Wakame Japanese and Thai Cuisine — Restaurant in Auburndale

Let me be clear when I say this was a “one & done” stop for my family & I.

I’m very understanding to new businesses, especially restaurants.

Yes, this was a soft opening, I understand hiccups. But tonight, we were sat and ordered by 6:10pm. 4 other tables were sat 15+ minutes after us. All the other tables received their foods, apps & desserts and were gone by 7:10pm.

Half our table got their food at 7:15pm. My fiancé & I didn’t get food until 7:30pm.

My steak hibachi was the equivalent of sauced beef jerky, so well done it hurt my jaw to chew. It was ordered medium per my server.

My kids (no kids menu here btw) ordered chicken tempura, and there was mass confusion as to what the difference between the appetizer sized portion & meal size portion actually was. Turns out, there’s no difference, it’s just double the price & the meal comes with soup + a bowl of rice.

The server would hyper fixated on one table and then be oblivious to everyone else around him. I tried getting his attention to alert him about my way overdone steak 3 times while he walked past us, but he just kept going in his “own zone”.

When he finally stopped to ask us how it was, I explained how bad my steak was, and he surprisingly agreed in whole that it looked bad (then why’d you bring it out to me??).

His resolution- he was going to talk to the chefs to see IF they WILL remake it for me (my entire family was done eating at this point) or he will see if he can have it voided from the check.

I didn’t want to wait another 85 minutes, so I obliged to have it removed.

No follow up from the server. No follow up from management. Management walked around several times and made no effort for a service recovery at all.

I’m not looking for apologies, discounts or anything hyperbolic. I just want to warn anyone who’s thinking of coming here that our experience was horrible.

I’m not usually critical to new places like this, but it was obvious that this was “normal” to the server & management as there was no effort to make things better, as I got to pay $60 to watch my family eat as I sat there.

Needless to say, we’re not coming...

What a lovely, peaceful, pleasant atmosphere, even with a couple of other customers, it was very relaxing & quiet. First time here for dinner celebrating upcoming birthday a bit early. Will def make this a lunch routine. We ordered as presented on the menu: Hibachi steak, vegetables, & fried rice, Chicken teriyaki, vegetables, & white rice, both chose green salad as sides, and shared calamari appetizer. Didn't get pics of salad or full plate of calamari as they were so good, a flavor of salad dressing I'm not familiar with so not sure what it was, but it was addictive! A large platter of food arrived with a vibrant mix of fresh sauted vegetables... zucchini, mushroom, onion, broccoli, carrot, garnished with long shreds of carrot on curly kale. A bottle of the most delicious Yum Yum sauce was brought to the table along with dinner. Prices are more than reasonable for the amount of food, which we both could not finish so had takeaway boxes to enjoy our meal again, tomorrow. You need to give them a try. We have never tried sushi, perhaps some day we will, they have both raw and cooked and the sushi counter looked very enticing so cannot...

Very disappointed. This was my first and last time. No flavor. I had the combination steak and shrimp with fried rice. Tons of hard hardly cooked vegetables. The meat was tough as well as the shrimps. You can tell the shrimps were precooked. Again no flavor. It seemed they forgot to fully integrate the flavors prior cooking it. We started with the side salad. It consisted of iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing and few strings of carrots. Then we had the crab Rangoon. Nothing out of the ordinary. As a food critic, this was a horrible experience. When I spoke to the manager, he apologized and insisted in giving us another similar plate. We told them we were leaving since we hardly touched our food. He then came back with the bill and took 20% off instead of the entire bill since we didn’t eat. Then when we were leaving, some lady came running to us and gave us to-go same food. Why? We just told them we didn’t like it. So we ended up paying $28.12. Never...