Kobé Japanese Steakhouse - Tampa — Restaurant in Citrus Park

Service was alright. Had to clarify several times about simple requests, that’s fine, we’re all humans, but still receiving the wrong order with a cheaper substitute and charging me the same price is not alright. I shouldn’t have to hunt someone down to get the right order mid meal.

Food was embarrassing to be say the least. Soup was good, salad was absolutely covered in dressing (might’ve just been soup #2). I also got totally screwed for portions of the good stuff, received 1/2 of the fried rice as everyone else while trying to fix the screwed up order from earlier. Was given an absolutely disrespectful amount of squash in the veggie portion, seriously an 8/1 squash to anything else ratio.

I wasn’t having a great time to say the least at this point but life’s life and maybe the rest of the stuff will be the redeemers of this meal. This was not the case. When the noodles came out it was rough, cheap wet noodles just there to fill you up. That’s fine, many other places do this, cover some overhead yada yada. What’s NOT fine is how somehow every single mushroom on the grill found its way to my plate in one scoop. I hate mushrooms with a passion, but no one would know that, but why the hell did I get an entire veggie size scooped onto my plate when no one else at the table did.

So here I am. With a plate of absolute bs waiting for the protein to be the divine redeemer of this meal. I have a pathetic portion of fried rice, an absolute warcrime amount of squash, a wet and slimy blob of cheap noodles, and finally to top it off the entire table’s ration of mushrooms tossed haphazardly into the middle of everything else I mentioned. It’s looking bleak at this point. Protein wasn’t much better but was the best I had, shrimp wasn’t totally cooked and the steak was fine, though portion sizes were lacking.

Kawasaki my man, you put on a fine performance and cracked some solid jokes. But man did you totally screw me during that meal. Everyone else had a fine time at the table, got solid portions got extra scoops of the good stuff. And I was the only one to get massive extra scoops of squash and maybe 25 mushroom? There’s a difference between joking around in a hibachi experience and just totally killing the dining experience for humor.

I repeat, no one else got a half serving of rice, an extra entire scoop of megasquash, and an entire scoop of all the mushrooms on the grill.

The reasons above mixed with having to chase down a sushi chef to not get dirt cheap, gamey, fishy salmon placed on top of salmon nigiri, totally killed my experience. Not even to mention the price of it all, paying $90 a head for this level of service and food is ridiculous and I will never be doing that again.

Keep in mind, in my years of life, I have never ever written a review about anything food related, but you guys are special! I disliked my meal and experience so much that I had to say something, the feeling of being absolutely gouged and being hungry 2 hours later is a bitter one to digest for such an expensive experience.

I’m not mad, just disappointed. Hibachi should fill you up and put you in a food coma for the night, not have a mangled monstrosity of bottom tier “fill you up” foods on my plate.

This review would have never been written if I had gotten a respectable amount of fried rice. Wish I had a picture but man it was pretty pathetic, like so apparent but no-one else cared cause they got a fine portion. Happy for them, unhappy for me.

Do better Kobe’s, I’m honestly amazed how bad my...

I took my mother out on her birthday on April 2nd to this place after a friend of mine suggested it, and my word, did it truly exceed our expectations.

Let's start with the atmosphere first, it felt like you were walking straight into Japan, from a nice koi pond up front to its cultural themes all the way up to the tables themselves, the people there were also extremely friendly as well greeting you with open arms, it is a great mix of American and Japanese cuisines combined. You can tell this place truly respects its Japanese roots and we were all for it. The tables also gave you the opportunity to socialize and make new friends along the way which was a nice touch as it's not everyday you get to see such a layout like this.

Let's move on to the waitress and the chef for the evening. Our waitress was Hailey and our chef was Steven. They were both excellent people to be around, Hailey's enthusiastic attitude really says a lot about offering great service as she really loves her job and she always brings a smile to people's faces. As for Chef Steven, he really blew us away with his cooking skills, he had a great sense of humor as he entertained us with hilarious food centric jokes as he was cooking our meals, you can tell he had a blast with his job from start to finish, that's how great of a chef he was, he and Hailey were by far the best parts of our experience.

Now we move on to the food. We ordered the Kobe Combo and the Sumo Special, and boy were they scrumptious! Chef Steven's presentations of our meals didn't disappoint at all, they were very well cooked and perfected to the core to get that mouth-watering taste, all their food options are nice, but the Kobe Combo and the Sumo Special were by far the best options they had to offer.

Finally, let's talk about what they do for birthdays. They put cute little chef hats on top of you as a nice gesture, after that, it follows with the waiters, chefs and even the restaurant owners playing drums and singing in both English and Japanese to spice things up, last but not least, they serve a wonderful little cupcake, if you want to celebrate your birthday at a Japanese restaurant, this is the place to go!

In conclusion, I highly recommend this place from the bottom of my heart. We most definitely look forward to returning a second time pretty soon when we...

I usually don’t leave reviews because they aren’t worth the time but this experience genuinely upset me. I dine here all the time and love Kobe’s so my mother in law booked a reservation for 8 for our family to celebrate my birthday. Our reservation was for 5:30 and 7 of the 8 of us were there on time but we let the hostess know we were waiting on my 92 year old grandmother and that it was raining really hard and she would be a little late. We were told that we could not be seated until she arrived and that we could wait at the bar (which was fine with us) and that if she didn’t arrive by 5:45 we would have to order for her (which was also fine with us). At 5:45 we were closing our check out at the bar and the hostess came over to tell us we could no longer be seated because they were going to sit the 6 pm reservations and had 6:30 reservations after that. When we asked if we could get sat after 6pm reservations but before 6:30 reservations (because it is 5:47 at this point and my grandmother had already made it) the chef standing by the host stand responded “Hell no” so we left and the staff at the front sarcastically said “enjoy your birthday!” as we were walking out but I am still so confused why the staff was so hostile towards us in the first place. When we left at 5:50 to go find another place to eat (now with no reservation) we were unable to get a table for 8 anywhere until 7:30pm and my grandmother ended up not getting to eat with us and having to go home before it got too dark for her to drive home. This genuinely ruined my entire birthday experience and now my whole family is refusing to come back so I never even get to have Kobe’s again. I work in hospitality and the fact that your staff had the audacity to more or less cuss at us while we’re being calm and asking questions is insane. The fact that we were on time for our reservation but were told to wait and then told to leave is insane. And the fact that we were being courteous while your staff felt so comfortable being disrespectful is...