Nakato Japanese Restaurant & Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Charlotte

Made reservations for 7pm. We arrived around 6:15 and let the receptionist know we were there, albeit a bit early. She was extremely friendly, found the reservation and told me they would send a text when our table was ready. No problem. I’m always early, so I expected nothing more. Not a problem enjoying conversation with my party for a half hour or so. Ten minutes later, I received said text and our table was ready. Pleasantly surprised, we made our way inside. Beautiful restaurant with lovely modern decor. Very clean and professional looking. It wasn’t “gaudy” or tacky. Once seated, our drink orders were taken in minutes. Our drinks arrived in less than 3 minutes. Our waitress was very pleasant, friendly, and patient with our questions. Our orders were taken, and our appetizers arrived promptly with the soup. Soup was hot and fresh and very tasty. The chef then made his way out, and confirmed the order taken prior by the waitress before he started to prepare the meal. This is the only reason there isn’t 5 stars. My vegetable order and my wife’s were incorrect. After telling them the corrections, the chef and waitress still couldn’t get the order right. We finally made it as clear and precise as possible and everything was made correct with their apologies. Everything was amazing. The noodles, soup, shrimp and vegetables. We all had NY strip with chicken. Our steaks were cooked to perfection as ordered and melted in your mouth. The hibachi rice, a $2 up-charge, which is a bit of a “Nickle and dime” tactic, is a bit unnecessary, but I understand. (For the record, boiled white rice is included) However, the rice was perfectly cooked and sauced. Chicken was thoroughly cooked, but not over cooked. Food was great, service was almost perfect, and the chef was great and had a great personality and made the dinner enjoyable. Prices were par for the course for the quality of food. Shrimp sauce was impeccable!! Ginger salad dressing was very good as well. One of the party members had sushi, and said he could have ate another order. This was our first time there, and it won’t be the last. My son, 12, asked if we would be coming again half way through the meal. A couple small hiccups as mentioned in the review is the only reason I didn’t give 5 stars. It was very crowded and had a wait. I would suggest making a reservation, especially on a Saturday night. Great job...

I took my cousin to this restaurant to celebrate his 40th birthday on Saturday night. The restaurant seemed clean and majority of the staff was friendly and helpful. I wish I had gotten my waiter's name, as he was also good. However, the hibachi chef assigned to our table was not very pleasant at all. I've been to hibachi restaurants multiple times and I understand how the chefs like to play and joke with the customers, which is fine so I tried to keep a positive attitude when he told my cousin to "deal with it", when my cousin asked about white sauce. ....Please just ignore the fact that that was a complete run-on sentence just now, I'm writing out of emotion, lol. Anyway, my cousin asked did they have white sauce ( as this is what he was familiar with from the hibachi restaurants in his town) And he was told, "that is white sauce," with a certain tone, my cousin and I looked at each other and I said to him, it looks orange and my cousin said to me, mine doesn't usually look like that. The chef then went to pour ginger sauce for my cousin, which he promptly denied by shaking his head and shaking his hand. At that point the chef turns back around and says "deal with it". As I said, this was a celebration and I understand and respect different cultures, most hibachi chefs are very playful, but since this is still on my mind on Monday and we visited Nakato on Saturday, I think that this should be addressed. I don't feel as if the chef made the comment in a playful way and I actually feel very disrespected the more thought that I give to this experience. The chef could have worded his response much better, seeing as how we are the customers! I'm now wishing that I had said something and walked out or at least requested another chef at that moment, but there was a table full of us and I let it go. I do regret doing that now though because after speaking with my cousin about this instance it seemed to have really affected him. I seriously doubt that I will visit this restaurant again, which is sad because the location is convenient and I loved how clean the establishment was, as well as the ease of setting my reservation earlier in the week. Unfortunately they have lost my business and possibly anyone that I share this story with, and I plan to share this with...

First time visit. Definitely make sure to make a reservation with them as that is the only way to get in for the hibachi, otherwise, you may luck out if someone canceled their reservation if you just show up. Make sure your party is all there in order to be seated. Part of our party was running a few minutes late so we had to wait until they arrived before they would bring us to our table. You will receive a text confirmation the day of requiring you to confirm your reservation. If you are more than 10 minutes late, they will cancel your reservation. It took some time for a chef to arrive, even though we were the second party to arrive at opening and it wasn't until the first party was done before we got a chef. I wasn't sure if it was the same one or not as we only saw that chef from behind. If it wasn't for the quality of the food, which was standard hibachi, I would have rated a 1, while our chef was nice, of all the hibachi experiences I've had (upwards of 15-20), I've never had a chef so painfully quiet and boring. We had a party enough to fill the whole table with children and family from out of state and our chef lacked energy and personality. He spoke no more than a quiet "choo choo" during what we had to figure out was a train sound and that was it. No interaction with us and you could cut the silence with a knife. It literally made our entire party feel awkward. We had young children in our party who were experiencing this for the first time and even they were unamused.

The hibachi food was good, very typical hibachi food which is fine, and the staff were friendly. Some of our party got sushi and one loved theirs and the other was not a fan due to a variation in the sauce compared other similar rolls they've had. For the steep price we paid, it was not worth it to us at all to come here as we chose this place for an entertaining experience and it was definitely not that. The people behind us lucked out and we got more entertainment watching their table for two seconds than ours the entire time. We would maybe come here for the open sushi bar but not for the hibachi...