EDOHANA Japanese Restaurant in Rockwall — Restaurant in Rockwall

I have given this spot a couple of 5 star reviews. Commending the staff, the Chefs(especially Huei) , the quality of the food and the overall ambiance of the place. My in-laws are in town and wanted to bring them to one of our favorite if not, our top hibachi spot in town. Tonight, was very disappointing. To begin with, I will say the Hispanic young lady with glasses I believe, that sat us down was very fun, kind and courteous. Once we sat down with another party of four, it was at least 15-20 minutes before our serve(tall guy skinny with curly hair), came to get our drink order. From what he was saying, he mentioned he was new, great! When you announce you are new and are taking drink orders, you may at least want to write down. Thankfully most of our table had waters, so that may have been an easy task for him. My wife and I ordered iced teas. When he finally returned, he was handling the glasses from the top, where his hands touched the rim of the glasses. You can’t do that! The teas were awful, not strong asked for replacement. He was kind enough to bring replacement but the teas were weak and had a nasty after taste. Quite possible, they are not rinsing out the tea container after every other batch or have not taken off the nozzle on the tea containers washing them and or soaking them overnight (if you know, you know). My wife and I then asked for cokes, don’t have coke they have Pepsi. Ok we’ll take Pepsi. Brought back Pepsis and were flat. Turns out they pour them out of a can. Ok, we just went to waters. Our chef came out, he was ok, possibly tired from the day, but not as enthusiastic as others or Huei. Huei brings lasers to the grill, that is cool! But we did not get him. The food was ok at best. When our server would come back and ask how everything was or how we are doing, standing over the grill or behind us, kept scratching his head at the table. When you are in the food service industry, you don’t touch your hair, face or other body parts when you are the one bringing out people’s food or at the table while people are eating. When the table next to us were sat down, I hope he knew most of the guests, because as he was slamming drinks and throwing straws at them… I’m was just like…wth!!!! It seems there is a new owner and new staff. I recommend to the owner or manager to set some time aside during business hours or after, and have a training session about proper service etiquette, how to properly address your guests, you can still have fun a be cheeky with them, but don’t over step your boundaries. Especially when a meal for 4 people goes well over $150. I hope the new management takes note and sets clear expectations on what great service looks like and product quality. Remember, this type of food can be purchased at any Asian cuisine restaurant, and Chinese mom and pop restaurants, that pour their hearts and souls into their food. The customers that come here, come for the experience. Sorry for rant, but I hope it gives perspective. Don’t tank this once once great food establishment, by cutting...

My husband and I's experience at this resturaunt was outstanding! I would honestly rate more than 5 stars if I could!

We came during dinner time (probably 6 or 7 PM). Service was super fast and very attentive! Our waiter had a big smile on his face and was super polite! Brought my husband a refill before he even realized it was half full!

We had the fried calamari, eel roll, 99 roll, tonkatsu pork, grilled seafood.

The calamari was cooked perfectly, I could bite through it with my front teeth and even with the better calamari I've had I don't think I've ever been able to do that!

The eel roll and 99 roll were both excellent. My husband thought that the rice seemed soft and overcooked but I noticed they seem to use long grain rice instead of the very short grained sushi rice, this is likely why it seems softer. To me it's not a deal breaker, it tasted just fine so I was plenty happy! I also highly recommend the 99 roll it is bursting with flavor!

The miso soup, salad, and fried rice that came with the entres were all good. I was a bit sad at the fried rice not having any veggies but the flavor was so good I did not mind. I realized when I finished the rice that it looked like they are using either butter or ghee (or some other kind of light yellow oil, noticed traces of it on the inside of the bowl) and that would explain it tasting so good!

The entres, my husband and I both sampled eachother's, his seafood tasted excellent, was cooked perfectly, and had excellent flavor. My tonkatsu, I'm not even kidding and I'm saying this 100% sober, the sauce tastes like Christmas. It's okay, you can laugh, I'm still laughing about it myself. But no seriously, it is heavy with ginger and sugar which reminds me of gingerbread (it works with the sauce though and isn't overpowering) and has a very strong citrus flavor that might be yuzu? I haven't actually had it myself so I don't actually know what it tastes like, but it tasted like lemon crossed with orange and very tart like a cranberry sauce. I could be completely wrong though, maybe it's just good old citric acid. Whatever it is, I absolutely loved it and would happily come back for the tonkatsu and that sauce!

Oh and I also see an earlier review stating they wished you could choose between fried rice and steamed, you can! Our waiter asked us which one we wanted before putting in our order.

If there was one thing I could gripe about it would be that the sushi menus need to be redone, they need to be laminated so they are easier to clean. They are grimey and I can tell they had tried to clean them by how wet they are but there is only so much you can do with paper, putting a plastic coating on them will really help with that! I would not say that this ruined my...

I don't normally do this, and when I do, I like to give good reviews. But this place really had awful service.

So the good first! We ate at the hibachi grill, and the food was great! Everything came back perfectly. The only thing I would have like more was, more of a conversational chef. That's personal opinion though and has no value to these review unless, you're like me.

Now the terrible service. I'm going to bullet point it because, it's that bad.

Back story: This was a family dinner for my fiance's dad and we had another family at our grill station a well. My fiance and her dad are both allergic to shell fish. It's no big deal, just don't let them touch the other food and everything is alright. We let our server know that when we ordered.

all the food, including the shell fish came out on the same plate.

-Server took between 5 &10 minutes to return with drink refills

sat at table with empty drinks way too often

server never apologized for anything

server while attitude was just "no big deal" on anything involving her job responsibilities

multiple drink orders were wrong for our group and the other families.....multiple times.....TO THE SAME PEOPLE Just an example, I ordered a beer and 5 minutes later, she brought me a coke. That's ok but, then it happened again. This time she have me some random liquor drink, that turned out to be one of her other tables drinks. She had forgotten mine entirely. That happened to 2 other people at our table as well, on separate drink runs.

she never wrote down a think

she forgot to bring other simple requests until we reminded her.

at the end of the meal, I explained all of this to the said manager. She told me the girl was new, and that her last job was McDonald's. Didn't say sorry, just oh and hmmm a lot as I explained.

The manager took $9 off my $150 check, when I told her I needed something in return for the bad service. Our server got that for her tip. All in all, I won't go back or recommend it to anyone.

Back story continued My fiance and I have been in the service industry, and restaurant industry collectively 25+ years. So, we definitely give more slack to our servers 99% of the time. Well look around feel out the restaurant, it's my server running around like crazy, are the other servers running around like crazy? Does our server have that look of desperation, just to be able to climb out of the weeds? No, none of that was the case. She was just downright awful.

Are you still here? Then my very last complaint, on a truly personal level. She didn't know what Shiner Bock beer was. They sold it, and we live in Texas. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT...