Kotobuki

Amazing sushi place. Very clean, nice staff, and the food is amazing. A bit pricey, but completely worth it.

Great service, great salads!!
WHEN ARE THEY WILL OPEN ROSLYN LOCATION???

Excellent food. Place gets really busy so plan ahead.

It's a great sushi restaurant, and I am a lover of sushi! Come here to find fresh, and reasonably priced food in a wide range of varieties.

After reading some of the reviews calling this the best Japanese restaurant on Long Island, I figured I would give this restaurant a shot. I'm not your typical American consumer of Japanese food - having lived in Japan for a year, I tend to have higher expectations of Japanese restaurant, and sushi is generally an afterthought for me as opposed to a primary focus.

I went in looking for good sukiyaki, and my mom was looking for teriyaki chicken. We also ordered a side of miso soup and the shrimp shumai as an appetizer and a soda and green tea as beverages. Besides the green tea being of only marginal quality, we were never offered a refill on either drink, but I'll get to that when I talk about the service.

Shortly after ordering, salads with a sesame ginger dressing came out. These were slightly above average in quality (freshness and taste), but were a little overboard with the dressing, and despite being only slightly above average, were the best part of the meal. Next out was the shumai, which was bland and didn't leave any impression on me whatsoever. The entrees and the miso soup came out quite some time later, and were easily the worst part of the meal.

Let's start with the sukiyaki. While there was a decent amount of food in the sukiyaki, the beef used was tough and of low quality, making it really hard to chew. While the veggies were fresh, the sickly sweet dashi made the dish hard to stomach; not wanting to wait an eternity for a new order, I just squeezed the dashi out of the noodles, veggies, and meat as best I could. Dashi in sukiyaki should be a mellow flavor, only lightly flavored, that complements and enhances the flavor of the meat, not overpowers it. Yuck. The chicken on the teriyaki plate seemed to be boiled or steamed rather than lightly grilled, and the sauce tasted like it came out of a can. Once again, yuck. The miso soup was salty to the point of being inedible, so we only had a couple sips.

After waiting for an eternity for our waiter, he finally came to clear our plates. Not once were we asked if the food tasted alright. One would think that with a nearly full serving of miso sitting in front of someone, the wait staff would ask if we were finished with the soup or if everything had tasted alright before removing it. We got neither - he simply removed the bowl without saying a word. I noticed the waiter giving the couple next to us a refill of green tea as we were leaving, but I had been sitting with an empty drink for well over 30 minutes. Similarly, another patron had placed a to-go order while we were waiting for our table and waited over 45 minutes to get his food.

Overall the food was marginal at best, the service was slow, and it was definitely not worth the 45 minute wait for a table. If this is the best that Long Iasland has to offer, you are seriously missing out on good Japanese food. If yaou're ever in Colorado, try Domo or Sushi Den in Denver. You'll get far better food with far better service. I think I'll skip out on Japanese in New York in the future if this is the best you've got.