Edo Japanese Grill — Restaurant in Chandler

This was my first time in this new restaurant. The restaurant was clean and the staff was friendly. Prices seemed a little high for a fast-food restaurant, but then discovered the portions are fairly large. Since there was a poster stating they have been open since 1979 and have a teriyaki sauce everyone raves about, I ordered the Chicken Teriyaki bento, with spring rolls and shrimp tempura. The spring rolls were nice and crisp; the filling was flavorful and not soggy. The sweet and sour sauce came in a little sealed container like McDonalds. It wasn't very sweet, which is good since most other fast-food restaurant sweet and sour sauces are too sweet. The shrimp tempura had a nice coating and perfectly deep fried. The shrimp remained tender. The dipping sauce was nothing special. The chicken teriyaki was the problem. It was tiny chopped up pieces of chicken (looked like thigh meat), maybe 4-5 tiny broccoli pieces, few slivers of carrots, alot of white rice, and alot of teriyaki sauce. But the teriyaki sauce was odd. It was more salty than sweet and had a charred, sour taste to it. I tried the sauce separate from the chicken. It's not like any teriyaki sauce I have ever had. I make teriyaki sauce and this lacked the caramel taste of brown sugar and lacked garlic. Traditional teriyaki sauce doesn't have anything sour; no vinegar added. The charred flavor maybe from the wok they cooked the chicken and veggies in. The saltiness is probably the type of soy used and/or they added Worcestershire sauce. Yakisoba sauce has some Worcestershire sauce in it, which can give that smokey-char, salty flavor, but it's not typically added to teriyaki sauce, and this didn't taste like traditional yakisoba sauce. The teriyaki sauce is odd to me. The other problem is when I tasted the chicken alone the chicken was salty. combined with the salty sauce was just too salty. If I return, I won't be ordering the...

We were excited to try a Canadian chain making it's U.S. debut in our city of Chandler, but our experience was underwhelming. I give them a little slack for being a newly opened restaurant, as I know it takes time to work out the kinks. However, certain things are not likely to change. The lack of sound dampening somehow allows the small space to become an echo chamber, where it's hard to hold a conversation during the dinner rush. This and the uncomfortable seating strongly pushes customers out the door for a takeout-oriented business. Ultimately, though, any dining option must be judged by its food, and that is where we were most disappointed. Although the Asian grill is billed as fast food, most americanized Asian restaurants are known for their quick preparation and value for large portions. That context meant the mediocre execution of the dishes we tried left a lot to be desired. The rice was plentiful, but there was surprisingly little protein included in the Orange chicken and Hawaiian chicken bowls. The orange chicken also had no excess sauce to flavor the rice, making it a big bowl of bland white rice. The Hawaiian chicken had plenty of sauce, but it was overly sugary combined with the pineapple chunks. The Sushi-Licious platter really drove home the fast-food feel, as this sushi is only the simplest rolls, with no fresh fish cuts, and it all had a chalky texture. Grocery-store sushi is a...

My wife and I were excited to try a new Japanese place to frequent as we don’t get to dine out very often. We checked the menu before we headed there and it looked decent. The wait to order wasn’t long as there were not many diners there. We decided to try several items from the menu. While waiting for our food we sipped on a brown sugar boba tea. I thought it was impossible to make a sweet milk tea bitter but Edo proved me wrong. The food arrived and the presentation of the bento box looked extremely authentic down to the prepackaged Heinz sweet and sour sauce for the veggie filled, grease stick that I am guessing was the spring roll. Until we dined at Edo we didn’t realize that authentic gyozas should have a burnt bottom and a pasty interior texture. The “sushi” roll definitely left us thinking ocean. The mealy texture and taste reminded me of when I was a kid and was dared to lick my goldfish. The main portion of the bento box was filled with a decent portion of the shaved beef teriyaki. Edo has achieved a truly remarkable culinary feat of making a dish salty while still providing zero flavor. I wish I could say that the texture saved the dish but my parents taught me to never lie. Not all was bad as the preparation of the ice in my Sprite was perfectly frozen water. This experience helped remind us that we are more than 5500 miles...