Akasaka Japanese Restaurant

Very authentic. Saw lots of Japanese speaking diners. Sashimi price a bit expensive for the area but good fish served at the right temperature. Not a friendly place but the chef and owners only speak Japanese! Love that!

Unfortunately, Akasaka closed in June 2011. :-(

I love this place for lunch, I always get the tuna don, which comes with a large bowl of delicious udon soup noodles. The food comes out quickly for me…
I am worried that they have closed though. I have tried to go twice for lunch now, and they say that they are «re-​painting». Their phone is now disconnected… Sad, as this is my favorite sushi place in Livonia. I am a sushi lover — my other faves are O’sushi in Canton, Benihana, and Yotsuba in AA.

I go to Detroit on business once in awhile and usually swing by a Japanese place or two. This place is a good place to expereince the standard Japanese dinner. Start off with some sashimi n beer. I would go for some chef special for 2 or so. Move to some small dishes here and there like geso, saba, karaage, ohitashi etc. then finish off with a rice dish. I also like the futomaki here as it is done in the traditional way with a full sheet of nori. make sure you share as it is a lot of food!

With this restaurant so close to our house we thought we’d give it a try. We did not feel welcome by the staff, and it wasn’t like they were too busy to help us because the place was practically empty.
Scallop sushi did not taste fresh. Everything we had was similar to, or slightly worse than, the sushi you would get at a chinese buffet. We did not get sick, so 2 stars.

First of all, I consider myself a Sushi Fanatic. I needed a fix while at work today and hit up the first place I could find near me off of Unilocal.We arrive here at noon and it is really not very busy. We order the Sushi lunch special which is soup and an assortment of rolls. It took almost 35 minutes to get our sushi which was quite a long time.
Now on to the actual food. I have never had worse sushi in my life. The squid was terrible, maybe I am just not a fan of squid who knows. The salmon tasted almost dirty. My co-​worker and I experienced terrible stomach pains for the remainder of the day and other assorted ill feelings. I would avoid this place at all costs in terms of Sushi.
They do have a broad range of Japanese Food which I have not tried, but I hear is pretty good.

I will definetely go back… I found this to be the most authentic Japanese place in the metro Detroit area. Japanese food is not just about sushi, sashimi and tempura, although 99% of the people stay within these choices. Also, call me pretentious, but because I am japanese descendent, I came to appreciate sushi for the way is rolled and how the rice is seasoned. For that, this place is a winner. The rice was perfectly cooked, the sushi held well in place but the grains although sticky were not all mushed up … which by the way, is considered to be mistake #1 in the sushi world … like so many places (such as that place starting with a «B») make this mistake quite often… I honestly do not enjoy mashed/​compressed rice, ooops sushi, so for me, this place was a winner in making very decent sushi. I have also enjoyed the fried eggplant with misso, and the salad with tofu and daicon… hmmm very yummy, not overly sweet which is usually what you get in most places. My daughter truly enjoyed the food. If you go at lunch time, you can seat in the tatame (whatever way is spelled) in the private seating area, with only a service surcharge (no minimum people/​$ 200 spent reqd), I found this to be a neat experience if you have kids over the age of 5.
Is this as good as it gets? No, the service was somewhat slow, the price was not really friendly, but the food itself, I found it to be as good as it gets for the american unknown dishes.

As others have said, reasonably authentic food, and slightly high prices.
Apparently this is one of the oldest sushi places in the state, but my guess is they aren’t what they used to be. My katsu was passable, but nothing more. I wish I had read the other review here mentioning katsu was not so great before I went. But the saddest thing was the sides. They used baby carrots.
Now call me a snob, but I think that a reputable restaurant should take the time to peel their own carrots. Most Japanese restaurants that aim to be authentic pay attention to moritsuke, the artful presentation of food. Now the expensive places can get really artful, but even the cheap places usually put in a little effort.
I wouldn’t normally care to point moritsuke, but it’s not exactly a cheap place. The taste is average for Michigan, at best. If they don’t have moritsuke, what do they have? A tatami room, I guess.
I would be on the edge of giving the place 2 stars, but their ginger ice cream gets them up to 3 for me. Now that stuff is actually good.

Décor is outdated, and staff & chefs seem bored most of the time. But I know some great sushi chefs have worked here before, so they must have done something right.

Akasaka serves quality authentic Japanese in Michigan. I highly recommend sitting at the sushi counter. One of the older Japanese chef is a really nice and skilled sushi chef. If you don’t really understand the difference between good sushi and bad, then this might not be the place for you, but if you understand that the size alone doesn’t determine the quality of good sushi, this is the place for you. I cannot give 5 stars because I’ve had some really bad tonkatsu here.

Good sushi and very friendly staff. They have the best sushi that I have found in the Livonia area.