Happy Teriyaki Dupont — Restaurant in DuPont

Well, I went here with good friends so I had a wonderful time, but that had nothing to do with the food or the service. Without a doubt, this was the WORST teriyaki I have EVER had. Now, I'm from South Seattle where we have lots of great teriyaki, but I've also tried lots of places around Puget Sound. And nothing has ever approached this level of awfulness. In fact, i don't think I've ever had BAD teriyaki before this.

My friend ordered chicken and tempura. The chicken was half of a grilled chicken thigh, sliced, with a few stripes of teriyaki sauce. The tempura was one shrimp and five huge pieces of vegetable (sweet potato, potato, mushroom, broccoli and onion). The batter didn't look too bad, but the the side of vegetables turned out to be big chunks of steamed (not even stir fried), tasteless cabbage.

Two people had fried rice, which looked like a plate of steamed rice tossed with the ubiquitous frozen mixed vegetables, and maybe a LITTLE bit of the protein of choice. Didn't even look like there were any eggs in it.

But I ordered spicy pork with extra veggies instead of rice. Which gave me 1/2 cup of steamed cabbage instead of 1/4 cup that seemed to be the standard stingy portion size. But what really shocked me was the meat. What I was expecting was thin sliced pork shoulder, marinated and then grilled. Since i ordered spicy, I'd expect them to throw in some red pepper flakes and maybe some siracha on top. What I got was a plate of a sweet red BBQ sauce with a lot of big soft onion pieces and some slices of some kind of precooked pork that was heated in the sauce. There was no resemblance to teriyaki of any kind. And it wasn't spicy ... At all.

The server took our orders, brought us water, and delivered the food. That's the last we saw of her, until she brought the check. She never brought the chopsticks we requested, never came back to refill our water or ask if we needed anything.

The fact that we had to ask for chopsticks (because there were only forks on the table) tells me a lot about this place. Granted, most teriyaki joints don't have many Japanese customers, because what they serve as "teriyaki" doesnt have much resemblance to the traditional dishes. But still, there's a certain standard I expect in the preparation of the meats and in the quality and amount of sauce. I'm not picky about whether they serve salad or stir fried vegetables (which can be mostly cabbage, but should include at least a little carrot and onion), as long as it TASTES GOOD.

I understand that this is a franchise and I don't know if the recipes are standard everywhere. And it's a pretty remote area and there were plenty of customers, so maybe this is what passes for...

Don't waste your time or money!! My husband and I walked over to the " Unhappy Teriyaki' last night from our hotel. He is doing a lot of work in this area so we were looking for a good Japanese food option for him. ( I was visiting for the weekend) . We were greeted by a young woman at the counter who clearly was not happy we arrived, let alone decided to dine in. It was 8:30 and they closed at 9:00 which we didn't know and weren't told. There was one other couple there when we sat down. She was walking fast and acted huffy and impatient with every encounter with us and them. We no sooner ordered when she was turning off the lights in the coolers and was preparing to close. It was obvious that she wanted out of there and didn't want to be there. In spite of her we actually enjoyed the food. My husband ordered Sake and I had a beer. We were enjoying ourselves and trying to ignore her attitude and negative Karma. She walked up to as at 8:55 and announced. " you only have 5 minutes to drink your alcohol because we close at 9pm". We looked at each other like 'what the heck?"' .. we still had about half of our drinks left. She flipped the open sign to close. Her attitude was getting worse and I questioned that we had to 'hurry our drinks' so that she could get out of there and get to her agenda. We were discussing it between us and she overheard us and stormed over to our table and said in a very angry way, " It's state law that you can't have a drink in your hand after 9:pm." I got upset and said "fine", we chugged our drinks down and got up to leave and I said to her , "it's obvious you don't want to be here and you don't want us to be here, so we are out of here and won't be back". We left and my husband was very frustrated with the whole situation and walked back in long enough to tell her that he felt we were treated very rude and that she should have told us that they closed and 9 and about the drink thing from the get go and not wait till 5 minutes before closing. She said to my husband " your wife was rude" and of course he said back to her ' She was reacting to you and we will not be back'. We would go again for the food, but would never step back in there because of her. Unfortunately she represents the business. It was awful!...

As I walked into the restaurant at 4:40ish with a smile on my face and a hello, the hostess ASKED if my meal was for here or to go. I replied to go. She POINTS to the menu. As I went to sit down by the beautiful koi pond, I asked if they had a special, she POINTS to the menu on the chalk board which is facing away from me. I get up to check it out. I decide to sit back down to look at what's on the menu. I choose to get the special they had for two people, which cost around 23.00, except I wanted to change out the teriyaki chicken for something of the same value. Mind you there were only 2 tables occupied and they had the meals in front of them. The hostess said she wasn't able to do that, so I kept looking at the menu, I asked a waitress that was behind the counter about their combo meal she told me that if I LOOKED at the top it tells me what I need to know. But most of them had teriyaki chicken, which I did not want. So I ended up getting the Kat shoo pork and orange chicken. My price came out to 19.50. I ask for a cup of tea as I waited for my meal, the young waitress told me that they didn't have any receptacles to carry liquids and that they don't give tea away. Of course that is not true as I have always, 100% of the time gotten complimentary hot tea with my meals and when waiting for my meals. The young waitress told me that restaurants will normally charge 2 dollars a cup. The hostess gave me a cup of tea anyways. When I got home my husband looked at the orange chicken and said "that's not orange chicken". It was so soggy it tasted like mush and the kat shoo pork...