Koen Japanese BBQ & Sushi — Restaurant in Lincoln

We dined here on 3/27/2022. My wife and I had heard nothing but great things about Koen. Our neighbor two doors down has nothing but praise for Koen. My wife told me that their three daughters also spoke highly of the place, and they even worked there for a time before going off to college (not sure if they still do). We ordered the Koen Sapporo and Kirin. The grilled meats were absolutely fantastic. But we'll never come back.

We arrived around 7pm and were told it would be about 15 minutes. Two other couples (I'll call them A and B) arrived after us. After a 45-minutes wait, couple A was seated ahead of us. My wife looked at the hostess who, upon seeing my wife's surprised expression, said we would be seated shortly. Then more waiting. We were seated closer to 8pm (maybe 7:50pm?). Then it was another 20(?) minutes of waiting after we got seated. Couple B was seated right next to us (tables have two grills for large parties, and a divider that comes down for two sets of couples). To our surprise (or perhaps not), they were already well into their meal before our waiter even appeared.

When he did arrive, he apologized for the long wait. He said no one notified him about our table (strike 2 for the hostess; did she never communicate to the service staff?), and that he was also busy with a much larger party. While I appreciated his honesty, it was disappointing to realize how low we stood on Koen's priority list. We didn't even give him a chance to leave and give us a few minutes to look at the menu out of fear that we would have to wait even longer -- at this point, my wife and I were so tired of waiting we had ordered right then and there. The appetizers (soup, gyoza, crab rangoons) came out surprisingly lukewarm -- like even less warm than if they had been left under a warmer heat lamp for a long time. The shells on rangoons should be crispy; ours were closer to chewy than crispy. No sides (various kimchi) typically served at all the other Korean places we've been to -- not a deal breaker but noticeably different.

Then yet another long wait (felt like half an hour). Part of me wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt (maybe busy night, short staff, etc.). Except we ordered their BBQ, which is cooked at the table -- in other words, there is no cooking time in the kitchen. It's literally raw meats that are brought to the table -- so why in the world did it take so long? It made absolutely no sense to me. To make the evening experience even worse, our sauce plates were dirty. Mine in particular had an extremely liberal amount of what could only be oil stuck to a third of the sauce plate. And the final kicker was their steamed rice. Anyone who eats rice regularly (regularly meaning just about every meal has rice) knows the smell of rice that has gone bad. There is a sour scent that is immediately recognizable. It is the result of leaving rice in a lukewarm environment (e.g. cooked rice that is left in the rice cooker, but unplugged...) for too long. Our rice was, like the appetizers, lukewarm.

You'd think it couldn't get worse... we couldn't get new steamed rice to replace what we were served because they were out. And, the rice we were served was apparently re-heated via microwave (waiter's words; not mine -- again I appreciate the honesty but wow did we feel like second class citizens). They brought us brown rice despite me stating that if they didn't have white rice, then it'd be fine to not bring anything -- I hate seeing food wasted. Unfortunately, it would be wasted on us. Why they didn't already have a new batch of steamed rice ready to go (there were diners who came after us), I'll never know.

As I wrote earlier, their grilled meats are in fact very tasty. Note that you'll be doing the grilling. Other places we have been to, the staff will grill for your if you prefer (we always like doing it ourselves). That didn't seem like an option here (or at least that night).

TL;DR: If you want take a risk on quality control, maybe try arriving at opening hour. Ending it here because of...

This place seemed like a great experience to try, so my group and I gave it a shot. It's a Japanese grill, which is literally in the middle of your table. You can order an assortment of meats, seafood and veggies to cook fresh at your own table.

Food: There were plenty of food options for people with different dietary restrictions. The miso soup was deliciously simple. Salad was really good, fresh and crisp. Sushi was excellent, fresh and well-crafted. As for the Japanese BBQ part, that's obviously more meat-oriented. There are some seafood options too, and a handful of veggies you can get a la carte for the grill. They serve this with your choice of white or brown rice, and soy and ponzu sauces are on the table.

Experience: During our time here, it became obvious that this place was understaffed, and still had to deal with a full house. They probably could have made it easier on the employees and reduced the amount of tables available that night (although business is business, so that's probably a factor). Our waiter was relatively new, but he was kind and did his best despite the rush. But because of the diners to staff ratio, the time spent here became much more than desired. We were waiting on our food at least an hour, and this was all what that we were going to be grilling ourselves, so it seemed unwarranted to wait so long for raw meats and veggies. One meal we did receive was missing two of its components (which were listed as part of it on the menu), and while we eventually got one of the missing ingredients, we never saw the other.

By the time we'd left, we'd been there almost 2.5 hours, when we'd expect to be there at least half of that time.

I'm leaving this review mostly in hopes the restaurant becomes more aware of staffing issues and how it's effecting diner wait times. I'm sure they're hiring, but they could consider cutting back on a few things until they're fully staffed again so that their current staff isn't running around in an overly stressful environment, and so diners aren't waiting for their food for absurd amounts of time. Even for a busy night, 2.5 hours at a restaurant is wild.

Overall it's a cool experience, I'd recommend just going at a different time of day that isn't busy to avoid the...

This place has the worst service ever. We are from Los Angeles Ca so we have been to plenty of sushi and Japanese bbq places and this was the worst experience ever. We went for sushi because we saw the ratings but we had a horrible waiter who mentioned he hated sushi and also told us to not get the iced tea because it was not freshly brewed. Then we proceeded to order but he had no idea how to answer our questions because he did not like sushi. Not sure why they would put him there. Then we ordered and every place I have ordered the roll I ordered I have received and amazing scallops sushi. However here it was disgusting and when I asked the chef nicely if we could just have a different one because we tasted it and did not like it at all he told me I obviously did not know how to read and was so rude I felt so humiliated. They called other people to talk to us over a simple thing that could have just been fixed but they made a huge deal. The honor had no people skills and treats woman extremely poor. He was so disrespectful that my husband had to step in. I was so shocked by how something so simple was turned into something huge because they refused to just exchange the roll we disliked for something different. Anyhow don’t go here. Chef and owner are so rude and there’s a woman there that I’m assuming is the wife of owner who excuses their behavior it’s so horrible! Also the wasabi was soooo dry! I wanted to gag. Please save your money and go elsewhere somewhere they have better customer service. Also the owner said my husband was cursing and I have evrything recorded without them knowing my husband dosent use curse words and we did not eat half of the roll we only ate one piece each. We kindly asked the waiter if the chef could cook it and he said no. It’s sad to see how much the owner had to lie to keep his services he’s a very prideful man. May...