FLO Japanese Sushi Restaurant & Sake Bar

HH was is a great value… an entire gluten free menu to choose from… featured wines and great specialty drinks. Not even packed on a Monday. We will be back!

We all have our bad days. So with an inspiring mission statement, upscale location and ambiance and prices to match, I except a restaurant to say when they should, hey, this can’t leave the kitchen like this, this is not who we are.
We were so excited a few weeks ago to have found a great neighborhood restaurant in FLO. The braised short ribs were out of this world, the Dragon Roll the best ever. Yes, everything fell into place — from appetizer to dessert, it was so well done. Three visits later and we can’t help but notice that portions seem to be noticeably smaller across the board. Then came our last visit when it, well, wasn’t really happening. Let’s just say it was a one time thing and that FLO may soon be back to «normal.»

I was charged $ 9 to add imitation crab to a 4 piece $ 10 roll.
My first and last time here.

My family loves sushi and we were happy to find this restaurant in downtown Bellevue. There is good parking, you can make reservations, and the atmosphere is elegant and family-​friendly. We love to order the seared salmon roll, nigiri, and red dragon roll. We love the Chirashizushi bowl too. Our three-​year-​old loves to use the modified kids chopsticks and the kids teriyaki chicken plate. We have had the same server, Serg, mutliple times and he goes above and beyond to make our experience great. We have also ordered take-​out.

The food quality never let me down.
Tuna is always good, not those big eye nor yellow fin.
Other fish are good as well.
Really love the Chirashi here, with their house 渍物.

I have been wanting to come here for a while now as I live so close. We walked over last night and realized we were under dressed… this a fancy sushi place! They start you with a hot towel to clean your hands. The food is pricey unless you order just sushi. I got the philly roll and my fiancé got the crunchy roll. His was ok, mine was delicious. Service was great! They do take reservations which we did not know, but it was not busy at all when we went so we were seated right away. There are many sushi options in downtown Bellevue and this place is an alright option. I may be back when I want a sushi place where I can walk to.

I have dined here on several occasions. Tried their chirashizushi, black cod, sashimi, nigiri and rolls. I think their basic offerings are adequate. When they try their Americanized fusion food, they fail. I know hakujin loves them, but …
I will dine here again. Sticking with their offering of classic Japanese food. The décor is bit too modernistic for my taste, but it’s OK. The service is friendly and, generally, attentive.
One negative, which really disturbed me, is the «backdoor traffic» of friends, owners, employees off the clock (?) … coming and going through the kitchen, storage area (?) … whatever, but visible from certain areas of the dining room. It is distracting and not conducive to relaxed dining experience.

The place is very nice, and clean. The music was very relaxing, and the waitress was very nice. I liked the food, but I felt like it was overpriced for such tiny portions. I do recommend their banana ice cream. It was very tasty.

Ambience: clean and aesthetically pleasing
Service: very friendly and attentive
Food: sad sad attempt at trying to make authentic Japanese sushi/​food. If you’ve been to Shiros/​Wataru omakase or had sushi in Japan– DO NOT GO HERE. You will be severely disappointed.
They really need to stop promoting this place as Japanese food. I attempted to do the omakase here. There’s like 6 or so courses. I had to stop them at course 2. The food and omakase at FLO is what you call, Japanese fusion failure. They gave me a sashimi plate and one of my salmon pieces had yogurt on it. You don’t put creamy milky yogurt on a oily fish– it’ll literally make you gag.
The 2^nd course was an arugula salad with mushroom tempura. It literally had a sprinkle of dressing so I got to eat dry grassy arugula with a dry tempura fried mushroom. So I had to use to my saliva to even swallow a bite. Honestly they could’ve drowned it in water and it would’ve tasted better.
At this point the two people I was with from Japan were too polite to say anything so I had to pull the red card and stop the madness. We ended up ordering gyoza and calamari. Unfortunately both were slightly below mediocre. Sad. Just sad.
The kicker was the manager. Some guy with a European accent. He came over to try and «educate» us on their omakase and reassured us that their guests rave about their omakase. Then I had to reassure him, that his guests probably aren’t from Japan and based on their website we were promised Japanese cuisine and didn’t get that. So a wasted night eating cheap gyoza, yogurt salmon that taste like phlegm, and sand paper. Somehow they manage to have great reviews and stay in business. This place probably appeals to anyone who’s never had real sushi.

We went for our first time this past weekend and my wife opted for the omakase and I followed suit. The 5 courses were tasty, which is the only thing that is holding this rating up to 3 stars. Everything else was abysmal.
Our waiter noted that the first course takes some time to prepare so he offered edamame. I was expecting this to be free, but it was not (a surprise when we got the check). Ordinarily, not an issue, except for the fact that it took at least 15 minutes to get the edamame. The time between courses was ridiculous — we were at the restaurant for 2.5 hours and spent maybe 15 minutes total eating. No real explanation or effort to improve our experience at all. Our waiter was nice but he knew this was not typical and noted it at the end of our meal. If this is the case, you should do something to make it right. As a side note, the table next to use turned over TWICE while we were eating — not sure how they were getting food fast enough to serve two sets of diners start to finish but we were left waiting.
After the 4^th course and before dessert, we were asked if we would like to order any more food. For an $ 80/​person omakase, you shouldn’t have to ask this question — you should be confident that you are serving enough food that your patrons are not left wanting more. Unfortunately — after dessert, I was still hungry.
The food was tasty and I may be back to order a la carte sushi but I would stay away from the omakase. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and probably get better value.

Excellent service and awesome sushi! Would rate this in my top five for sure! We had veggie sushi roll which was awesome and the crunch was perfect! Had Dungeness crab roll in the special and it was simply awesome!
Seattle roll was probably the least of my favorite! Will surely come again for more!

Been here a few times. They are the best sushi place you can find in the east side. I’m talking about Nigiri and sashimi only, not rolls. My boyfriend never enjoys sea urchin because of the strong fishy smell. But he showed me the OMg face when he tried their sea urchin nigiri. I guess it’s because of their wonderful balance of the flavored seaweed and a little bit sweet in the vinegar they use on their sushi rice. Some people might think that their lightly sweet and sour sushi rice steal the freshness of the raw fish, but I’m happy about it. I think they serve each other perfectly. Besides sushi they also have tons of appetizers. And also chirashi, unaju, and Uni ikura Don as main entrees if you wanna try something else than sushi and rolls.

I’ve eaten at FLO a few times. The 3 star review is a reflection of mixed service and high pricing. Yes, the sushi is very fresh and they have great rolls as well as a diverse menu featuring fish, beef, apps, etc. But the service is just not super efficient or friendly. The bar is average at best (don’t order the sake margarita which is made from a mix) and the wine list is not great. I think you can do a lot better for sushi in the Bellevue area and at a more reasonable price.

My girlfriend and I have been here three times now and we have both just loved the selection, quality and service at this sushi eatery
Too many good items to list here so just order away from the menu
Among the best sushi in Bellevue and free parking street side or in the building
I’ve also found this to be a great place to bring my real estate clients for a great meal and good talk time

Good quality sushi and sashimi but it has that Japanese for Americans feel to it. A bit overpriced for what you get, but it’s good enough to hit the spot when you are hungry for sushi or sashimi.
Sake selection is on the low end with premium prices, but not embarrassingly bad like some places.
Biggest complaint was the hostess who made us wait 7 minutes to sit at a nearly empty bar. I was also surprised that they ran out of hot towels and didn’t even have a backup plan (like wet naps — common in most cheap Asian restaurants).
If you don’t know good sushi or authentic Japanese then you’ll think it’s a 5, but those who do will recognize this as conveyor belt quality in Kyoto.

Good service, good food. I don’t really have any complaints. I enjoyed every part of the meal and our waitress was super nice. She accommodated all of our needs and provided prompt service.
However, I do recommend making a reservation, because the dining area isn’t usually available for walk-​ins and we got sat in the bar area.

High-​end, high-​end, high-​end. The décor is classy and fresh. When I sat down, there was a hot towel in front of me and I wrapped it around my hands quickly because they started to collect everybody else’s. I like how they give both tea and water out. The starter salad was tasty, but small, as fancy restaurants usually are. After looking at the menu, I ordered the 8 piece Dragon Roll and the eel felt like it had little fish bones in it. Kinda strange. It tasted fine though, the texture just threw me off. Those 8 pieces of sushi cost $ 16.50! That’s 2 dollars per piece. I was still hungry after eating the sushi, but I knew that if I wanted to eat until I was full, I wouldn’t be able to look at the bill without cringing. I think its pretty much a given that if you come here, you’ve gotta be ready to go with the FLO when the bill comes out.

Went into FLO with high expectations opting for the omakase. The meal consisted of 5 courses which were a sashimi course, and appetizer, an entrée, a sushi course, and finally desert. Things started out fantastically with a really nice sashimi selection. The sashimi included some beautiful, melt in your mouth, blue fin toro, sweet shrimp, citrus marinated lobster and hamachi. Everything was very fresh and delicious.
Then things started to take an unexpected, not so great turn. The second course was the appetizer course which was tempura. For the tempura section they served two pieces each of a mushroom, shrimp, shishito combination which was fantastic and some tempura okra which was not my favorite.
Next came the main course which was my real issue with this meal. The main course was a piece of steak on top of some garlic mashed potatoes with asparagus. When I come to a sushi restaurant and choose to do an omakase, I do not want the center piece of the meal to me a piece of steak. Furthermore, if that center piece is a steak, it had better not be overcooked, and showcasing no creativity or Japanese influence. This whole course was really bizarre and tainted the experience.
The next course was the sushi course which consisted of 4 pieces of sushi: sockeye salmon, scallop, seared squid and an unagi and tomago hand roll. The hand roll and the salmon and the scallop were all very good. The seared squid was chewy and didn’t have any special flavor that was better than say a piece of seared albacore.
Finally, the desert course came which was a tempura banana with ice cream, and strawberry and green tea sauces. The desert was OK and not very imaginative or especially memorable.
So, all in all, I went to FLO looking for a wonderful sushi omakase and got two sushi centric courses for a total of 8 pieces of sushi/​sashimi and 3 course of filler that I could have definitely have done without. The sushi parts for the meal were actually quite good, I just wish there were more of them and none of the rest. When it comes down to it, $ 85 for 8 pieces of sushi/​sashimi, some tempura, about 4oz of overcooked meat and some ice cream is not a great deal.

My husband and I were looking for a good sushi spot in Bellevue one Saturday night and found this place on Unilocal and decided to give it a try. We were seated pretty quickly on a Saturday at 7:45 pm without a reservation. The space looks like it use to be a small retail store and the décor is pretty plain.
We got the lobster crunchy roll, the spider roll and the veggie philly roll. Both the lobster and the spider only came with 6 pieces, which was pretty small for the big prices. Both were good. The veggie philly roll on the other hand was the least expensive roll, the biggest roll we ordered ($ 8) and it was the most delicious! We loved it so much we ended up ordering another! The roll was covered with their delicious sumiso sauce which, the waitress later told us is their signature sauce.
The service was great and our waitress was very friendly and helpful. It was a good sushi spot but next time I will go with the veggie philly roll (or just the philly roll the waitress also suggested for next time) and not waste time (or money) ordering anything else.
The place was pretty pricey and I will definitely pay for good sushi but the more expensive rolls weren’t anything special. The prices were around the same as Japonessa in Seattle, but Japonessa offers more options, larger rolls and better quality.

We waited 45 minutes to get seated. Should have made resos …
Great place and good service! Everything was fresh and tasty. They make a great hamachi kama … nice and crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.