Ichibiri Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Dana Point

Do not go!!!!! Just look into goin to another place! I warned you!

Edit: Plus they carged a $5 fee for my kids sharing a plate! So not ok! They didn't even let us know ahead of time. Such scmammers!

I wish I could give this place zero stars. We came in hoping for a nice dinner to celebrate my 11-year-old son’s birthday, but what we got was one of the worst dining experiences ever. From the moment we walked in, the service was beyond rude. Our server literally threw the menus onto the table where we were commanded to sit. When I politely asked if we could sit on the other side, she mumbled something under her breath and acted like I had just ruined her day.

She didn’t even give us a minute to breathe, let alone look at the menu. Every two minutes, she kept coming back, pushing us to order. When we finally asked for more time, she stormed off with an actual hate face—I kid you not. By that point, the whole mood of our dinner was ruined, but we decided to go ahead and order a whole bunch of sushi along with our teppanyaki. BIG mistake.

This place is not a sushi restaurant, and it shows. The sushi was downright awful, probably the worst we’ve ever had. And the teppanyaki? Tasteless. It felt like they bought the absolute cheapest ingredients they could find and just threw them onto the grill without a second thought. The whole meal was a disaster.

To top it all off, I went to the host and demanded to speak to a manager. The host disappeared and never came back. After waiting 15 minutes, I finally gave up and went back to my seat. Apparently, customer service is just nonexistent here.

If you’re thinking about eating here—DON’T. The food is bad, the service is even worse, and they clearly don’t care about their customers. They need to seriously check themselves before serving people. Absolutely do...

This was an extreme disappointment and total waste of money. As a visitor from the East Coast, it's difficult for us to understand restaurants without air conditioning - and it gets pretty warm in there from the hibachi. Additionally, the seafood is much different on the West Coast than the East Coast (to each their own). West Coast salmon is much different than Atlantic salmon, and much saltier. We dined here the last week of June 2023 and each ordered from the teppanyaki menu, but chose to sit in a booth as opposed to sitting at the grills.

He ordered slamon and mahi manhi and salmon. The salmon in my opinion wasn't bad, because I like West Coast salmon - it was flaky but very salty. The mahi mahi was an undesired mystery. I ordered chicken and steak. The chicken I had had the texture of rubber, and the steak was cooked as medium well, nearly well-done. I had asked for medium. The rice and noodles also have no flavor. On the bright side, the spring rolls and miso soup were not bad.

Had we not been so hungry, I would have had my steak re-made to medium. The food was not close to being a value for the money and I don't...

This place has really given up completely on customer service and food quality. They recently started charging $5 for each person who wants to share a plate, which is absurd, we have young 5 children.

We came in to celebrate my son’s 4th birthday and had such an awful experience. The waitress was trying to explain to us the menu changes and kept trying to recommend different things to us and I could not for the life of me understand what she wanted me to order. But I could tell that they didn’t want us to share plates. Then when the chef came he asked each of us what we were having and he said we can’t share plates and he was so upset he threw a fit and went to go talk to the waitress. He came back and started cooking and was mostly silent and didn’t interact at all. He gave a lousy dinner show, no effort. He rushed through and didn’t even care. The food had no flavor, there were only onions and no vegetables. This was a sad birthday dinner experience. We will never be coming back. We will go to...