We've run hot and cold on some of our sushi places around the Quad Cities lately. There seems to be an inconsistency in taste and quality from day-to-day at many of the places. However, it seems that Friday night is the time to go get sushi as the cuts of fish seem to be the most fresh on that day. We've eaten at nearly every sushi place in the Quad's over the years, but there was one place that we still hadn't tried - Sakura Express. On a cold early spring Friday evening, we went over to Bettendorf to give Sakura Express a try.
The people behind Sakura Express are the same people who opened Fuji Sushi on Davenport's west side. (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Fuji Sushi.) Michelle Zheng and her cousin, Jessie Chen, and other members of their immediate family have a financial stake in a handful of Chinese restaurants in the greater Quad Cities. Zheng's brother, Jeff, learned to be a sushi chef after the Zheng family relocated to the U.S. from Hong Kong nearly 10 years ago. The Zheng's eventually moved to the Quad Cities to join up with other family members including Jessie Chen. Chen, whose cousin Eric owns the Panda Garden in Bettendorf, had moved out to from the East Coast to work with other family members in their restaurants.
After helping out other family members in their various restaurants around the area, Chen and Zheng opened Great Wall Chinese on Davenport's west side in late 2009. They opened Sakura Express in the Spring of 2016 and opened Fuji Sushi last year.
We got into Sakura Express around 6:15 - sort of early for us to eat, but we were glad we got there when we did. Not more than about 15 minutes after we had gotten there and ordered up our sushi rolls and niguri sushi a couple of larger groups came in for dinner. The place isn't large and we took a table at a booth off to the side. They had counter service for to-go orders, but they did have a waitstaff, one of whom came over to drop off menus for us. They had a limited beer, wine and sake menu and I got a Kirin beer while my wife got some green tea. After our sushi was presented to us, I ordered up a second Kirin, but the suddenly busy waitress brought me a Sapporo instead. That was fine - I drank it.
My wife wanted to start out with a kani salad. Usually, a kani salad is served in a bowl at other sushi places we've been to. But Sakura Express served their heaping kani salad on a small indented dish. My wife thought the kani salad was very good.
We got a couple of sushi rolls - a spicy tuna roll and a spicy salmon roll. The sushi rolls were just all right in our book - they weren't all that flavorful and sort of mushy in texture.
For sushi that evening, we got nigiri sushi consisting of smoked salmon, yellowtail and tuna. The smoked salmon had sort of a petroleum taste to it - it wasn't all that good. The yellowtail was sort of fishy in taste and was sort of mushy, as well. The tuna was the best of the three, but it wasn't as good as other tuna nigiri that we've experienced over the years. The tuna texture and consistency was firm, but, it also had sort of a funky taste that we didn't care for. It was almost like a medicine taste or a
Eh, for what we had at Sakura Express, we'd probably pass at going back another time. We really liked the sushi at its sister restaurant in Davenport - Fuji Sushi. But the sushi rolls at Sakura Express were a little mushy and the nigiri sushi we experienced had sort of a funky taste to each of the types of fish we had. Compared to other sushi places around the Quad Cities, Sakura Express is probably on the bottom of the ones we've tried.
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