Taki Japanese Steakhouse — Restaurant in Macon

07/29/2024 Updated Rating after experience my son had last night:

I've always considered this a favorite or "go to" place to eat. The food is typically great whether we get take out or dine in. However, I have to drop my overall score for the establishment after an encounter my son had last night while dining in.

Story time to make it make sense ....

He is 16, he's young, and his girlfriend is 15, He wanted to do something special for her because it was their 2nd month anniversary 🥰 (ain't love grand). Anyway, he was super excited about taking her for their first "real date". He had budgeted his money so he had enough to take her and make it through the week until payday again. His money is limited because he is also in school and only 16 as I mentioned. We talked about the upcoming date and he had planned out what he wanted to order which was just get fried rice (I forgot to mention he is a somewhat picky eater and rice is ALL he ever eats from here). His girlfriend falls into the same category and only wanted what he ordered since she had never eaten there before. So off they went on their date night : )

Now with a bit of history...I'll get to my point and why I had to lower my rating for this establishment...

He wanted to treat her and sit at the hibachi table so they could share the whole experience at the restaurant together. Now to my knowledge, and PLEASE someone correct me if I'm wrong, you can order anything from the menu. I've never saw any signs posted saying differently.

With that said, my son gave the waitress their order which was 2 orders of fried rice and drinks for them both. The waitress then proceeded to tell him he couldn't order just rice, he had to get a full meal. Well as far as I know, that's not accurate. We have gone there many times and dined in as a family and he ALWAYS gets just fried rice and it's never been an issue. Also, when you are seated, if you don't have enough people in your party to fill the table, you are seated with other guest to get the table as full as possible. Since he was young and hasn't experienced conflict such as this, to avoid embarrassment for himself and in front of his girlfriend, he didn't argue or question the waitress, he just said well I guess we will both get the hibachi chicken if we have too. Luckily, he had enough money to cover the bill. however, he doesn't have enough money left to get his gas and make it through the week since he wasn't expecting a bill for over $50.00 there. He budgeted for them to go, but only ordering fried rice, especially since he didn't like anything else on the menu.

I can't help but feel like he was taken advantage of since he is young and didn't know better or didn't know enough to know he didn't have to order more than what he had originally asked for. There really was no reason they shouldn't have let him order what he asked for regardless. Even if there are signs posted, he is young and chose your establishment to eat at and spend the money he did have for their meal.

Unfortunately, things like this bring out the "Mama Bear" in me and really hurts my heart that a well known establishment could be so insensitive and greedy for lack of a better term, to a young man and his girlfriend who was out eating on a budget but ended up having to spend almost all the money he had, just to avoid embarrassment or conflict.

With that I say:

DO BETTER TAKI ----- I'm quite certain your establishment isn't hurting so bad that you have to con a young man into buying a meal he didn't like, didn't want nor could he really afford. You should be grateful he chose your place of business to treat his girlfriend too and spend his money either way, regardless of what or how much they ordered, they were there spending hard earned money!!!

Very Disappointed...

Chose to eat here to celebrate the birthday of two teenage girls. We were quoted a 45 min wait at 7 pm when we arrived and were actually taken to our seat within that time frame. After being seated, we sat at our grill unserviced for nearly an hour. We watched party after party being entertained, fed, and served around us with not even an acknowledgement of our presence. As we had gotten to the point of walking out (it is now 8:15), a server comes to take our drink order. Before ever getting those drinks, we were served salad and soup. After about another 20 min we finally received our beverages.. still no waiter. We had a birthday cake and asked them to place them in the cooler for us and the manager took it and placed it on the counter with the silverware, cups, and to go Items where we watched our cake box pushed around by every employee (and guest) that had gone by. We went and picked it back up and my son had to sit at the table with his Dinner plate on top of the cake box!! After another 15-20 min. the waitress gave us the news that our grill was never turned on and it would be another 30 min for it to heat. It was 9:30 by the time we finally were greeted by a waiter. He was instantly upset and expressed that to his team in another language. The grill was still not hot enough to cook on.. another 15 min wait. Once he began cooking, he did just that cooked. No tricks, no laughing, not even a smile. He finally got to the point of cooking the chicken (which our whole table ordered) and told us halfway into cooking that the grill was not hot enough to finish. He scrapes the half done meat onto a pan, sits it on the side of the grill and walks off quoting 20 more minutes. At this point I go to the front counter to speak with management and they were very rude and nonchalant advising us that it was ridiculous for us to assume the grill was not hot since they had fixed all the rest of our meal on it. We agreed and pointed to our chicken sitting on a tray with half prepared plates. We told them not to worry about it at the point of getting nowhere and demanded boxes and our checks. All of our chicken was served into to go boxes on top of ice cold rice and noodles with no discount for the bad service received. Never going back to spend my money...

Terrible, terrible experience! We've been wanting to try them for a while but never was able to because it's always been busy and we needed a reservation. Well, after a time at the movies we decided to try our luck and was lucky enough to get in right away. We were excited to see what this place had to offer. Now, it's sad to say we will NEVER come here again. We have tried many of hibachi places and we have NEVER seen a chef cook the rice and noodle so quickly. The "fried rice" still had clumps of white rice and lukewarm (coming straight off a grill so that should tell you enough). The noodles were also cool to taste and barely had flavor. Unfortunately, 4 that he cooked was rushed. The shrimp was hard and barely any flavor. To add insult to injury, the vegetables were sitting to the side once he started the meats but when all the meats were cooked he brought the vegetables into the juices of every single meat that was cooked and cooked it into that. It was burnt up leftovers from the meat. One of us is a vegetarian, and that's why we chose the hibachi vegetables. So, the assumption that we would want our veggies cooked with the juices of the meat is disgusting. On top of all that, once he started to cook the veggies, it happened so quickly that the broccoli and carrots were still hard. The worst part is that I mentioned at the very beginning to our waiter that my son has a seafood allergy. When I mentioned it to him the second time, he said yes, the food would be cooked in the kitchen. We waited and waited and waited. Hibachi was over, and we waited. Finally got the attention of the waiter, and he said he forgot to put in the order. So my child had to leave hungry because at that point we were so disappointed in the experience we just wanted to go. Food was not great, waiter was not personable and the experience could be tied to the waiter and the cook but nonetheless it cost them what could have been a...