Q: positive

A: Yum! Definitely a good place for fresh seafood in Phx. Highly recommend! Make reservations and prepare yourself to not see the outside while eating at Salt Cellar. Had the crab cakes for appetizer, halibut and baked lobster as main course. All were excellent and service was an A+!

Q: positive

A: This place was amazing! Service was great and the food even better !! It was our first time but it is our new favorite. It has the small intimate family owned feel and the meat is top quality. The food combined with the great service left us very impressed

Q: positive

A: First of all, this is an upscale restaurant. Their prices are high, the quality of food is high, service and knowledge is paramount. Get over it. Station Casinos had some kind of employee appreciation thing going on for the month of June, so you could eat at any restaurant in a Station casino for 50% off. Sweet. This is the only reason my broke ass was able to go. Two people in our party knew the Hachi staff so we got special treatment. We had two servers and two bussers. Hachi is the Japanese word for 8, an auspicious number in Japanese and other southeast Asian cultures. The waitstaff wears belts with a sideways eight (otherwise known as an infinity sign) buckle. One of the things that bugs me about this place is the decor. It's all good ... just not cohesive. Murakami's signature eyeball wall paper, a huge picture of an ambiguously Asian chick with a giant dragon tattoo (that I've seen all over the interwebs), and cherry blossom ceiling hangings. But I know that's just my nit-picky art faggotry. Onwards. The food is really good and they have a mega selection of sake. We had the Demon Slayer, a well-rounded sake, really good to please a party of various sake-drinkers. Their menu is a long list of sushi (temaki, nigiri, and sashimi), as well as entrees, and they do omakase. If you can spring it, there are four different choices ranging $65-120. If you can't, they also have a section of dishes for $8 and under. I think one of the gluttonous propensities of America is the delight of variety and at Hachi, we #$%^& capitalized on that ish. We went family style and pretty much ordered everything we wanted (prices are shown before our 50% discount): Salmon avocado and mango roll $11. Meh. Hamachi sashimi $9, 2 pc. Big pieces, very fresh, clean cut, perfect marbling (but then, I am a fat-chaser). So good with the shiso. Don't throw it away! Nasu dengaku $6. Broiled eggplant with miso glaze. Very good. Hachi vegetable fried rice $7. Decent. Filler. I think fried rice is a comfort thing. You can have it any where. Move on. Spicy kabocha coconut soup $5. Outstanding. Nicely balanced. I'm a sucker for coconut milk and that one bowl of soup probably had a fully day's nutritional requirement of fat. Tofu miso $5. Filler. (We get a lot of these flller items because half my family is vegetarian.) Pan fried Chilean Sea Bass cake $7. This is a pass. If you want sea bass, get the Broiled Sea Bass. Hachi BBQ baby back ribs $ 7. Braised short ribs $17. Broiled Chilean Sea Bass $32. The highlight of the meal. Cooked t perfection, so tender and moist, marinated in miso. (We also got lamb chops and some kind of spicy popcorn shrimp, but I don't see it on the online menu. The spicy shrimp things were really good. Reminiscent of the Chinese honey shrimp dish.) Each of the dishes came with carefully-crafted garnishes, like a marinated daikon cross-section or scallion shafts. The colors and architecture of the pieces were amazing. At Hachi, you get what you pay for and you pay for aesthetics. We didn't get these, but they have gimmicky rolls like Pakalolo and Smack. Yum, drugs. For dessert we got the Trio brulee $9. Green tea, ginger, and macadamia guanduja [sic?] (tasted primarily like chocolate). Pretty generous portion, comparatively. The ginger was my favorite. We sat in one of the two tatami rooms in the back of the deep restaurant. The tatami room has a sunken hearth. You sit on the floor, but you can dangle your legs into a pit. The room we were in had one flat screen tv with the controls mounted on the wall in the room (we watched the Lakers take the Celtics. no comment). You can close the door to keep out most of the outside noise, changing the atmosphere of the room. It was very sexy. But you can't completely seal off from everything. There's a gap between the floor and the bottom of the screen that divided our room from the other tatami room. There was a window view to the outside water and fire feature. They also have a sushi bar you can sit at. The restaurant is partitioned into two large sections plus the tatami rooms. In the end, I think our total bill was $240 with the 50% discount ($480 before the discount) before tip. It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. (The listing of foods and our total bill does not reflect the fact that we ordered several of some of the dishes.) I think Hachi is one of those Japanese places that's very American or American places that's very Japanese. It does well to educate an American palate of Japanese cuisine with many compromises, how's that? * off the strip

Q: negative

A:
My husband and I usually love it here, but our recent experience makes me question our loyalty. We know "holidays' can we a busier time, and we never usually go out on v-day, but because we love this place, we decided to go. They sat us in the bar area for dinner, so it was just pretty loud. They weren't particularly busy, so I am not sure why this was. Our server (didnt even get her name) was not friendly at all. She hardly came by our table, and then another server showed up at the end of our meal to pick up our plates that had been just sitting there for a while. It did seem like they were short staffed because we went to the cigar room and it was packed. The server/bartender in there was the only one, so she was less than pleasant also, but I suppose I might get frustrated trying to serve the needs of 30 plus people in a room and being the only one. Overall, I am not sure we would be back soon. The food was good, my husband had the ribeye and I had the crab cakes. If anything, we would go back for the food, but the usual atmosphere and service just kinda stunk.