Anna R.
Yelp
My mom and I were looking for a hibachi style restaurant and saw from Google reviews, that Soho seemed to be pretty popular. While this restaurant does both teppanyaki and sushi, the majority of the reviews I saw commented on how good the sushi was here. Since we were wanting hibachi though, we still chose the hibachi style. Inside is very atmospheric and the decor is pretty cool. Definetly gives off an experience type of restaurant. They have one side dedicated to tepanyaki/hibachi style cooking and the other for sushi and normal dining. They even have an intimate dining area called the tatami rooms for 4 - 10 guests for sushi or normal dining.
We decided to dine here on a Saturday, which unbeknownst to us is one of their busiest days on the hibachi side of the restaurant. We were told the wait would be a couple hours, but since we were still hungry, we were assured that the hibachi food could be ordered on the normal dining side, just without the cooking show. We had a lovely view of the fountain and restaurant. The staff were very friendly and helpful. All of our food came out very quickly, if not a little too quickly. We had food piling up on our table and felt rushed through our meal. The appetizers we ordered were very good and we were excited to see our main entrees, but were extremely disappointed with what we were given.
I'm giving this experience a 2 star rating because our main food tasted very cheap. I had ordered the shrimp and scallop teppanyaki meal and was pretty disappointed. Typically hibach fried rice is buttery, well seasoned with soy sauce and mirin and has a pleasing grill flavor and so I was shocked with how dry and unseasoned/flavorless my fried rice was. It was reminiscent of the kind you could get at Panda express where the flavor was non-existent, almost washed off tasting. The rest of my food (vegetables, shrimp and scallops) was soaked in what looked like a teriyaki sauce, which I hadn't ordered and my scallops were pretty fishy. Hibachi meat and vegetables don't come smothered in teriyaki sauce. The presentation of the food is pretty, but it was very bland.
From how their menu is laid out in the teppanyaki area, my mother had accidentally ordered the wrong meal for herself, which our server told us was a VERY common mistake there. She had a similar experience of her fried rice being unseasoned and the rest of her meal soaked in teriyaki sauce. She had ordered the filet mignon with hers and also discovered her meat to be flavorless. While our server attempted to negate the mistake with a separate meal, the new food brought was worse than what we originally ordered.
For the amount we paid for our food and the poor quality it turned out to be, we probably won't be returning to this restaurant for their hibachi. I would recommend Panda Express instead, half the price, but more flavor.
**Note: They also don't sell egg yolk sauce, which is very disappointing.