Wakatobi Japanese Grill Hibachi and Sushi — Restaurant in Seaside

I wanted to love this. I felt a loss when the owners made the switch from a gyro restaurant to a Japanese grille.

They opened 3 days ago as the Japanese grille and I went for lunch today. Here was the outcome: Chicken Hibachi lunch To Go: I'm not a fan of white rice but it was the best part of the meal unfortunately. The grilled vegetables were overcooked and oily / greasy as all hell. The chicken, while it's white breast meat, was dry and absolutely flavorless. They forgot to include both plastic utensils as well as the soup that is supposed to come with the lunch.

Shrimp tempura: I ordered shrimp tempura and it included 2 pieces of battered shrimp, couple onion slices, carrots, broccoli, sweet potato slices. The drive back to work is literally 3 minutes but by the time I returned to work, the tempura was completely soggy and heavily tasting of oil, as if the oil temp in the fryer was not hot enough. The shrimp "tempura" tasted more like they had bought pre battered shrimp and deep fried them and not in a good way, the coating was extremely heavy and thick and absolutely sopping with oil.

They didn't have that light crunchy tempura coating that every other Japanese restaurant serves. When I finished with one shrimp I couldn't eat the other as I felt as if my mouth was coated in grease. Honestly, I expected that when I ordered shrimp tempura, I was going to be getting 4 to 6 pieces of shrimp tempura, not 2 shrimp and some vegetables. Never the less, just not good at all. Way too soggy and way to oily and sauce way too salty.

The tempura sauce was more like soy sauce than any tempura sauce I've ever tasted. It lacks the sweetness that comes with a quality tempura sauce but had all the saltiness of a soy sauce.

Total price was around $18, way overpriced for what it was.

I'll be honest here, unless they improve, Harumi's down the street and Suishi Time across and down the street have nothing to worry about with Wakatobi's.

As an example, I can go to Harumi's and get the lunch bento box special. It comes with salad, soup, edamame pods, white rice, your choice of 2 main portions (I always choose teriyaki chicken and assorted tempura) for $9.99, I can add a third item such as a sushi roll and my bill is under $18.00 and the quality is awesome. The chicken is full of flavor, you get 2 shrimp and assorted vegetables in tempura and it's light and crispy and their miso soup is also wonderful as is the salad with the dressing they use.

I think the owners of Wakatobi should go and dine at Harumi's and try to get their own quality up to that level or higher for the prices they are charging.

I'll give them another try in about 3 to 6 months (if they're still in business) to give them a chance to improve on their dishes as what they served today was to be blunt, disgusting, oily, soggy, flavorless. Not sure that I should even care that they omitted the soup with the lack of quality of the rest of lunch.

Shame, as the owners made a really good gyro sandwich roll, unfortunately there wasn't much of a call for those in this area prompting them I think to try a Japanese grille.

In a rather small city that which we live in (and the restaurant is located) you really have to depend not only on first time consumers but repeat business, and unless they improve I just don't see them staying in business here. The city is too small and the first time consumers will be used up and not want to come back to this.

I think my headache may have been caused by the large amount of oil on everything (except the rice). Literally threw away at least half of my meal, it was just that bad.

The positive about them however is the staff and owners. Always a delight to converse with, and the wait staff had a smile on her face as she walked by me. I can't fault any staff or the owners as they are friendly, polite and professional and at times I've felt like I've known them for years and years...

This place was a total rip-off. We (3 people) went there on a Tuesday, checking the menu the night before. When we got there, it was nice. The restaurant was very clean and pristine. We went to the front to get some menus and we got 3. We sat down and reviewed what we decided on the night before (we just wanted to make sure). When we told the guy what we wanted, he said that we don’t serve sushi on Tuesday’s. Here comes my first problem. WHY WOULDN’T YOU TELL US THAT BEFORE WE SAT DOWN FOR 10 MINUTES TO CHOOSE WHAT WE WANTED??? Then after I was just like, “ok that’s not a big deal, can I get the sashimi?” And then he said, “this whole side of the menu,” he spreads his hand on one side of the menu then flips it over, “we don’t serve today. You only can choose from this side.” Why. Didn’t. You. Tell. Us. That. BEFORE???? So we were just like ok whatever and looked at the side he said we could order off of. There wasn’t much selection considering we had already decided on food we couldn’t get and didn’t want, so we looked at the combo meals. We decided to get the lobster and told him. He said that it would be enough for 3 people because it came with miso soup, salad, and noodles. We said ok and he said it would take 20 minutes. 15 minutes pass and he’s walking over to hand us our food. Now, what I’m about to say doesn’t really contribute to the story that much, but it still felt kind of weird so I’ll mention it anyways. As he’s walking over to give us our bags, I think he’s gonna hand it to me in my hand so I try and take it from his hand. He kind of tightens his grip on the bag and sets it down on the table. I feel like because I had Halloween makeup on, he thinks he shouldn’t give it to me. Might be overthinking it though. When he sets it down on the table, my mom asks if there’s any sauce in the bag and if not can we get some. He asks us confused, “You really want hot sauce and soy sauce?” And my mom is like, “Yeah???” He goes to get it and my mom opens the bag and and puts them in there and we say bye. We went to the car and I looked at the food. IT WAS NOT ENOUGH FOR 3 PEOPLE. AT ALL. It was barely enough for one. Because we were in a hurry, we just left and didn’t go back and say anything. We just got food from a different restaurant.

Don’t come here if you want good food. Come here if you want...

These positive reviews had me excited to try some halal hibachi-style food, and was sorely disappointed. The food took a long time to come out, and it was evident that the food was sitting for a while before it was served to my table. Understandably they only had on cook, so it does take a bit to cook 4 plates of food, but in no way can a self respecting restaurant serve cold fried rice and cold fried noodles (apparently they don’t even understand what yakisoba is when they named it on their menu). We asked them if they could heat our fried rice and fried noodles, and they tossed it into a microwave and handed it back to us. At this point I already thought the bar couldn’t get any lower, but keep in mind I haven’t even tried the food yet.

Everything was so bland that even drowning it in sriracha couldn’t save the dish. The sriracha even seemed like it was watered down? Fried noodles were so bland and oily, vegetables seemed like it was just boiled and tossed on, and the chicken was so dry and tough it felt like I was chewing on jerky. Needless to say I did not finish my food.

The server then had the gall to cancel the custom tip payment and asked us to press one of the preset tip buttons, starting from 18%. The fact that they already knew of our food issues and had the audacity to ask for a tip of 18% minimum was the cherry on top for this horrible establishment. Still ended up giving them a ~15% tip due to the kindness of my friends, but I would personally have left no tip and walked out, even when I normally tip 10% even for terrible service.

Needless to say, I definitely didn’t get the same experience the other reviews were talking about. The best thing I had was the miso soup, which would have been impressive to me if they messed that up as well. Easily a 0 star place for me, will not...