Akagi Japanese Restaurant

Quick and tasty. I always come here after training. I get the Chicken Katsu Donburie usually or the sushi combo set. You can’t expect super fresh fish in Michigan of all places…
Their portions are large and filling. The staff always friendly and kind.
I don’t really understand the negative reviews.

food is awsome here. and the staff are nice. it is a tiny restaurant, if you need somewhere quiet this is your best choice. and they have a lot authentic choices too

Staff is very friendly, my spicy beef was excellent, and the atmosphere was very relaxed.
The prices were very reasonable, but, the one down side to me, was the portion sizes. Maybe, because in America, we over eat most all the time.
I will be going back!

I just wasn’t impressed. Average to below average sushi. I ordered take out. Maybe that had something to do with it?

Akagi intensely reminds me of the hole-​in-​the-​wall places you find all over Vancouver, BC. You don’t go looking for the empty ambiance or special effects some look for in their «Japanese» dining, but should expect decent quality at reasonable prices. Akagi delivers on this.
My spouse loves the sushi (even if somewhat limited) and eats here often, particularly if in hunt of unagi. However, not being a big sushi fan, I often judge a place on how well it accommodates my less raw fish sensibilities. Once again this is where Akagi delivers and offers multiple options including «sets,» known most places as bento boxes. In order of preference: ginger pork donburie, yakisoba, katsu, spicy beef, and teriyaki.
The staff are very friendly and service is excellent. The only reasons I shave one star off are the limited options for vegetarian friends and limited, changing hours.

look like they change owner. The food is less then what it was before. Udon noodle is half bowl now. My friend order another dish. IT was also less. Sushi is not real good. NOT real Sushi. It is like you buy at Meijer. The food has gone way down. The food is not like it used to be. This Japanese restaurant is not Japanese food. They are replacing cheap chinese ingredient vs real Japanese ingredient. IT not worth going their any more. The way they doing the business pretty soon they might go out of business. They wanted more $$$$ and give you MacDonald kids meal.

My friends and I went to the restaurant around lunchtime on June 5, 2012. We were warmly greeted by our waitress whom we have had before. The restaurant was not busy and we were attended to at all times. The ambiance was OK. It was a little loud in the open kitchen, but it didn’t bother us much and the music was at a very appropriate level and the music playing fit the scene. Upon seating you are faced with a set of chopsticks and a napkin. If you are adverse to using chopsticks I’m sure they have silverware, but I don’t know. The first thing we ordered was three strawberry flavored Ramune drinks. It was given to us in a manner of seconds. And yummy as always. A few minutes later we put in an order for 1 avocado, 1 cucumber, 1 eel, and 2 California sushi rolls. a few minutes after that an order for miso soup and 2 orders of the shrimp tempura set and an order of the vegetarian style udon soup. The cooks adapted their regular udon for my vegetarian friend without any problems. Our miso came within a few minutes and while it was good it was pretty standard for a restaurant. For me a truly perfect bowl of miso soup would have more nori and more or thicker chunks of tofu. All along the way our empty dishes were promptly taken away and food filled dishes put in its place. Shortly, after finishing our soup we got our sushi. Their California roll is out of this world. It has a ton of crab and is creamy and all around yummy. The eel and the vegetable rolls are also quite good. After our sushi plates were cleared our main dishes were brought out. The bento box tempura set included a ginger salad, a side of white rice, tempura pieces and sauce, an orange slice, a small pasta salad, and a pickled radish. The large bowl of udon soup included a broth filled with nori, udon noodles, veggie tempura pieces, and served with a side of spices you can add at your own discretion. Let’s break down mine and my friends bento box. The ginger salad is OK, but I’m not a fan. The dressing is not gingery enough and it way too runny (probably due to the wet lettuce). The rice was cooked perfectly and had not a crunchy piece in the bunch. It had a nice flavor and a light starchy taste. The tempura pieces were made from fresh tasting veggies and shrimp then battered not too much and not too little, fried just to perfection. The sauce had a great flavor and was slightly warm. When dipped in the sauce the flavor of the tempura pieces were made even better. The pasta salad is my favorite piece of the bento box sets. It is only a tiny amount, but it is filled with so much flavor and is so creamy you don’t need anymore than a small amount. As for the orange and the pickled radish they had a nice flavor which only complemented the meal. While I did not have the udon soup today, my friend said it was really good. Overall everything was so good and the meal was produced in a timely matter with everyone being so nice that I would definitely recommend this to a friend. ⁴⁄₅ stars.

I was heading home after running around in Okemos all day and just so happen to see «japanese food» in the corner of my eye. Im glad I did because I will definitely be going back. I had some miso soup, shrimp tempura and chicken katsu curry! all good!

I just finished throwing away $ 20 worth of sushi— the fish was NOT fresh and I couldn’t get past the smell alone. It was as if the food was prepared hours ago. My shrimp tempura roll was mushy, the California roll was dry, and the eel roll was just saturated in eel sauce. I’ve never in my life thrown away sushi but I was legitimately worried that I’d be made ill from substandard fish.

Not a great place for a vegetarian.
Other than the standard vegetable rolls on the sushi menu, they have very limited options for the flesh-​free diner. Ordered seaweed salad, which I’ve had in dozens of places. It came with whole pieces of seaweed (which is fine) rather than shreds, covered in some kind of sauce and crab meat (evidently the crab was caught up in the seaweed when they harvested?). I politely explained that I don’t eat meat and wanted to pass on the seaweed salad and was told that «this is traditional, not like what you get other places». Agreed.
And while I am all about trying new things, if you use unexpected ingredients in a dish that EVERYONE knows, maybe a description on the menu is in order?
Although they took the dish away and told me they wouldn’t charge for it, they were clearly annoyed/​offended. The waitress came up to me and told me that if I come back (?if?) I need to tell my waitress that I’m a vegetarian. Maybe I should just embroider a scarlet «V» on my clothing.
The have «sets», basically bento boxes with lovely combinations of things, but are not willing to do a vegetarian sushi set for some reason. I was told it would be too expensive to substitute cucumber or avocado rolls for the california rolls (?!).
Prices are great, staff are friendly, menu is meaty and somewhat inflexible.

Akagi is a teeny little restaurant in a teeny little strip mall in teeny little Okemos. Family-​owned and operated, it offers a comfortable, unpretentious atmosphere with excellent, attentive waitstaff.
It will never compete with SanSu and Maru, nor should it. Akagi is for when you want a simple lunch or dinner without the fuss of a larger, more expensive restaurant.
They offer all of the «basic» Japanese dishes ~ edamame, sushi, sashimi, tempura, teriayki ~ but I have only ever tried their sushi. My favorite is the Akagi roll ~ tempura shrimp with eel and avocado on top. They also offer an excellent Spicy Tuna ~ it has a bit more mayo than most ST rolls, with just the right amount of bite.
I’ve been frequenting Akagi since they opened, and I’m always made to feel welcome and at home ~ like part of their family.

This place was suggested by my boss who has traveled to and eaten in Japan many times. First impression, this place looked horribly dirty in comparison to other Japanese restaurants in towns like Omi, Sansu, Sushi-​Ya, and Maru. Secondly, the people running the joint aren’t even Japanese OR Korean. I know this because I’m Chinese and they were definitely speaking Mandarin! Having had my fair share of poorly executed Japanese food from Chinese owners I still gave this restaurant a shot. The sashimi was definitely not fresh as it was grainy and chewy as it had been sitting there for days and just tasted off. The kicker was when I got up to the counter to pay for the bill I watched the following happen over by the deep fryer…
There was a cook hovering over the deep fryer cooking up an order of shrimp tempura. A waitress is beckoned and carries over a plate to receive the shrimp from the cook. As the cook lifts a piece of shrimp from the fryer using his chopsticks and motions it over the server’s outreached plate, the shrimp misses the plate completely and dropped onto the floor! At first I didn’t think anything of it since there was a garbage can sitting just 5 feet away. Then the server picks up the shrimp off of the floor with their bare hand and instead of depositing it in the garbage the shrimp is placed back onto the plate and left on the counter beside the cook! I quickly looked away as the waiter looked over in my direction. I settled the bill and ran out of there!
The next day, I made a call to Ingham’s Health Inspection unit and filed a formal complaint. Steer clear of this place!

Akagi is a tiny place without much atmosphere, however it is one of my ‘go-​to’ places for Japanese food because of its affordability. The Akagi special is my most ordered entrée because it has a little of everything and being priced at just under $ 17 or less if you go on the day it is the special, it is quite a bargain.
The tempura at Akagi is up there as a contender for best tempura in the East Lansing area, after having tried tempura almost everywhere. Granted, the tempura sauce isn’t my favorite (SanSu has a slightly sweeter sauce to my liking), but the delicate art of tempura making is not easily mastered. The batter is just right, not too heavy, which some places can be.
The teriyaki is acceptable and the sushi is not bad. Interestingly, one of my favorite pieces to the Akagi special is the noodle appetizer that is served with the set. It is a cold noodle dish with a mayo-​type seasoning.
Akagi is a great place to go when you don’t feel like waiting forever in a loud, busy place and want to eat quality Japanese food without paying the prices of higher end restaurants.

I can’t speak for the sushi, as this is something I don’t eat, but the other entrees here — the Japanese cuisine offerings (bento boxes, katsu, teriyaki, etc.) are quite good and reasonably priced. This is a small, very casual — but comfortable — Mom & Pop spot that I think has a really nice, friendly vibe to it. It may be low on atmosphere, but it more than makes up for this with friendly and efficient service, tasty food and very reasonable prices. Akagi feels more like a «neighborhood» type of joint where the owner greets you at the door and addresses the regulars by name, rather than a «night out» spot at a place like Sansu. The service is great, the owners, as noted, are very friendly and the food is consistently very good if not excellent. The veggie rolls are great, the tempura udon is very tasty and I have enjoyed pretty much all of the entrees I have been served at Akagi. The menu is a bit smaller and the food is a bit simpler in presentation than some other sushi joints, but it is specifically this humble-​yet-​elegant quality that I find very appealing.

I ordered the Akagi set, thinking if it was named for the place it would be decent, right? Well, the sashimi was sliced deli-​thin and tasted just plain awful. I had to choke it down, which is really saying something. The rolls weren’t all that bad, but they were small and you only got 4. On the upside, the tempura was tasty, and the Teriyaki chicken was fine, if a little drenched in the sauce.
Also, even though the sushi selection was small, Akagi does not have any descriptions of the rolls, nor are there pictures of all the rolls. How you are supposed to know what you are ordering is beyond me. As for price, the rolls and sashimi were not at all cheap, and considering what you get it’s a total rip-​off. Our bill crept close to $ 40 for two, which was more than the equivalent meals would be at, say, Sushi-​Ya.
We had actually gone here to find Maru, but I couldn’t remember the name. Apparently it’s down the street, and supposedly much better.

Small, take-​out style place with limited seating. The help was friendly and provided good service. My sushi was good, not great, but my husband’s sashimi was warm and slimy. Also, the sushi is prepared out of site of the customer, which takes away from the experience (and food quality assurance). Lansing has many better alternatives for sushi-​seekers.

Nice little mom ‘n pop sushi place located in a shopping plaza that few people seem to realize even exists. While the menu is a bit sparse, the food is VERY reasonably priced and is always very fresh. The service here is fantastic and Akagi offers a quiet atmosphere that would be perfect for a first (or any!) date.

Since I am a total Sushi Whore, I had to continue my quest to try every sushi place in town. Akagi is pretty small and lacks the ambiance that the other places in town have, but looks are not everything, right? The sushi was pretty good, but not outstanding. They serve a fairly small selection of sushi, with just a couple specialty rolls. Basically they cover the mainstream stuff like spicy tuna, salmon, california rolls, etc. Even for those they were just decent. Did not stand out in comparison. They did however have «sets», which are bento boxes with different meals. The teriyaki set was actually quite good and included checken, a salad, cold noodles and rice for about $ 7. This place is a decent choice, but there are certainly better options in this sushi crazy town…