No one was more excited than I was that a new Thai/sushi place was opening up in Stafford. I'm a big fan of both types of food. My husband was more leery. He warned me not to get too excited and that places that try to make two different types of food are rarely successful. Still, I played the optimist.
I visited Sake as soon as I could after it opened. The location is convenient, right by Home Depot. The decor is very nice. The booths are raised on platforms so if you have a child in a high chair (like I do) then you have to sit at a table. Speaking of high chairs, the first one we tried didn't latch, even though it was probably brand new!
Our waitress was pleasant but seemed like she was really scared. I figured that it was probably a new job for her. She brought our drinks and menus. She did forget to put a lid on the kids cup (which defeats the purpose of a kids cup) but she brought one when we asked.
Several people sitting at tables near us asked for the lunch special since it was listed on the menu, but apparently they don't have the lunch special on the weekends. They should put that on the menu somewhere.
We decided to try an appetizer, some sushi, and a Thai dish. That way I could try a little bit of everything and let you know how it was. That's right... I do it all for you ;)
The Appetizer:
Spring rolls. A win. I thought they were really good and the dipping sauce was, too. They had chicken and vegetables inside with a perfectly thin wrapper.
The Sushi:
The prices on the menu were... high. When we usually eat sushi, we get a few inexpensive rolls and then one or two special rolls. They have a small selection of "small" rolls, which are six pieces. They are a decent price, all under $5. Looking at the website now, they have added a few rolls to this section. They had a larger selection of "large" rolls, which are 8 pieces and ranged from $10- $13. I find this expensive because most people eat 2 1/2 rolls at a time. $25 - $32.50 for lunch seems excessive unless the sushi is spectacular. They even have a few rolls that cost $25 each. I'm not sure what the rolls must be like to justify that price.
The small rolls are very basic and the selection was limited. Still, we chose a tuna roll and an eel roll from there. We decided to try one special roll. We asked the waitress which special roll she recommended and after looking scared and confused for a few moments, she finally admitted that she liked the Dynamite Roll.
When we got the rolls, the waitress pointed them out like they usually do. Tuna, eel, and Dynamite.
We looked at them ourselves. The tuna roll had a thin looking orange sauce in it... but there were 6 pieces. Small spicy tuna isn't even a choice, so I'm not sure what roll that was supposed to be. We tried it and the spice in the sauce was so overpowering, I could barely eat it. You couldn't taste the tuna or the rice at all, which defeats the purpose of sushi in my opinion. You might as well just eat some lava.
The eel roll was really good but definitely not what we ordered. It had eel on top of a California roll. I found out later that they had actually given us a Dancing Eel roll.
On the menu, the Dynamite Roll was described as "Mixed seafood in sriracha sauce." I've had Dynamite rolls in other places. In most places there are two or three types of fish with some sauce and you can usually tell what you are eating. This looked like they had chopped up whatever leftover fish they had and poured that same sauce from the spicy tuna roll on it. The sauce bled into the rice so it looked like an orange colored fishy mess in a roll.
The Thai:
We decided to go with Crispy Duck. That's an easy one... it is just fried pieces of duck in some batter. I've had it in many places. Sometimes they make it too greasy and sometimes the batter isn't that good, but it is still always edible, right? Nope!
The small pieces of duck were mixed with random vegetables and leaves (I don't know what they were) and then cooked in a sweetish dark colored sauce which wasn't very good. The only way I could eat it was to pick out the pieces of duck and mix it with a lot of plain rice. Ugh.
The Conclusion:
In the end, the only part I really liked was the appetizer. They also had to have the manager come out and fix our bill since two out of the three sushi rolls were not the ones we ordered.
My suggestions to them are to a new Thai Chef and lower their sushi prices. My suggestion to you is to head to Woodbridge or Springfield for decent Thai. Head to Umi or Miso in Fredericksburg for sushi. They have great lunch specials... even on the weekends.
