Sake Cafe (Pensacola, FL)

Formerly Okinawa, the Sake Cafe has greatly improved under the guidance of new management.

In the past, the only positive the Okinawa had to offer was the cheap food, namely the $10.00 hot/cold lunch buffet. Of course, that wasn't saying much. The sushi was mediocre at best. The hot food (tempura, teriyaki, etc.) was average. And the service was absolutely terrible (servers spent most of their time giggling at the sushi bar).

Sake Cafe carries on the tradition of cheap sushi, with the exception of it being good. The sushi is not the best you can find, but it is pretty good for the price charged. The appetizers have also improved.

Along with the usual array of Japanese cuisine (from bento boxes to hibachi tables), their hot/cold lunch buffet (noon to 4pm) has been replaced by Happy Hour (3pm to 6pm). Depending on how much you can (or want to) eat, Happy Hour can be a much better deal to the consumer. With the previous hot/cold lunch buffet, you got all the mediocre food you could stomach (as long as you finished everything before ordering again). With Happy Hour, you can get some well-made sushi at the discounted price of $2.99 per roll. Of course, there is a set list of what you can get, but it is a long list spanning 10 appetizers ($2.99 per plate), 10 sushi pieces ($0.99 per piece, low enough to try new things without being left with food you don't like and still have to pay for), and 10 sushi rolls ($2.99 per roll). Anyone who loves sushi knows that $2.99 is a much nicer price than the average $6.50 to $17.50 per roll. And of course, $9.00 for a meal (shrimp tempura, salmon avocado roll, snow crab roll) is a much better value than $10.00 for a couple orders of chicken tempura and all the inedible sushi you can try to hide in a napkin.

Overall, Sake Cafe is still the best place for cheap sushi; it just happens to be much better tasting now. And the service still leaves much to be desired, though it does show improvement.