Awagyu Restaurant — Restaurant in Johor

Been here a couple of times and love the food. So I'm just going to do a review for lunch and dinner (we went on different occasions) at one go.

Ambience: The place is well decorated interior-wise. The artificial Sakura tree does give a Japanese theme to it. Restrooms are clean and so is everywhere else in the restaurant. The staff was always going around cleaning, that's a great point.

Dinner: We were recommended to take the special yakiniku platter which consists of 8 types of cut. The waiter was kind enough to demo and cook for us and he said during busy hours, they could just do the demo. Yakiniku 8 types: Great! Value for money as well. My favourite cut is the Sotomomo. The meat is super tender and it just melted in my mouth. The platter is specially marinated in a few types of fruit which gives a sour taste but with sprinkles of black pepper and salt, the taste isn't distinctive. A special dip was served together with the meat but it wasn't for me as it had strong taucu taste but it is supposed to go well with the meat. We like our meat medium rare so basically just 30-45 secs for each side depending on the cut. Chicken Teriyaki: Taste different from a typical Malaysionised Japanese restaurant. The batter coat was really thin, which is good because you don't get quesy easily. The amount of teriyaki sauce coat is also minimal retaining the taste of the chicken. Definitely for future order. Scallop on grill: Don't remember what it's called but it was part of the monthly promotion. It didn't taste anything special, my partner loved it tho, but if I were to compare, I love meat on the grill better. Good for seafood enthusiast.

Lunch: We ordered our favorite Yakiniku Platter. Taste great but this time around, the cuts were more marble, it was juicier and more tender. This is our all time favourite. Actually this set is alot for 2 pax, could also be shared by 3-4. Towards the end of the meal, we almost couldn't finish our food, but to avoid wastage, we forced ourself 😂 Hotate Mentai for appetizer. The amount of cheese/cream was right and it was flamed torched giving it a slightly burnt taste. I prefer this over the grilled scallop but my partner preferred the grilled scallop. Personal preference. Lunch Set of Teriyaki Chicken. The teriyaki chicken was different compared to the dinner but portion was just as big. The chicken was a bit crispy on the top, I preferred the former version. The chicken was on a bed of rice with salad and eggs. Came with side dishes of miso, cawanmushi, gyozas, and pickles. Gyoza was a bit overcooked but it did not spoil the overall experience. There was a few selection of lunch set and I must say that the lunches are value for money. Our next visit might also be during lunch as I find it more relaxing compared to dinner (even tho the window is short). We really took our time to enjoy the food compared to dinner where we were in a rush because it was almost closing hour.

Anything else? Love the sauce/dip bar. The condiments are readily available for guests to try each and one of it. My favourite would be the spicy soy sauce and the green sambal. It's really spicy 🔥 so not for the faint of heart. There are other sauce options. Free flow of green tea. You can get it yourself or the staff as they refill everytime they see the glass is empty. The staffs were really sweet and attentive BUT during lunch I was a bit annoyed. Nothing big but I feel like it needs to be mentioned here for constructive criticism -- we drove a normal car, nothing fancy and when we wanted to park at the designated parking area for customers, a slim chinese waitress was running towards us to let us know that we can't park there. I asked her if the place is closed, she said no and without apologizing -- let us in 🤔 We are plain simple folks but we do enjoy a good meal 😊 so please don't judge. Customer service should go on par with the food. For this, it lose a star...

Came with my partner for dinner to try their wagyu and we ordered the MCS 1 combo set. Didn't manage to note down the name of the Indian waitress but she was very kind to explain the difference between the meats in the MCS 1 (less fat) and MCS 2 (more fat) sets to aid us in our decision making.

California maki wasn't impressive, but it's acceptable. Nothing too wow about it.

Hotate Mentaiyaki was drowning in mentaiko sauce, and the sauce strangely tasted abit fishy. Again, nothing too wow about it.

Wafu salad had little sauce, it was pretty much just a bunch of vegetables with a few drops of sauce which wasn't enough to give the entire bowl a good mix.

Kimchi pickles were decent though!

Chawanmushi was also just acceptable, nothing too wow about it and actually tasted a little more bland as compared to other japanese restaurants. However, the egg was really smooth.

As for the wagyu platter, we've never tried wagyu before so we can't judge the authenticity and quality of the cuts for sure, but there was this one particular cut in the platter which was strangely super fatty even though the waitress said this was a less fat platter.

Food aside, the waitresses and waiters were all really friendly and would respond to your requests. They would also offer to help you with the grilling of meats and show you how to do it yourself. But do take note, they are NOT obligated to grill ALL your meats for you although many reviews here claim that they did grill all the meats for the customers. We were confused why they walked away after grilling one cut for us and never came back so my partner decided to try the grilling himself.

They were also in a rush to clear our table even though we were not leaving yet and not entirely done, particularly this tall Chinese waiter in a suit-like attire. Honestly it felt like he was rushing to chase us out. He also served us at the cashier during payment and asked if the food was okay so I took the opportunity to ask about whether they could actually help us with the grilling of meats and he was so rudely defensive, basically stating that they are not free to do that for every table and that this is a SELF-GRILLING RESTAURANT and not GRILLED-FOR-YOU. To be honest I was only asking because of what I saw on the reviews, I'm not even complaining so I didn't understand why he had to be so aggressive? Odd.

Overall wouldn't come back again despite the RM20 cash...

I have been a loyal customer at Awagyu for quite some time and have recommended this restaurant to countless friends and family for its great meat. However, my visit yesterday completely changed my opinion.

I made a reservation for 8:45 PM for four people, and we arrived on time, only to find that others who had booked for 8:30 PM were still waiting to be seated. When we walked in, the host (who I assumed was the manager) told us we had to wait for tables to be turned over. I thought this would be a brief 5-10 minute wait, but we were told we would have to wait for other diners to finish eating. This made no sense, considering we had a reservation. To make matters worse, they were accepting walk-in customers while we waited, even though it was a busy Saturday night.

The manager didn’t offer any further explanation or assistance—he just walked away to help other diners. Later, a staff member informed us that the only available seating was on the second floor, which had a minimum spending of RM800. After some negotiation, they lowered it to RM500, but why should we be forced to meet a spending requirement for a table that was supposed to be ours based on our reservation?

We eventually sat down at 9:30 PM—45 minutes after our reservation time. We had to push back our plans because of this delay. When we asked for clarification, we were told that customers who reserved for 5:30 PM were late, which caused a domino effect of delays for everyone else. However, didn’t their reservation policy clearly state that tables would be given away if customers didn’t show up within 10-15 minutes? How late were they, exactly, for this to affect all subsequent reservations? This is unacceptable.

As compensation, they offered us two scoops of ice cream. Really? Two scoops of ice cream after we lost almost an hour of our evening is hardly enough to make up for the inconvenience. To add insult to injury, we were given a RM50 voucher to use within 3 months, but with a minimum spending requirement of RM400. That's just not reasonable.

The quality of the meat has also noticeably dropped. I am incredibly disappointed by how this visit turned out. This place is no longer the reliable, enjoyable dining experience it once was, and I will not be recommending Awagyu to...