China Boi Hibachi — Restaurant in Saint Petersburg

Kills me to leave this review because the people who own it and work there are amazing folks so its definitely based solely on the food I chose for dinner. Let me preface this with it's my first time eating here and ive been in one other time just to see the menu and interior before I decided to try it out. So tonight I went in to buy dinner and sit at the bar however they were having a private party and would only allow take-out? My parents owned a restaurant for years and would never stop regular business for a private party they'd have done it after hours or the one day they were closed and they did do takeout. Anyway it's Hibachi and it seems they're like Boba tea places 10 years ago and they're everywhere. So it's close enough to walk in 3 minutes so opted to walk. When she said all they had was take-out i was upset but I was starving as well. So I ordered the crab rangoon and steak and rice but they gave me noodles and rice creating what would have been a full rice order had I gotten just the rice I wanted to get. So anyway took the food home and the best thing was the dipping sauce for the crab rangoons. So the Krab rangoons were my appetizer of choice and boy was that a bad idea. Id always assumed all crab rangoon were the same. Kind of like pizza. It's all pretty good even bad. But I was way wrong about these. They weren't wrapped in a crispy wonton style rice wrapping. They were wrapped in some thin, maybe rice dough, no texture, and they weren't crispy in fact they were barely edible. Greasy like the fryer oil was dirty and temp was too low? Not sure but they were like the pillow on your bed as a kid the day after your fat drunk uncle stayed the night and sweated some off colored alcoholic sweat all night making the pillow heavier, off colored, and a really gross kind of squishy consistency filled with oil. They were awful really. I had high hopes that dinner would be better and I hurt writing this but I'm being brutally honest. So, dinner was steak Hibachi and it was genuinely the worst piece of meat ive ever eaten a bite or two of and thrown out. No sauce would help. It's like they cooked fish or fish sauce or something on the grill and didn't clean it when they cooked mine. They steak was under cooked with absolutely no browning whatsoever it's like they steamed the meat under a lid. Zero flavor and again no texture at all. The meat was approx. ¼ inch thick and there was so much grissle and fat on the meat half wasn't edible for that reason alone. The edible pieces still were awful grey pink in color. I had 2 bites both I spit out. The noodles were flavorless and super plain, the rice wasn't any better. The egg in the fried rice wasn't cared for in the least barely chopped up in it. Like they out no care into any of the food I ordered and unfortunately I won't go back this isn't a minor issue. Place was clean inside and basic. Beer selection is super small, sodas are from a can. Not at all what id hoped for. Sorry but I'm being honest hopefully you'll get a better chef and better...

All I can say is YUMMY!!! My husband and I walked into this place with a total bluesy music and darkly lit lighting atmosphere. I thought we walked into a Jazz Club not an Asian restaurant. What a great surprise!! We really loved the lighting, a big TV displaying a wood burning fireplace and the other TV playing blues music with the screen dimly lit. What a relaxing place to enjoy good food done well. The chicken wings were the crispiest and tastiest I’ve had in a long time. Great with Yum Yum sauce. The hibachi plates are big and full of food and very good. The service was good as well. They’ve got the three most important things down. Good food, good atmosphere and good service....

The crab ragoons are really good, not sweet, and actually have crab in them, which im not used to from Chinese places, would definitely come back to order these again. However, my only complaint would be the hibachi dinner as a whole. The hibachi is served with linguine noodles (unless they ran out of lo mien). The marinade flavor for the chicken is really good, but the chicken itself was dry and had no...