Tokyo AYCE Sushi Hot Pot Lake Charles — Restaurant in Lake Charles

This restaurant was easily one of my favorite restaurants in Lake Charles to go to, my son and I have dined in on multiple of occasions for the AYCE hot pot for their lunch and dinner services, but yesterday 8-17-25 around 6:30 ish hostess Chyna went above and beyond to try and ruin our dinning experience and lose us as return customers. We walked in and we were greeted by a hostess not sure of her name but she asked if we were having hot pot? I said Yes a table for 2, she said ok there was a table being cleaned and we would be next. We could have continued to stand and wait for the table but both myself and my son chose to sit down in front of the hostess station while waiting. There were no other people waiting at this time and no wait time was giving to us. Our table was just being cleaned. Within a short period of time a 4 top comes in and they want hot pot as well. I hear the hostess tell THEM it would be about a 15 min wait. The 4 top proceeds to sit down to wait as well. China comes up to the hostess stand and she and the other hostess have a discussion and Chyna proceeds to go and sit the 4 top that came in AFTER us at the table that we were waiting on to be cleaned. So I asked the other hostess why are we being skipped over? We were waiting on that table and we were told we would be next, that’s when Rude Chyna comes back from seating the 4 top and begins to argue with me about that being a bigger table for the party of 4 and we are only a party of two and we have to just wait for a smaller table to come available. They assumed that since we were only 2 people that we should just have to wait for another table with 4 hot pots to come available instead of sitting us at the table that was already offered to us when we first walked in that has 6 hot pots. I tried to explain this to Chyna because she wasn’t there when we first walked in ,but she didn’t want to hear me all she wanted to do was cut me off from speaking and argue with me about us only being a party of two and that they’re a party of 4 so the table goes to them no matter what ! Even if we were waiting there first. Well If that is the rule of this restaurant then that should have been explained when we first walked in. If a party with 4 or more people comes in AFTER us we will have to forfeit our table. Meanwhile, I am frustrated and all China wants to do is continue to argue and go back and forth with me because she was determined to be right and make it a point to tell me that I was wrong! She could care less about my feelings of frustration from being skipped over and not knowing about this 4 top rule.So I asked to speak to a manager. The manager walks up and I begin to explain to her my experience and what I just encountered. China is standing behind the hostess station talking to another hostess making rude comments and being VERY Unprofessional talking about me as if I wasn’t standing right there! Now at this point I am MAD and I could have easily made a seen inside of this restaurant right in the middle of dinner service with all the things that were being said by Chyna behind the hostess stand, just rude! The manager I was speaking with could hear her as well and I really should have just walked out and left at this point, but like I said before I really do enjoy the food here and hot pots are one of my favorites so I wasn’t going to let one hostess ruin my night, but after this bad experience with Chyna, this restaurant will not be my first Choice to patronage on a Saturday night...

Update: I've been here a few times now, and have been impressed with how they are progressing. This is one of the best dining experiences in town. They have added more hot pot flavors and offer different levels of heat on the szechuan (I reccomend starting with hot). The sauce bar has been improved and now has a house sauce that is pretty good. The hot pot menu also includes sushi, but you wouldn't know unless someone told you. I have had the sushi a few times and although its not my favorite AYCE selection in town, its not bad. There are too many deep fried offerings and not enough raw rolls for my liking.

My only note of improvement would be to update the printed menus. Include the all hot pot bases and spice levels, let people know about the sauce bar and that sushi is included with hot pot, and better categorizing and improving sushi roll selections. I went on opening day and was pleasantly surprised. I had the Sichuan hot pot and was pleasantly surprised. This is only place in town that I know of that has actual Sichuan anything. For opening day, I think they really did a pretty good job. Food was better than I was expecting for Lake Charles and service was good. I’ll return to try the sushi side and update accordingly.

Some areas that could use improving: Sauce bar - the bar was out of several items 2/3 times I went. Fried garlic needs a spoon instead of tongs. There needs to be a house sauce for the noobs who don’t know how to make a good sauce.

Menu - Hot pot pricing for dinner makes a large jump that isn’t really justified by additional offerings in my opinion. I don’t think I would visit for dinner hot pot. There needs to be an option to add sushi to hot pot (not uncommon with hot pot/sushi/bbq places).

Consistency - I don’t want to over order, but there needs to be some kind of expectation on what will come from the kitchen. I ordered beef 3x and received 3 different portion sizes. It would be very helpful to replace the menu pictures with actual photos of the portion size to assist in ordering...

After contemplating and telling this story to my friends in food service I have decided to write a review about my friend and my experience dining in at Tokyo AYCE on 7/17 ( PSA: long text). They serve Non-alcoholic (NA) Piña Colada’s and Strawberry Daiquiris, so we ordered some. Note that me and my friend are both 20 so if the waiter had understood our order as being the alcohol cocktail she should have ID’ed us and the “misunderstanding/happy accident” would have ended there. We got our drinks and went on with our dinner, no notable taste of alcohol in either of our drinks. The sushi rolls and hot pot were very delicious, so I have no complaints there. Our ticket came out and I noticed we were charged $9 for our drinks instead of the 4.50 on the NA menu, so I thought we were overcharged for two drinks on accident. I point the price out to our waiter and she said that was the price for the drinks we ordered. I pointed to the price listed for the NA, and how that’s what we ordered. She said that we had received alcoholic drinks and had drank most of them already so regardless we’d have to pay that price, I repeated how we had ordered NA drinks though and we didn’t know we had received alcoholic drinks. To which she repeated how we received alcohol and drank it, where I responded citing how we are both 20, and couldn’t have ordered alcohol even if we wanted to and how we didn’t even taste any alcohol in the drinks to have said anything sooner. She said she would go get her manager and walked off. I saw her go to the terminals and to the bar. She came back saying that the bartender had made the drinks NA even though they were rang in as Alcoholic as a “happy accident”, and proceeded to take the cups away from us (my friend still had about 1/3 of her drink left that she hadn’t drank yet) and if they didn’t have alcohol in them why take them away? A Manager never came up and talked to us about it all, we just paid, tipped, and left in...