Tokyo Express Hibachi and Sushi - Nicholasville — Restaurant in Nicholasville

First time customer. Always see Tokyo Express along the road when driving through Nicholasville and decided to try it out. Overall, good food and good quantity for the price. Ordered at the drive-through window after checking out their menu online beforehand and was told to park and wait in the parking lot. Service was pleasant and the food was delivered to my car in less than 10 minutes.

-Spicy Tuna Poké Bowl

If there's one thing you need to try here, it's their Poké bowl. Traditionally it's made with raw fish, but if that's not your thing, you can order it with cooked proteins as well. I had mine with spicy tuna and it was pretty amazing. It was the right combination of ingredients and the sauce brought everything together perfectly. If there was less sauce that could have ruined it. There was a good amount of tuna and it had good flavor. All sushi grade fish comes frozen for safety. I can tell it was well taken care of. It also comes with edamame, corn, avocado slices, carrots, cucumber, seaweed salad, salad, rice, a spicy mayo sauce, and garnished with white and black sesame seeds. This was very refreshing and flavorful to eat. I'm excited to try this again with salmon next time.

-Chicken Bento Box w/ Fried Rice and a Drink

If you want a hot meal with a lot of variety and a drink bundled into the price, this is a good choice. The sauteed vegetables have a sauce with a lot of good flavor. Because that part had so much flavor the rest was a little underwhelming. The fried rice was cooked well, but lacked depth. I moved some of the sauce from the vegetables and it was great after that. The chicken wasn't seared enough during cooking, but the flavor and texture were above average. The gyoza were nice and crispy still after a 25 minute drive home. Pretty good. The California roll was just okay. A California roll is a pretty simple roll, so the ingredients need to be on point. A hint of rice vinegar in the sushi rice for sweetness and crab meat mixed with mayo for creaminess and fattiness would go a long way.

-Philly Roll

Just like the california roll, a Philly roll is a pretty simple roll as well. And just like the California roll, the ingredients need to be on point. The sushi rice was lacking rice vinegar. The cream cheese needs to be Philadelphia brand cream cheese for the tanginess and less creamy texture. I understand it's more expensive than the other major brand of cream cheese that's commonly sold and wasn't used to keep margins up. Tokyo Express, you can use less of the Philadelphia cream cheese and have a better roll for the same price. I can't comment on the salmon because I forgot to focus on it. Based upon how their tuna was, I would like to think it was comparable to how I felt about their tuna.

I would like to see Tokyo Express succeed because they offer something unique to Nicholasville. The flavors they bring are in a different strata from Wah Mei and Ichiban Buffet (come back soon!) and it's not something you can easily make at home. I see they have the potential to be something great. They have a big dining area that's clean. They need to fix their marquee. It's a bad first impression. There should be a promotion on it like free mountain dew or free crispy gyoza or free miso soup with a poké bowl. Restaurants are a tough business to be in. Make your menu simple to read and focus on what you do well. Keep improving, Tokyo. You're...

We ate here tonight for the first time and it will be our last. No real issues with service (although we asked for white rice and they gave us fried). The prices are good but the food is rather bland.

Negatives:

-Hibachi doesn't really taste like Hibachi. Seems more like my wife and I just fried this up ourselves. It lacks that Hibachi Grill flavor. Also the rice was sorely missing that flavor.

-Yum Yum Sauce seems way off. Taste more like Benihana salad dressing than the actual Yum Yum people have come to love in Japanese American cuisine. The color was even off, a little more yellow than orange.

-Vegetables are lacking. Just some flavorless onion and broccoli. Again, missing that hibachi flavor. I am starting the think everything was cooked in a wok instead of a hibachi grill.

-Sushi was middle of the road at best and lacking a soy based sauce. The exploded packets of regular ol' soy sauce in the bottom of my bag does not count.

Pros:

-Price.

-Chicken flavor was pretty decent.

All in all, I would rather drive 10 minutes to Sakura 13 and pay and extra $2 per entree to get what I actually want. The sushi rolls there are very good for this area . The hibachi is the best you can get without paying quite a bit more money to go to a real...

Beware of here if you are allergic to MSG. Apparently everything on the menu has it. At the suggestion of the waiter I had to order the salmon and white rice with vegs. The salmon was thin and looked like it was cooked like a hamburger on the grill. Did I mention it was a thin patty? Not much flavor. I did try a touch of the sauce that was brought out with it but was afraid to use it since the msg warning was there and I didn't know if that meant the sauce too. This is a small building in a small town. Probably the only Asian restaurant here. I noticed they were doing more business with the take out than the dine-in. I won't...