Otani Hibachi and Sushi, Murphy, TX — Restaurant in Murphy

Saturday, January 29, 2022

I gave it 3 stars because I just didn't want to be that hateful. They really really only deserve 1 star. I won't be back to this particular Hana Hibachi, unless they can make some major changes. The food is good, but the staff need more training. They need to either retrain or fire the old staff; but, definitely are in need of more staff & the front entry/wait area could use some decorating & better seating. The staff needs to work on time management & customer service skills.

We've been going here 4-5 years now, at least once a year, to celebrate birthdays. There were 10½ of us. The restaurant states they do reservations, but every time we've ever called, we were told they don't take reservations, so we just show up. Last year we actually ended up leaving. This year, we arrived at 6:15pm. It was quite full. We went to the host desk to get on the wait list & waited for about 10 minutes to be helped. A young man asked if we'd been helped yet & I said no. He said ok hang on & walked away. He came back speaking with the restaurant manager & I told them both, I've been standing here & just want to get on the wait list. They said, ok hang on & walked away. They finally came back & asked if we had reservations for our party of 10 & I explained that we call & are always told you don't take reservations. The manager looked very confused & said are you calling the right restaurant, because we have several locations. I assured him I had been calling the correct Hana Hibachi in Murphy (I showed him later). He was polite, but it seemed like he was putting the fault on the customer & not taking responsibility. He put us on the wait list & said it would be 40-45 minutes. People came & left & came in after us & were seated before us of varyibg parties. At this point, we had been waiting for 45 minutes, & a party of 10 came in. At our 70 minute wait mark, the other party was seated ahead of us. We asked why & were told they had a reservation. We were seated 10 minutes later. What is frustrating is that we had attempted to do all the right things & then had to wait. The manager & staff knowing seating was being cleaned for 10 people, they could have seated us ahead of the other party, who had only waited 25 minutes while we had been waiting over 1hr. After being seated, we were first asked for our drink orders. This took another 15 minutes & then my mixed drink didn't have the alcohol in it. I went to the "bar" to get my drink fixed & waited, along with several others, to be served. Several staff (at least 4) walked past is & never made eye contact, nor asked if someone needed anything. I finally saw the manager behind the bar & said look, all I need is for them to actually put the alcohol in my ($7.50) drink. He looked at me incredulously, shook his head & asked where I was seated. He said he'd bring it to me. 3 other customers at the bar told me they would never be back to this restaurant. The manager was very nice, fixed my drink, & came over to speak with us; apologizing multiple times. By the time the chef came over to cook our food, I was past hunger & just nauseated with a horrible headache. I ate a few bites of the rice on my plate, while he continued cooking the other ingredients, & spent the rest of the evening lying in my car in the parking lot, as to not ruin everyone else's night. By the time everyone was done & coming to the vehicles,...

I’ve been visiting this location for years, through 3+ name changes. We visited last Saturday night for hibachi.  I love their yum yum sauce, and the meat is always well flavored fresh off the grill.  Despite there being open tables in the main dining area and at the hibachi tables in the main room, we were asked to wait in the lobby area for about 15 minutes.  The host seemed to be working the front, the bar, and taking payments for tables throughout the restaurant. He was friendly, but clearly over extended and busy. We were seated at a hibachi table with one other couple.  I was concerned we’d be waiting for a while for our chef since the attached table was being cooked for, but our chef came out rather quickly.  There were no kids at the table so the “show” was rather quick, but I think we all appreciated that because we were hungry lol.  We did get to do the initial fire, the catch an egg in your mouth, and the choo choo/volcano tricks though.  The chef was attentive giving each of us our requested sauces, and cooking our steaks perfectly.  We started with the crab puffs, similar to crab wontons which were cooked and fine, but more cream cheese than crab.  I ordered the dinner hibachi with filet and scallops and upgraded to friend rice, and my husband ordered the dinner shrimp hibachi with friend rice.  The soup is served hot with a couple of slices of mushrooms, and the salad comes with a giant spoonful of ginger dressing.  Hibachi dinner comes with clear soup, salad, white rice, noodles, 2 shrimp appetizer, and veggies.  My filet was cooked perfectly medium rare, cooked in butter, salt and pepper, and a touch of sauce, it was melt in your mouth tasty.  The scallops were also cooked well tender, not rubbery, hot and seared perfectly. Shrimp were cooked in butter, seasoning, and teriyaki style sauce.  So much food, so many leftovers, and full bellies. The only downside was that we couldn’t get drinks or pay the bill, and we tried.  The drink refills are kind of a big deal here, as everything is salty, so this was frustrating.  Our server was nice and took our order quickly bringing us our first drink quickly as well.  But we didn’t see her again after that, and no one, besides our chef, came to serve us after that. She was seated with a large party in the main dining room shortly after we were seated, and it seemed like she was too busy with them to tend to us.  That seemed to be the issue in general, not enough employees to manage the number of customers present. We grabbed our own to go containers and had to leave the table twice to ask to pay.  The host finally came back so we could pay on the machine, and we didn’t see our server a second time.   Overall, will be back for the food, but aware they are...

I have been here many a times. My friend and I come here every year for both of our birthdays, so twice a year and I know that they just changed ownership and extended their hours to start at 11:00 a.m.,, they used to open at noon. So we were very excited that they were opening early because it was my birthday and we wanted to come have some hibachi lunch. We arrived at 11:00 a.m. and there was no one there. We walked in and there was no one inside except for one employee sitting at a table and another table covered and used plates etc. We were sat at the table in between those two. That was so sticky. We couldn't even put her hands down on the table. The menus stuck to the table and made audible sounds when we tried to pick the menus up. Like I said we've eaten here for years and the food has been amazing so we stayed and ordered. But I did ask the very young gentlemen to clean our table off. He wiped it off and it was still very sticky. We ordered the food was actually really good, we ordered the hibachi lunch even though we were sitting at a table and not the hibachi area. The salad was very good and the soup we both agreed was probably better than what we've ever had before. We ordered the filet with chicken hibachi and the filet was cooked amazingly but the chicken was so dry and burnt. Obviously not cooked on a hibachi. After we were there for about 40 minutes, the young lady who works there decided it was time to start cleaning the floor. Mind you, the restaurant has already been open for 40 minutes and the cleaner that she was using to clean the floor was so unbelievably strong smelling that we literally had to leave. I would like to point out that not one other person had come into the restaurant since we had been there for 40 minutes and the smell was so strong that I made a comment to our waiter that we needed boxes immediately and had to leave and yet he didn't tell her to possibly stop cleaning the floor with that horrendous smelling cleaning solution... We boxed up our food and basically ran out of the restaurant. The food was good but as someone who has worked in the restaurant business before, please clean your restaurant the night before so that when people come in for lunch they are not smelling all that cleaning fluid because it is extremely unappetizing and basically ruined my birthday lunch that I wait...