Sakura Nail & Spa : East Village, Manhattan, NY
Nail Removal and basic polish for dali
design by: unknown
technician: unknown
photo credit: Hawazen A. via Yelp
price: $$$
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Overall:★
Sakura Nail & Spa is a quaint Japanese nail studio on the Lower East Side. Although it was high-end and clean, their steep prices and willingness to let me walk out with a less-than-perfect manicure significantly brought down the quality of my experience.
STUDIO: ★★★
The studio is tucked away on the lower level of a brownstone with good natural light and a lovely interior with clean black fixtures that make it really feel like a Japanese spa. The staff are very friendly and offer you tea the moment you enter (and refills throughout your appointment), which was really the best part! The peach green tea was to die for…I have to admit I ended my appointment buzzed on caffeine and with a very full bladder. When I went to the counter to pay after my appointment, the receptionist handed me envelopes with the names of each person who had worked on my nails so I could put the tips inside. I really like this system because then you don’t have to chase down each technician and interrupt their work to give them their tips. It also just feels more civilized - I have always not liked handing people bills directly, it somehow seems demeaning(?). All in all, it’s a great environment to spend an afternoon.
NAIL CARE: ★
Unfortunately, this is where my appointment starts going wrong. The technicians at Sakura had an extremely difficult time removing the gel nail polish that I had on from my trip to Korea (design pictured below). To their credit, this design was a little intense in places, so I don’t know if the polish was particularly tough or if they just didn’t know how to deal with it (they claimed I was wearing “hard gel” when they normally only deal with “soft gel”). In the end, it took them THREE employees and nearly THREE hours to remove my nail polish.
The reason I don’t blame this tragedy entirely on the nail polish I got from Korea is because the designer I went to there is a top nail artist who’s known for doing the nails of celebrities, Kpop stars, etc., so I think she knows what she’s doing. Since this experience, I have had other experiences where I got gel at one studio and went to a different one to remove it and they struggled because it’s different from what they are used, but never was it THIS bad.
I did feel bad that they were struggling so hard to try and get the polish off, but once they did my nails were essentially ruined. They had removed so much of the enamel that there were still bits of scraped nail sticking up when they went to do the polish. I was extremely disappointed.
ART: ★★
The reason I went to this studio was to get another gel design, and from the looks of their Instagram pics and the nails of the customers that were sitting around me, they are capable of doing some nice designs (just make sure to come in only with bare nails or simple gel!). However, because the removal took so long and their prices were pretty high ($60 for calgel polish, $3 per nail for basic design), I decided to just get a coat of regular pink polish, so I can’t speak to their art skill first-hand.
LONGEVITY: ★
I hadn’t gotten regular polish since discovering gel because no matter how long I sit with my nails under the fans waiting for them to dry, I always mess up my nails somehow after leaving the salon. So naturally, this happened right after I left Sakura. Of course this isn’t entirely their fault, but what annoyed me the most was that the polish already looked terrible due to the unevenness of the surface of my nails underneath, and they allowed me to leave their studio in that condition. I think they were fed up with me because of how long it took to remove my polish, but I also spent a lot of my time there, so they should have been more considerate of the customer and ensured that I walked out with a proper manicure. It looked so bad that I immediately removed the polish when I got home. Sadly, this appointment started out strong but ended up feeling like a waste of time and money.