Shogun Steak House — Restaurant in El Paso

I was in town as part of a several day stay of a road trip. I had heard about Shogun and thought I'd give it a try. I'm from San Diego and we have a similar restaurant called Benihana. I've been to Benihana a number of times so I sort of knew what to expect. Well, Benihana this is NOT. The only diners in the restaurant when I entered were a couple and their young son (on a Wednesday at 5:30 pm). They had already ordered and were eating their soup when I arrived. Being that we were the only customers in the place, I had to awkwardly join their table. When the waitress brought soup and salad for me they were served at the same time. This is not the norm, but I had arrived late. I must have misread my invitation. The soup and salad each were served in ugly plastic bowls. The salad had a ginger dressing that was thick ("creamy style"), which was decent, but I'm used to Benihana with a thinner, snappier ginger dressing. The soup was a thin broth with a little bit of sliced carrot, a little bit of sliced onion and something that looked sort of like a cucumber, but I can't be sure because I didn't eat it. I ordered the steak and chicken combo, which comes with rice (I upgraded to fried rice), and veggies (zucchini, onions and alfalfa sprouts). There were a lot of mushrooms mixed in with my steak and chicken. The fried rice was pretty good though, again, I'm spoiled by Benihana because they use garlic butter and garlic on their rice. There was no "artwork" made of the rice. At Benihana they make Pac-Man, Mickey Mouse or just a heart (which they make "beat" by putting the spatula under it and gently pressing up and down). They also "break" the heart by cutting it with the spatula. None of this was part of the "show" at Shogun. The chef did twirl the pepper shaker and catch it behind his back. Mildly impressive, but then, he was playing to a very small "crowd". He did make an onion "tower", though the slices were thicker than they make them at Benihana. One difference is that he put some liquids inside the tower and actually lit them on fire, which unnerved the young child at the table. Benihana does a "steam" version rather than actual fire. I thought the fire was pretty cool. The chicken wasn't breast meat, which was disappointing. The steak was ok but not spectacular. I definitely didn't think the $25.95 price tag for the steak and chicken combo was a fair price. The father of the young boy, however, was quite impressed. Clearly he's never been to Benihana, though he mentioned he had been to a Shogun in Georgia and the one in El Paso was better in his opinion. I think I'll avoid the one in...

We have tried two of the three Japanese steakhouses in El Paso and decided to try this one, since we really liked the Shogun’s in a different city we lived in. As it’s Valentine’s Day we expected a wait to be seated but that wasn’t as long, drink orders were taken right away, and food order wasn’t far behind it; But the time it took to get the salads after the soups was quite a while, and then the time before the chef came out and start cooking was close to an hour. We asked for YumYum sauce instead of ginger dressing on the salad and It was way watered down. Plus, They don’t offer any sauces with the hibachi, like every other place I’ve been to, but that would be forgivable if the experience was better. Food wasn’t great, they don’t warn you that there’s sesame seeds in the rice and then the fried rice was barely fried and had no flavor! It was like steamed rice with some extras. The vegetables were sad, only zuchinni and onion barely seasoned, and cooked poorly. The menu made it sound like there would be mushrooms but that was cooked with the meat, not cooked with the rest of the vegetables. Then, to make everything worse, my 13 year old ordered the Teppan Chicken on the adult menu, because she is 13, and the chef gave all the adults that had chicken with their order the majority of chicken leaving her with a small portion for her meal, she ended up with a smaller portion of chicken than my 10 year old’s junior steak. Speaking of steak: don’t order the kids steak, it’s more of a few thinly sliced rouladen style steak pieces and not an actual steak; had we known I wouldn’t have ordered that.

Positives: employees were really nice, and the atmosphere was nice. It gets 2 stars because of friendly staff and proteins were cooked like we expected, aside from my 10 year old’s steak because medium rare with those slices is impossible.

Absolutely would not recommend. Way too much money for not a great experience, we...

I’ve been coming here since I was a child and I feel the customer service has gotten progressively worse over the years. I recently went to celebrate my graduation and took my entire family. My 75 year old grandma doesn’t have a big appetite so she ordered a kids meal due to the smaller portion. They said that she could not order from the kids menu. So my grandma just got a soup. When our food comes out, my grandma picked off a little bit of food from my mother’s plate and the waitress, who is also the owner never said anything. While our food was being cooked, we noticed the cook was preparing a plate on the side on top of ours. We didn’t think anything of it, thinking maybe it was a to-go order. Well, when our bill comes out we were charged 2 additional plates that we did not receive on top of the 5 we already ordered. When we asked the owner she said “I charged your mother for picking off of your plate. She should’ve gotten her own if she was going to do that.” After they were already getting our money from our big party, she still wanted to charge my grandmother a nonexistent plate that she didn’t eat. Turns out the 2nd plate we got charged for was the chefs plate. He made himself a plate and didn’t tell her I suppose and we got charged for it. On top of all of this, the owner, waitresses and hostess was extremely rude and unreasonable. It was so embarrassing to take my family there and for us to experience this when we are paying customers. So sad because I have been a loyal customer for years and I receive this treatment. Needless to say I will never be...