Saga

My first and only visit to this place for a late dinner was… not good.
I don’t know. There’s a lot of ways I could spin it or explain myself. But it just didn’t taste good. I ordered the beef phở, and it tasted something like phở. Approximately. It was close enough that it kinda satisfied my craving for it.
Thing is, I’ve had food catered from Saga before, and was pretty impressed. The dishes were delicious and quite inventive. So maybe I expected more going to eat there.
But the food didn’t taste better in the restaurant. In fact, I wish I just ordered what I normally eat catered.
The service wasn’t great and the shape/​seating of the restaurant made for weird ambience. Not big points especially late at night in an Asian restaurant where neither of those traits are highly valued, but when you already kinda get a bad vibe about a place these foibles tend to get intensified.

Delivery took exactly 1 hour and 27 minutes. Is it even worth it to wait so long? Come on– I ordered a miso soup and a dragon roll… how long could that possibly take? By the way, the avocado in my roll was browning and the miso was luke warm. I have ordered from here before and even though it was a 45 min. wait, the food was decent. This time — horrible! Never again!

I thought that this place was called Saga (Grill) but whatever.
We order takeout from here regularly on Grub Hub. It’s a major «ehhhh.»
The food is decent, delivery always takes a little bit more than an hour and the menu selection usually leaves me craving more (no dumplings? no steamed broccoli side?).
On our latest takeout adventure, we got the Shrimp Tempura Roll, the roll combo and chia gio. The meal also came with a delicious little cucumber salad and some miso soup.
Chia gio are like deep fried spring rolls. These things were way too greasy and salty, so I could only stomach one. We ended up throwing half of them away. Skip them.
The shrimp tempura roll was pretty tasty… and I loved that little cucumber salad. Okay, so for my roll combo, I ordered the salmon roll, New York roll and Alaska Roll. I’m pretty sure what they made for me was the salmon roll and then two Cali rolls… okay…I didn’t even bother complaining.
Again, this is a Grub Hub standby. So if you’re really feening sushi, then why not?

Saga closed yesterday I believe… Saw them moving stuff including their furniture and empty barrels of MSG (nasty) filled with random crap. Asked a worker if they were closing and in friendly broken English he seemed to say they were moving to a diff location on amsterdam in the 90s. So perhaps they will be found elsewhere… I’m sad to see them leave the neighborhood.

Saga has updated their menu, combining Vietnamese and Japanese choices into one place. Once again ordered takeout and was pleased with the food. Do not prepare to have your mind blown, but come away knowing that you didn’t get ripped off or eat poorly. It remains on my order in rotation.

Not too expensive, and they have some great combo deals. The delivery is pretty long, but they’re food is good. I get sushi from here when I am too lazy to go out the house and have enjoyed it every time.
If you’re not in the mood for going out, but you want a sushi fix then Saga (Grill) is the place to order…
it’s a great
choice.

This is a cheap Japanese and Vietnamese restaurant run by Chinese.
Do not order sushi here. A friend and I ate sushi here in January 2010, and we both were painfully ill within 12 hours (and visiting doctors within 18 hours). It was certainly food poisoning because eating at Saga was our only shared environmental factor (I had been out of town for three weeks). [0 stars]
I’m still willing to eat the cooked food here. The phở is reasonable, despite their consistent mispronunciation of its name, though it contains too much water and not enough cilantro. The curry ga isn’t bad. The low prices make the food more palatable. [3 stars]
If you live more than four blocks away, you have better options for Asian cuisine.

This place has great lunch specials and is consistently delicious! I highly recommend the bento boxes for lunch!

So the first time I went here, I was looking for a good phở place. I was sorely disappointed with their phở. The noodles, meat, veggies and everything is pretty par for the course for phở, but the broth was way off. Luckily, we had decided to get a sushi roll with dinner. They were exquisite.
The sushi was really the only reason my wife and I ever went back. We went back for lunch and were really glad that we did. We got another few rolls and some bento boxes. My wife got a teriyaki chicken and I got a chicken curry. Both were good, but mine was clearly superior.
So, to recap, bento boxes and sushi good, phở bad… And the entrance kinda really smells like fish.

I liked the Japanese food better than the Viet food when they used to serve it.
–Phở was nothing special, but I’m Viet, so I get cravings and I’m too lazy to head downtown to get a more decent bowl
–Bun was not that great, but again, I am lazy.
Would I eat here again if I didn’t live a block away? Hells no, but I’m a poor grad student that needs to get my craving fixes fast in order to start cracking at those papers again.

TIME: Weekday nights, after class when I have too much homework
PLACE: Nothing special, but clean and cute.
FOOD: Vietnamese food now only! Phở is pretty good
TIPS:
Call Ahead and get pick up– it’s usually ready in 5 – 10 minutes
The Fried Rice is huge and inexpensive — around $ 8.
Delivery takes longer than it should because it seems like the wait for a few orders to pile up and then deliver them all at once.
Menu is on a menupage website.

Don’t get the Phở here. It tastes like paper and water. What the heck was I eating?! Perhaps their other dishes are a bit better, but wow this place needs a lesson or two on how to make Vietnamese noodles. Just sayin.

Stopped by for lunch today and ordered the lunch special. Disappointed that it wasn’t very special. Simply put, the food was mediocre at best. Service was fairly quick and efficient but the waitresses were not particularly friendly.
I ordered the vegetable tempura bento box. Tempura was the highlight of the meal, decent, but the california rolls I received in the bento box tasted like the kind you find at an all you can eat buffet. The dumplings/​potstickers or whatever I received were soggy but okay tasting.
Overall, not a restaurant I’d recommend, I’m sure you can find better.

The broth of the phở is too diluted, and gave us only a little meat. Not a lot of flavor.
I’ve had much better for cheaper.

I’ve been coming here for their lunch specials for awhile — mainly for the la sa tom and la sa ga, which are noodles with shrimp or chicken in a mellow coconut milk curry broth. They’re great on a cold day and very filling. The noodle soups come with fresh basil, a few wedges of lemon, and bean sprouts.
But now, this place has transitioned to be one of my favorite sushi places in the city — because it’s cheap, fresh, and well portioned. They don’t skimp on the fresh fish. Sushi dinner for two was $ 36 — soup or salad for both, 18 pieces of beautiful nigri, a tuna roll, and a tasty yam yam roll (hamachi and crunchies inside, and loads of spicy tuna on top). Plus free green tea!
I don’t come here for a comprehensive dining out experience, but it’s a great place for some cheap and really solid food.

I work nearby so I have little choice but to include saga in my lunch rotation. I think the rest of the reviews have nailed it pretty well: the interior is dingy and the food is not outstanding. But personally, I find the staff friendly and the prices super cheap so I probably end up there twice a month. I really can’t reiterate enough how terrible the food options are in morningside heights in general but if you are stuck near CU looking for somewhere different to get lunch the Chicken Bun Xao is a big noodly beast that is reasonably tasty and utterly filling for $ 6.50. I also like to order the Curry with Chicken ($ 6.50) and ask for NO ONIONS. If you let them put onions in, then you will basically get a little bit of chicken, an odd vegetable here or there, and 2 lbs of onions. If you ask for no onions they actually include a reasonable amount of good vegetables and some tofu.
Dammit, when am I going to graduate and escape this culinary wasteland.

Usually Saga is an OK place to rely upon for delivery. I’ve only tried the Vietnamese food from Saga once, and it was extremely disappointing. However, although the sushi has never been mind-​blowing, it has always been adequate, and the delivery guys are usually friendly and fast. The above information is why I have given two stars instead of one.
They just weren’t on top of things today… I ordered a three roll combo and a few other small appetizers. It took fifty-​two minutes (I counted.) for the order to arrive. Usually, it takes about twenty minutes. The avocado in one of my rolls was actually hard and chewy. Probably not ripe enough. The rice was gummy and cold, and I found a piece of plastic in my spicy tuna roll. The tuna in my tuna avocado roll did not look fresh, and had a slimy texture. The only thing about my meal that was the quality I expected was the little side salad with ginger dressing. (Now that is sad.)
Unless anyone informs me of another sushi/​delivery place in harlem, I will probably be doomed to order from Saga again. Let’s hope that today was just a mess-​up and that it won’t continue to be this bad!

My bf and I have been on the hunt for good Phở here in the city, to no avail. We definitely got spoiled at Mai Lee in St. Louis. Wow, what aromatic and flavorful phở. but I digress.
The phở bo here is passable. It’s one of the better ones we’ve found, although a little bland in the flavor department. We like to add Sriracha and tons of basil (they’re stingy on the basil and you have to request the sriracha) to make it better. All in all, though, it’s not greasy and it does the trick. The shrimp summer rolls here are fresh and abundant. I can’t say enough good things about the hoisin/​peanut sauce they come with. Mmmmm.
I recently had their sushi and it was very fresh. I actually have had both the sushi and the phở delivered all the way to Washington Heights and it arrives surprisingly fast and as if it had just been prepared a minute beforehand. Impressive! I can’t get the corner sushi place to give me anything close to this.
Oh, and just because there’s a language barrier, that’s no reason to shun a place. Unilocalers can be quite elitist snobs, huh? It took them a few tries to get my address down when I first ordered, but the second time was a breeze. They had my info in the computer, including my credit card, so it was fast and efficient. Overall, fast and fresh delivery of tasty food gets an A in my book!

I need to vent.
I work in a large university, and we patronize Saga because the food is consistently good and the delivery workers bring the food to rooms inside of the university, i.e. they don’t make us come down to the front desk to get our food. Tonight, I worked late. I ordered from Saga specifically so I wouldn’t have to leave my desk. The delivery person opens the door to my office, throws the bag of food on my desk and says, «What, you can’t come downstairs when I call?»
… oh no you did NOT just say that to me!
Holding it in, I politely asked him if I should come downstairs from now on to pick up the food. He rolled his eyes, shoved the receipt in my face to sign, muttered something under his breath with the flavor of a «f%$& you» and hurried out the door. Fair enough, you’ve got a busy night. Don’t take it out on me! I’d rather walk down to the front desk to get my food than deal with downright rude delivery staff. Next time, I will; I won’t be ordering from here again.

Woot woot! More great delivery in Harlem!
To start off I must mention that their lunch specials go until 4pm every day!
I’ve had the grilled shrimp bun — perfectly charred shrimp skewers with soft cool vermicelli and cripsy veggies which was just perfect.
Also they list one of my favorites an avocado and peanut roll… mmm…
The pepper tuna tataki is awesome. Lots of cucumber slices and ginger, with a perfectly light sauce and peppery fresh fish.
Also, this is a slightly cheaper option than my other favorite in the area — Suma Sushi — and Saga has the option of Vietnamese food to boot!
They deliver to me near 132^nd very quickly, and pack everything neatly and with appropriate condiments/​utensils. yay!