Kobe Steakhouse of Japan — Restaurant in Maryland Heights

I am very disappointed in experience. I planned for my family and friends to meet me at Kobe’s to celebrate my 39th birthday for a 7:30pm for a party of 13. Prior to making the reservation, I read their policy online website to make sure I had all the information I need before booking my reservation. Their policy online states, “At Kobe we strongly encourage making reservations for your dining experience, however a reservation is not a guaranteed seating time. It is an order of seating guarantee at an estimated time based on our normal reservation flow giving your party preference over walk-in customers.” With that thought in mind, I book my reservation 3 weeks in advance for 7:30pm, but tell my guests out reservation is 6:30 since I know there are some who will run late. Day of event, I arrive at 6:35 greet the hostess, tell her about my reservation and asked me of my whole party has arrived I say no. She states we can’t seat you until you whole party arrives. I agree and waiting for the remainder of the guests to arrive. By 6:45 everyone was present except one person so I let the hostess know my full party was present and she hands be a buzzer. By 7pm, all of my guests were present. Again, this a 7:30pm reservation and my guests are all on time. Understanding that there is no guarantee we will not be seated at 7:30pm, we will be given priority over walk in guests. By 8:30, I have watch several large parties come and go, in addition to several people smaller parties walk in with a limited wait be seated. At 9:15 I ask the hostess do we know how much longer it will be she states you are next to be seated. At this point, I’m hungry but still hopeful. By 9:45, about half of my guests have left. I got to the hostess and ask again as I believe my wait is way too excessive and can we at least sit it the bar area to order which she states that is not possible for the full experience. She states since i have a larger party it takes more time to be seated. I agree but I tell her that have of my party is gone now. Manager hears the conversation and says “you’re the party of 13 and half of your guests have left” I say yes…I am a party of 8. He apologies for the long wait and say he would seat us shortly. At this point, I see the policy in the restaurant that states, “if a patron is late their reservation will adjust put on the bottom of the waiting list.” Fifteen minutes later, i ask the hostess again and she states the table seat 26 people and we have to make sure all seats are filled to accommodate the experience with the chef. Manager then comes to seat my party and apologizes again but now I’m getting upset because i realize that the reason why we being waiting so long is because they were trying to fill a whole other side with a different chef when my side originally already had 13 people. So I’m thinking things would be great from here. Nope! We wait another 25 minutes after being seated before we are even offered water or menus. As a disclaimer, I hate complaining at restaurants because more do what they can but I would rather reflect my unhappiness in my tip. The young lady who was our server was PHENOMENAL. Even with the good food my experience was worse because the general manager (non-black)send another “manager” (who is black) over to handle me. I ask the question, your policy states what happens if the patron is late but what happens if you don’t uphold your end as a business. After several minutes of foolishness. Someone attempted to adjust the bill but by taking the young lady’s tip. I’m leaving out a lot of unfair treatment on my end but at this point I want to make sure she get her money. I have her go take the receipt to correct the bill again and we still each tip her 30%. This is very disappointing because it made me miss my next location where I lost $600 on a VIP booth with bottle service downtown. So I lost out all around and on my birthday!!! HIGHLY...

We’ve been coming to Kobe’s for years and have enjoyed our experience each time, until this most recent visit. There is typically a long wait, we’re used to that. It gives us an opportunity to chat in the bar area before our meal, grab a drink or two, etc. We had a larger party (14 originally, but FIL left so 13), and were told that we couldn’t make a reservation, only walk in. No biggy. We got to the restaurant 5:45, my MIL and FIL got there around 5:30. They checked in at the front, were not given a buzzer, but were told they would get a text. Some time went on, and we were told a table should be ready around 7:07ish. We were a little disappointed, but what can you do. Around 7:45ish (rough estimate), we were finally sat. My 2 SILs, 2 BILs, niece, nephew, and their friends were all seated at one table (10 total). My husband, myself, and MIL were seated at the table on the other side with a mother and her daughter, and two other couples (9 total). In no way, shape, or form were we included in our actual parties’ dinner. We had different chefs, that cooked at different times. The environment is loud, so we really had VERY limited ability to hear/converse with the other people that were supposed to be in our party. We didn’t complain, we understood although it was frustrating. The chef (Mike) was phenomenal. The food was fantastic. We even enjoyed getting to know the strangers we were eating with. The ONLY thing that we “got to enjoy” with our party, was singing happy birthday at the very end, and they almost forgot to include my nephew. Nevertheless, our bellies were full of good food, and even though we missed out on actually sharing a meal with our family, we still enjoyed our time and food. HERE’S WHERE IT BECAME A NIGHTMARE. We were handed our bills. My SIL had 10 people on hers (the people at THEIR table), my husband and myself were on our own TWO PEOPLE, and my MIL was on her own (she put my youngest SIL and BIL on my older SIL check since they were at their table.) 18% gratuity was added to ALL of checks. I brought it up to our waitress and was told “any parties of 4+ that have a reservation” will be charged that. Problem 1. We were told we couldn’t make a reservation. Problem 2. We did not get to sit or converse with the party we had originally came with so we were in fact, NOT a party of 13. We were a party of 10, a party of 2, and a party of 1. My MIL decided to try and switch it to where she also had my youngest SIL and BIL on her check (still on a party 3 technically), but when she was told they wouldn’t remove the gratuity, things escalated. We tried to calmly explain things to a “manager” (if that’s even what he was), just to be met with complete disrespect and a smugness I’ve never witnessed before. Another manager (maybe?) stood in the background with a kind of smug look on his face, so I tried to step off of to the side and explain it to him calmly. He didn’t say much, but didn’t seem to agree or care. There was no understanding, there was no care that we missed out on celebrating with our family, yet they still wanted to try and make extra money off of us. My husband and I just paid our bill because we told our waitress, got dismissed, advised her that she lost out because we would have tipped better, THEN she said “oh well I can take it off.” This place really should be ashamed. We unfortunately will probably not be back due to this experience. That night alone we spent over $1,000 (including drinks/apps during the 2.5+ hour wait), just to be treated like WE were somehow in the wrong. No way. Hopefully they can turn things around, and actually get back to caring about their customers who WILLINGLY spend their hard...

Very overpriced. We love Hibachi, but we have never spent as much as we did at Kobe. Our plan was to go to Kitaro in O'Fallon, but they are temporarily closed so we had to go to Kobe as a backup plan. I had never been there but assumed it would be just as good as any other Hibachi place, if not better. I assumed wrong. The water tasted like dirt or mold. I thought it was just me, but we asked around the table and everyone agreed, even the people at the other table that we didn't know said the same. So, I just drank by $12 margarita, it was maybe 6 ounces and had a half of a shot of alcohol in it (I only know this because the 1/2 shot was hanging on the side of the margarita in a little shot glass. I tasted the margarita first, and there was NO alcohol in it... so I had to mix it in myself). The chef kept getting confused over who ordered what, and had to call for extra meat because he didn't have enough. The signature ginger salad dressing was basically just shaved ginger on a salad - not impressed. The meat portions were half of what we would get at other Hibachi restaurants. They had YumYum sauce, but they did not have the ginger soy brown sauce that every other place has... which is my favorite. They just have a spicy sauce. The noodles were twice as thick as spaghetti and tasted like lemon. They added 18% gratuity (which is fine - we typically tip 25% or more). We had a large party split between two grills... but many people didn't catch that the gratuity was added already. On the credit card receipt that you sign, it had handwritten "Tips are split between the server and chef" right above where you write in a tip. As someone who worked as a server for over 10 years, I found this to be tacky and kind of deceptive considering they had already taken 18% automatically. In tips and gratuity alone, one server and chef made well over $180 for 1 hour and 15 mins. Now comes the worst part of all. After leaving Kobe, one of the people in our group was notified by their bank that their debit card was compromised. They had not used their debit card in 5 days, and Kobe was the only activity prior to the fraudulent charges. Over $600 was stollen from this individual via online purchases several hours after our visit to Kobe. The bank said it was likely that the person who swiped the card at the restaurant either wrote down the card info or they used a skimmer. We are all monitoring our card accounts now, until we get to the bottom of this. I'll end on a positive note - the vegetables and rice were tasty. I'd recommend Kitaro or Shoguns if anyone asked me for a good Hibachi place... and Shoguns is in a strip mall and pretty sub-par for the most part... but still 100x better than Kobe. I won't...