Miyabi 9
| Address » | 512 E. Grand Ave., Des Moines IA (Map) |
| Phone » | (515) 288-8885 |
| Website » | n/a |
| Downtown » | No |
| Type » | Restaurant |
| Tags » | Japanese | Sushi |
| Avg User Rating » |
  (based on 15 reviews) |
| User Reviews | |
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User Reviews (15 reviews)
May 02, 2008 rpiowa50009
Great food - great service. We are very new to this type of food but the staff was friendly, knowledgable, and patient in helping us determine what to order. We were started off with a light salad. Both the ginger dressing and the apple dressing were fantastic. The miso soup was some of the best I have ever had at an asian style restaurant. I ordered a sushi combination patter and it was wonderful - the fish was very fresh tasting and the rice was fixed to perfection. My partner had a 'fried combo' platter served with sticky rice, relish, and a moth-watering ginger dipping sauce. Miyabi 9 is not a large space but it is definitely a big addition to the businesses in the East Village. We will most certainly be repeat customers.
Apr 18, 2008 
John
I had the sushi lunch for $10. It came with 1 tuna, 1 salmon, 1 shrimp, 1 whitefish, 10 cali rolls & miso soup. All were delicious and would recommend to anyone that enjoys sushi. Their menu had plenty of options for those who are not into sushi, which is nice when you have a diverse group. The restaurant has a small eating area (like 10 tables), but the food/service is excellent. If your looking for a tasty option that is healthier than Tasty Taco's, try this place.
Apr 13, 2008 Rhea V
I love Love LOVE Miyabi 9. Hands down best sushi in Des Moines. I find myself eating there at least twice a week. Service can definitely be poor at times when only one server has the entire restaurant, but the phenomenal food makes up for any downfalls.
Apr 08, 2008 AlaskaTSS
WOW is all I can say. I lived in Japan for a while and in Alaska where seafood is fresh. Not to knock on the midwest but I wasn't expecting any good seafood. I was wonderfully surprised with the freshness and quality. Best sushi I've had out here in the midwest. Prices are decent with the average combo platter around 20.00 dollars. Service and atmosphere are ok, the building is still in the process of modeling. If your looking for great sushi check out miyabi 9.
Apr 07, 2008 Izaak
My wife and I ate at Miyabi 9 for the first time Friday night. Everything was excellect including the service. We arrived at 8:00, the hostess asked for our phone # and we grabbed a drink at the bar nextdoor while we waited. Softshell crab, sashimi, and sushi were better than anyplace in town. Nice to know that we don't need to drive to Kaze or Katsu in Chicago for truely great sushi.
Apr 01, 2008 foodlover
Great food. I tried the volcano roll, miyabi roll, and curry katsu.
I especially love the volcano roll; it's fresh, tasty, and isn't as dry as the volcano made at Waterfront. I also loved the aroma of the hot green tea. It's not the typical Bigelow green tea that many restaurants serve.
I'd take some points off for the atmosphere and service though. The restaurant is a little too dim and looks unfinished, and there isn't enough servers to accommodate the large number of customers.
But I'd still go there again and again. In Asia, the best place for food are usually those stalls by the streets anyway. If you're looking for a casual dining place for authentic Japanese food in Des Moines, Miyabi 9 is the place.
Mar 24, 2008 dmreviewer
I've been here 3 times and everytime it was the same thing- great food but terrible service. We kept giving it another try because we want East Village buisnesses to make it, but the service was unacceptable. It took us over an hour and a half last time and all we got was a few sushi rolls, and it was a Wed. night! We wanted more drinks but didn't even bother ordering another round because it would have taken forever! Also, the atmosphere is terrible. Very poorly designed and if you sit in the booth agaings the wall it's very uncomfortable because the wall is made of layers of overlapping plywood so it's uneven. It's such a shame because the food is wonderful but I'd rather go to Zen where I can get some service, drinks, and atosphere.
Feb 06, 2008 hojo
Went on Friday night and sat at the sushi bar. Miyabi was behind the line prepping sushi. While waiting he served us an excellent salad with fish pieces. Miso soup was pretty standard, but can't really stray too far off with miso. Sushi was incredible. Everything we ate was fresh, well put together, and thought out. I do agree about the ambiance, BUT, I will say that some of the best restaurants (especially sushi) are the tiny places that aren't glamorous - even in LA, Chicago, or so I hear, in Japan.
Feb 01, 2008 wes
Best sushi in des moines...you won't be disappointed!
Jan 25, 2008 Heidi
Finally! I place in Des Moines that gets sushi right!
I sat at the sushi bar and got to visit with the chef as he perpared my selections. He had a great sense of humor and showed me how he makes a "Japanese Big Mac." So much fun!
The tuna was fresh and delicious. The sushi rice is seasoned perfectly.
The only reason I'm not handing out 5 stars is the atmosphere. The interior looks unfinished and the waiting/reception area is unfortunate.
I will be back again and again for the wonderful fresh fish!
Jan 21, 2008 yt
Miyabi 9 is the Sushi Restaurant that I can bring someone trying Sushi very first time. Their Shari (Sushi rice) is prepared just right with sugar and vinegar, and Neta is the freshest you can get in IA. (I ordered Sushi from A-La Cart Menu... Tuna, Octopus, Yellow Tail, Squid, Spicy Tuna Roll on the Shari)
The prices are little more than you want to pay outside Japan. Specially Sushi Combo is very pricey...... I expected around $15 to start for combo menu like any other restaurants.
The service wasn't great. Too many waiters for the table, but they were gathering at the corner and not paying attention to customers. Unfriendly.
I asked refill for Green Tea and my waiter totally forgot it, chatting with his friends just walked in - it took me another 15 min to get my tea filled.
The inside restaurant was freezing cold and white eating, we saw 2~3 parties left after they sat down. Some elder people are still wearing coats at the table. (I prefer sit at the Sushi counter next time.) The interior is unfinished this could be one of reason to the temperature.
The overall - the food is great and I would like to see better service.
Jan 19, 2008 dsmwmn
Hands down the best sushi in Des Moines! I have patronized the Japanese restaurant a few times now and haven't had anything bad here yet. The box lunches are nicely presented and fun to eat. There is a large sushi menu which offers classics as well as chef creations. The sashimi is wonderfully fresh and tastes great. I also enjoy the volcano roll, sunshine roll, and spider roll. Most meals are served with a piping hot bowl of meso soup. I actually like the modest interior of Miyabi 9. It has a small neighborhood cafe feel to it and the fact that the owner feels that the food is important enough to have a large kitchen isn't a turn off for me.
Jan 14, 2008 broox
Wow. The sushi here is amazingly good. The fish is super fresh, the rolls are great, and the presentation is also pretty good.
Miyabi 9, is located in a typical long, narrow suite of an east village building. The style is minimalist, with lots of large, light wooden panels and an open ceiling, but the space is utilized very strangely. It seems to me that there is wayyyy too much kitchen space for a sushi restaurant. The actual seating of the restaurant takes up less than half of the entire building - and there is no waiting area at all. It would be nice if they used a little bit of that minimalist mindset in the kitchen to make extra room for guests.
More on the waiting area - it's quite awkward. You basically just stand in a line by the doorway and watch everyone eat. I hate when wait areas are amongst diners - it's very intrusive. It might be nice if they gave out some kind of long range pagers for guests on the waiting list. That way you could hop over to the Piano Bistro or wait outside...
Service at Miyabi was definitely lacking in that they only had a couple servers managing the entire restaurant. 1-2 more servers would really help this place out... however, given the space, they'd probably be walking all over each other. But, I think they could definitely get a lot more customers and keep that wait line smaller with quicker service.
As I said earlier, the food is, wow, super good. I loved it. There's really not much more to say about it other than it being the highlight of Miyabi 9. A very, very high ... light.
The party atmosphere is lacking - nothing like Taki, but sometimes that is ok.
The bathrooms are pretty cool and minimalist as well. Check those out. (I love cool bathrooms).
So the main thing here is, this restaurant is going to be hard to get into. It's a good location, has amazing food, and has very limited seating. I hope they improve on the service and figure out a way to accommodate the crowds better.
Jan 07, 2008 A and D
Miyabi 9
East Village
Grand Avenue
January 6, 2008
A and D enjoyed Miyabi 9 for lunch on a Saturday. By 12:30, the restaurant was full and lunch-goers were standing in line for a table.
A and D have a new home for sushi and Japanese food. This is Japanese cuisine at its best.
Last month, D had dinner at Nobu in Park Lane, London. It was the typical "wait two months for a reservation" and "take out a $600 loan to cover the cost of dinner" that one experiences at Nobu and other similar London restaurants, such as Gordon Ramsey. Here is the bottom line:
Miyabi 9 serves better Japanese food than Nobu, and certainly better Japanese food and sushi than any other Japenese restaurant in Des Moines, in Iowa and, perhaps, in all of the Midwest. This is a true Master Chef.
"A" ordered the Bento Box, or Lunch Box A. It was artfully arranged with chicken terriyaki, tempura, sushi, a small salad, and rice with black seasame seeds. Exceptional. The only comment was the tempura lacked the crispness that one hopes for. The tempura shrimp was a bit limp. But the flavors, presentation, quality of ingredients, artistry, and freshness were perfection itself.
D ordered a variety of nigiri-sushi, handrolls, and sashimi. The eel is the finest D has ever eaten, including 3 years living in Kamakura, Yokohama and Tokyo. The squid was the freshest and most perfectly translucent ever experienced, with a silken texture and just-perfect mouth feel. The Mackerel was sea water fresh and unparallelled. In all of the sushi and sashami dishes, the rice is superb with just the right stickiness and an aromatic flavor that complements the seafood.
The decor is minimalist Japanese and, as yet, unfinished. The tables and seating are functional, comfortable and secondary to the food. Here, unlike some Japanese restaurants, decor is not the central focus, rather the food takes center stage. One would prefer linen napkins, however, especially in a restaurant of this quality.
Service was good, not perfect, but good. It is clear that the Des Moines wait staff are learning what Japanese service is and what it entails. Miyabi-san gives frequent guidance and direction to his servers from behind his sushi bar. He knows exactly what he is doing and, doubtless, has a high vision for the eventual standards of his restaurant. You can see it in his watchful and all-encompassing eyes.
With the small mechanical kinks worked out, Miyabi 9 will emerge as the best Japanese restaurant ever to be in Des Moines. There is a clear leader now. The Waterfront no longer holds its slim lead over Appare. Taki fails to measure up to either of those two pretenders. Miyabi 9 has appeared and conquered. This is Japan and Japanese cuisine. This is the result of mastering 700 years of tradition handed down from one master to the next. This would be a great Japanese restaurant in Japan.
There is a nice wine selection and the requisite selection of Japanese beer and sake. The prices are reasonable; the pours are generous.
A and D's tab was $43 with two glasses of a very good Chardonnay. A generous tip brought lunch to $55. At roughly $27 each, for this quality of food, it was a bargain. The same lunch at Nobu in London would have been over $300.
Welcome to Des Moines, Miyabi-sensei!
Overall Rating: 4.5
Food Quality: 5.0
Service 3.5
Ambiance: 3.5
Value: 4.5
Dec 15, 2007 docpark
Finally, an authentic Japanese restaurant in Des Moines. Mr. Miyabi is a classically trained Japanese chef. He apprenticed with the same master chef as Nobu. The food is as good as the best you can get in New York or San Francisco, barring the limited sushi choices due to being in the middle of the continent. Mr. Miyabi makes sure everything is fresh. Recommend anything from the sushi bar, the Una-ju which is rice covered with roasted eel, Udon -a savory noodle soup. Newcomers to Japanese cuisine can start with the fried pork or chicken filets -called pork or chicken Don-Katsu (dohn gaht-soo). Prices very reasonable for the exremely high quality.