more of these radioactive rolls they call Special Rolls.
Maybe I should have forced down those rolls so as a reflex would have vomited all over the place to make my point what she insist I finish– so she’ll see what kind of food she is in charge of. But I am not a trouble maker or unethical so I didn’t proceed to do so.
There it goes, my complete RAW honest review. My fellow Unilocalers-​you should have gotten the picture and visuals that may come from dining here.
This place is a Sushi Restaurant but the absolute BOTTOM Grade Quality that I have ever tried in my life. Choose Kikoo Sushi instead– A Positive execution to this disaster of a Sushi Buffet restaurant.
#Not Sponsored nor affiliated.
#Overkill Review.

I used the AYCE groupon deal– including drinks (sake, beer and soda) which usually isn’t included for ~$ 22/​person. I came in on Thursday night and the place was empty– I was expecting there to be more people considering it was a pretty good groupon deal. The AYCE is a la cart style– you order from a menu list and I ended up not receiving half of the items I checked off from the sushi list, which was kind of annoying. Out of the pieces of sushi that we did receive, they all tasted decent, but had a bit too much rice.
I agree with the previous reviewers that the staff was pretty rude– not once did they come to check up on us and we had to call them over every time we wanted something (more food, drinks etc). The only time they came over was to tell us if we didn’t finish the rice we would get charged. Thanks.
Overall, this is your average AYCE sushi restaurant but with some rude staff.

Came here for the groupon deal. $ 45 so its the dinner buffet. They have a lot of special rolls so if you’re into that, this is a good place to go.
I was really hesitant about coming because of the previous reviews. Some were about the food but mostly staff issues. To be very honest, I’m not too concerned and critical when it comes to staff manners? As long as they give me my food and don’t contaminate it in any way, I’m pretty nice about it.
Now when I got to the restaurant, it was about 4:30PM on a Monday night so I wasn’t expecting it to be crowded and I was right. It was empty and there was only one other customer there. The lady immediately shot up and greeted us. I told her I had a reservation (you need to make one if you’re using groupon) and she sat us down wherever we wanted. She gave us the check off paper menu and a laminated menu with details of whats inside what roll. My friend and I checked off several things and the staff was super nice about it. They were helpful and pretty quick on their feet.
Now the food. It’s not the best, I’ll admit. There’s obviously BETTER choices but Mika isn’t HORRIBLE. Their food is edible and I quite liked it. The rice was a but too vinegar-​y for me but I’m not very picky. Their salmon was sooo good for an AYCE place. Maybe I was hungry and delusional but I really liked the salmon. What I don’t reccommend is the smoked salmon. There was this bitter after taste so I would stay away from it.
My friend ordered 5 pieces of eel nigiri (or unagi) and it never came so we told them and they asked is to order it again. No problem. I heard they had some issues about that. So we reordered the eel nigiris and I also placed an order of miso soup. Mu miso soup never came but it was okay since I was too full from the sushi.
You definetly want your moneys worth so come here when you’re super hungry! This wasn’t a bad experience for me and I didnt’t get sick so that’s a plus!
+ one of the waitors was completely immersed on his phone so he didnt notice us calling for him so it was quite awkward to kind of shout in such a quiet place. Also, he kept coming back to my table to ask us if we were done which kind of annoyed me? We had a few pieces left and I felt like they were on some sort of plate shortage so they wanted us to hurry up and finish? Mind you that there is a «2hr limit» and we were only there for an hour. This particular waitor was nice but lacking but we’re all not perfect.

Stopped by here for a causal drink. Happy hour 4−8pm, $ 5 cocktails so I thought sure why not?
Not a good decision. I ordered a whiskey sour and my friend got a sweet drink (forgot the name). Drinks barely had liquor in it, I drank my whiskey as if it was a fountain drink. Pretty disappointed, but I think I would stop by again for the groupon deal

We discovered this place thanks to a groupon deal, Stopped by on a Saturday & had no problem being seated.
Once seated we started with some Sapporo beer great beer have always enjoyed it.
Appetizers we tried the Beef Negimaki & Fried Calamari.
The beef was delicious great tasting, nice & juicy. Calamari was ok it was kind of over fried pieces were a bit hard.
The deal called for all you can eat sushi not a bad idea, so u would think !!
When we sat down we got a paper menu & were to told to check off what u wanted to eat, seemed that everything was included so good deal here to begin with.
In total we checked off 24 pieces of sushi to name a few we had from the special Maki House, New York, Rainbow, Salmon Dream, Sexy & Volcano Rolls all very good & probably too much since these are 3 pieces at a time.
Some of the other pieces included shrimp tempura, spicy crab, mango shrimp & tuna all very tasty .
Rock & roll, salmon, avocado & white tuna jalapeño … Also good.
So here is the kicker we of course had no idea how much we were ordering we figured it would be maybe two pieces for each choice. Upon ordering we did ask our waiter if it was too much? He just smiled & walked away not saying much he wasn’t the only one when we did try to talk they honestly didn’t seem like they understood English too well. Oh well not that big of a deal a bit of an inconvenience because we ended up ordering enough sushi for like 2 – 5 people no lie … Check out my pics !!
I mean it was insane when we got our appetizers & first two plates we figured hey this is not bad we thought that was it. then the last platter came & it was like dammm! Needles to say there was no chance in hell we were going to finish all that & of course we felt terrible about having to waste food, we asked about taking it to go first the waiter say no we can’t then He comes back & says if we want to take that they would have to charge a little extra ok no biggie how much I ask? He didn’t know. So I said please find out? In the end they charged us $ 10 dollars for the extra sushi, completely worth it took it home & 3 more people ate from it.
A bit of a warning here, do not order appetizers if all u want to eat is sushi as for the sushi itself it is a lot choose carefully.
as far as the restaurant goes simple décor nothing crazy, service was not bad food came out a bit too quick makes it hard to really enjoy after the first couple of pieces of sushi it all pretty much tasted the same.
over all this was a decent find, we enjoyed our meal.

Came here with some friends for a social meeting over drinks. It was a little difficult to find because it required climbing up stairs but it’s on a prime location in Chinatown.
Highly recommended.
The Bartenders are extremely friendly and even with my colleague’s special requests they were nice enough to make it as ordered.
Service is always a huge factor for me. If your looking for a private spot to host small events or gatherings Mika is the place to go.
Next time I will come back for the karaōke room.

This restaurant has decent décor, but somehow you don’t feel relaxing at all! It’s has weird radio music as background, and the service was slow. Every single sushi roll contains a lot of rice and crunchy filling.
It is basically fast food. I wouldn’t bother to come again.