Todoroki Hibachi and Sushi — Restaurant in Evanston Township

What a weird and uncomfortable night. I'll start out by saying my underage kid was getting sake squirted down his throat.

So I took my son here last night for his birthday. We sat on the hibachi side. There were only 2 chefs working and the place wasn't even 1/2 full.

It took more than 20 minutes for a waitress to take our orders. Never got asked for drink orders. We ordered the gyoza, edamame, and nigiri regular to start. We each had the filet mignon hibachi and I asked the waitress if we could have scallops with the filet since scallops were an option on the other 2 meat choices. She said yes & never mentioned any additional charge. Then when I asked her about maybe sharing just one hibachi since we ordered so much food for 2 people, she said there would be an additional charge for sharing. My son said he would eat a lot so we ordered 2 hibachis.

It took another 20 minutes to get our starters. The gyoza was pretty good and the nigiri was fresh. However, we got ALL of the starters all at once. None of it was paced and fortunately, my son and I had the entire side of the table to ourselves to make room for it all. And I thought it was weird that we had to ask for chop sticks. And we got a strange look when we asked for them.

Then about another 20 minutes went by and the chef finally made it to our table. It was a fun little show - nothing spectacular. Part of the show is him squirting sake in our mouths. However, I wasn't aware that it was sake. And when he got to my son, he squirted A LOT in his mouth. Of course, my son didn't say no and kept his mouth wide open for as long as he could - he's in high school! When I asked if that was sake and the chef said yes, I said he's not 21. The chef looked pretty panicked. I didn't want to ruin my son's night so I just said it's ok but don't give him any more. Then we all had to catch a piece of broccoli in our mouths. I caught mine so more sake. We had like a total of 3 sake turns that went around.

The hibachi was decent but nothing spectacular. And definitely way over priced. Then we had to wait another 20 minutes or so just to get our check.

Now for the really bad part - when the waitress took our orders, apparently she thought the guy and little girl on the other side of the table was with us. They were on the OTHER SIDE of the table.... so he got our check with his. When she finally straightened it out, I saw that I was charged and additional $11 for the scallops on each of our hibachis and they charged me for sake shots. It would have been helpful if they had mentioned there was a charge for every time he squirted us. And she should have mentioned that the scallops would be extra when I ordered. When I pointed out that she never said the scallops would be extra, she said "Oh, well it is".

And when we were first seated, I did mention it was my son's birthday. I figured they could bring him a little something with a candle like restaurants do. But it wasn't until she brought our checks that I had to remind her. So she then brought out a scoop of ice cream with tempura fried bananas and a candle. At that point it was pretty lame.

And if all that wasn't bad enough - every party at our table was charged an additional 18% gratuity!

I knew that I was ordering the most expensive items on the menu and was fine with that. But I wasn't told about the extra charges at the end. And given my final bill was just short of $200 for 2 people, they should have been way more accommodating and apologetic for completely screwing up the bill and definitely should have taken off the extra charge for the scallops.

Not to mention I was EXTREMELY cool (maybe cooler than most parents) with them squirting the equivalent of several shots of sake in my kid's mouth. This mistake could cost them their liquor license for certain! But they couldn't be cool about $22?? And it was really uncool to charge everyone at the table a gratuity. We were separate parties - not one big party. And the waitress pretty much did nothing except screw up my whole check.

I definitely won't...

Good Afternoon Readers, Today, as many of you may know, was Todoroki's Anniversary special: BOGO all-you-can-eat sale. I am a man that likes a deal, and so I went, and I went with a smile on my face. I walked away with a weak apology and a pricier lunch than I had expected. I personally had not seen the ad for the BOGO sale, but my friends had, and they informed me of the incredible opportunity. I was enthralled by this prospect; I could potentially be saving more than I spent to eat some of my favorite sushi. We walked in, and were asked to wait 15 minutes-- a reasonable amount of time I would think. We were seated after a half-an-hour, and were presented with their all-you-can-eat menu. The menu stipulated that for groups over the size of 5 people, an 18% gratuity would be added automatically... there were four of us. The waitress then expanded upon the deal, and explained that we would effectively be purchasing two all-you-can-eat options, because the other two would be free. This mentality was reflected later, when the receipt explicitly stated that there were two guests (we’ll come back to this later). This seemed like a pretty sweet deal to me, so we confirmed with her that we were going to do two all-you-can-eat meals. We initially selected a hefty quantity of the food we wanted, but we noticed that there was a $1 fee per piece of sushi that we didn’t consume. So we reduced our quantities, afraid that we wouldn’t be able to finish our food. We submitted our first all-you-can-eat form and received the first appetizer after 40 minutes, and the sushi followed about 20 minutes after that. We were hungry, and naturally, our first order wasn’t enough to satisfy our hunger, so we submitted a second round for the all-you-can-eat. Unfortunately, we were painfully aware of how long this would take, but our fear of not finishing all of our sushi caused us to order in waves. After our third order, we had been at Todoroki for a total of 3 hours and it was time to get our bill. We received the bill, and the receipt clearly delineated that there were two guests (because of the BOGO deal) and that we were charged for four all-you-can-eat deals and subsequently discounted the list price of two of the deals. The subtotal before the discount was around $100 for the four of us, which is a traditionally an incontrovertibly expensive lunch. The discount gave us about $50 of the $100 back. So far so good! However, when we looked at the service fee, there was a pre-applied 18% gratuity, not on our adjusted total, but rather on the $100 subtotal. Just to clarify, we spent $50 on the food, and provided a 36% tip that we didn’t choose. The waitress explained to us that the ad clearly stated that the tax and the service fee would be based off of the subtotal, but didn’t address the fact that there should never have been a service fee because there were only four of us. We ended up forking over about $90 between the four of us but we weren’t very happy about it. After leaving the restaurant, I realized I wasn’t all that surprised. The first time we had gone to Todoroki, we asked if we could apply the student discount, and the serving staff told us that in order to get the discount we’d have to pay entirely in cash. Our bill was $120 at this point, and it seemed like they were banking on the fact that a group of college students wouldn’t have that much cash on them. Fortunately we had enough cash, but if we didn’t, they wouldn’t have honored the sizeable discount. Ultimately, I was superbly disappointed in Todoroki’s profits-over-customers mentality. There was no money to be saved today, only disappointment...

ALMOST SENT ME GIRLFRIEND TO THE HOSPITAL!!!

I've eaten here before and it was decent so I'm just really confused and disappointed at this last time. I ordered takeout form here on grubhub and mentioned TWICE on the order for them to please separate any shrimp from the hibachi dish and cook it separately from anything that had touched shrimp or seafood because I had someone in my group with a seafood allergy. I specifically used the words "do not cross-contaminate" anything, which anyone with common sense would take to mean that dissimilar items should not touch or be packaged together; aka fish should not touch non-fish items. After that I called and reiterated this verbally to the staff and asked them to please make sure nothing non-fish touched any thing that was a fish dish in my order. When I went to pick it up, I asked if they separated everything and they confirmed that they did.

When I finally got home and opened the food, the first thing I saw was that they packaged the regular sushi with the vegetarian sushi. Thankfully, they separated the shrimp so they got that part right. I was annoyed, but not planning on making a fuss so I just figured I would not give those rolls to my girlfriend since they had been packaged with fish. As I was eating them, I found a hair in one of the rolls. I decided to call just to inform them that there was a hair in it and to please be more careful. Again, didn't feel like causing a fuss so I didn't mention the botched packaging job since I didn't give it to my girlfriend. Then, I found a piece of chicken in her rice that was not cooked through. If that wasn't bad enough, she still had an allergic reaction to her rice because something obviously touched fish. I called back and explained this to the restaurant and all they offered me was a $5 credit and a "too bad we tried" response. Wendy, the less than helpful manager, claimed that all their chefs wore hairnets. Well, it looked like an eye lash or freshly shaven hair and was embedded in the cream cheese so it definitely came from them and I explained that to her. She didn't care. She also claimed that they treat all sushi the same so they can package veggie and regular sushi together. What sense does this make? Especially given the fact that I made 4 separate attempts to convey that there was an allergy and that things could not cross-contaminate. Either they need to open a dictionary and look up cross-contamination or go back to hospitality school and learn how to prepare/package food. She claimed that I was at fault because I only mentioned separating the shrimp...well I said don't cross-contaminate anything and told the man verbally on the phone to make sure nothing non-fish touched fish so no, that wasn't my mistake; it was theirs. At that point I just wanted a refund because they botched the order and did NOT make every reasonable attempt to accommodate us as they claimed. We barely even touched the food. The level of disservice I received regarding the matter was absolutely disgusting. They messed up and wouldn't even own the fact that they made a careless mistake that could have potentially put someone in the hospital. I have no faith that they cooked the other food properly because of the blatant error they made in packaging the sushi. Way to go, Todoroki. They're just about money here; no accountability, problem resolution skills or critical customer service skills. I wish I could give them 0...