Shoryuken — Restaurant in South San Francisco

This place is a prime example of the follies that often come with dining at a Chinese-run Japanese restaurant.

We came on a Saturday night, and fortunately the wait wasn't too long, especially given how busy it was. The staff aren't rude, but they're not too friendly either. If you didn't know already, the name of the restaurant references the popular video game franchise, Street Fighter. As such, they have the restaurant decorated with mugshots of the various Street Fighter characters here and there. I wonder if Capcom approves of this. The walls are decorated with posters of various Japanese landmarks and a few Japanese laterns are strewn about.

They have a "sushi bar" which was sparse at best. Despite this being a "Japanese" restaurant, they have a section for dim sum. It must be said that the dim sum is subpar. The har gow is chewy and unpleasant, as if they've been sitting in the stream basket too long. We ordered the Spicy Wagyu Tendon broth, some American Wagyu, A5 Wagyu, pork belly, and beef belly. We also ordered four sushi rolls: all of which were actually decent, but two in particular were note worthy: the Truffle Hamachi has a distinct truffle flavor with the spiciness of the spicy tuna in the center. The Double Crab roll is also note worthy. It has an imitation crab center and is topped with a mound of real crab and a spicy mayo. The meats were alright, but the broth is not at all what I expected. It was a bland, flavorless broth that strangely has that numbing spice you often see in Chinese Hot Pot restaurants. The moment I tasted this, it was then that I realized that this place is a Chinese Hot Pot place masquerading as a Shabu Shabu restaurant.

That said, it took more than a half hour for them to get the sushi to us while they slap you with a 90 minute time limit. What's worse is their highly inefficient ordering system. They give you a small slip of paper to order your foot items. Once you've ordered, they take that slip of paper away and you'll be lucky to see it ever again, especially if you're looking to get refills on sushi, meat, or other items (many of which they seemed to be out of at the time). This practice is extremely typical at Chinese hot pot restaurants to make as much profit as possible. We got full off of their snacks and sugary sodas while we hungrily waited. I get the feel that's how these guys are able to stay in business; they take forever to bring your food out so you have to fill up on junk. They're a reason they have unlimited hard and soft beverages, cookies, snacks, and ice cream.

When you want to go and get more snacks, drinks, and food items, it's difficult to navigate in between the chairs and tables of other patrons because of the tightly compacted seating arrangements. This is also compounded by how slippery the floor is. I nearly fell and ate shit, myself. But these guys are smart and have a yellow "Slippery When Wet" sign showing so that they don't get sued if someone gets injured from falling. Tread with caution.

When I paid, it ran $40 per person. When they rang me up, they have the typical pre-calculated tips, the lowest being 18%. This sneaky practice is something you'll see often at many restaurants and I find it criminal. I encourage you to sit there for as long as you need to calculate however much tip (if any at all) you think they deserve as opposed to what they show you on that screen.

The cherry on top: there were three in my party, including myself. We all ended up getting sick.

I don't think I'll be coming back here again. This place needs an overhaul. EAT AT...

Long story short, my partner and I got horrible food poisoning from this place, and have found at least 6 other guests who became ill the same night we did.

My fiancee and I ate here on Feb 1 for an anniversary dinner. The food itself was alright, though service was absolutely terrible. This is an all you can eat place, and there's a sheet you fill out over and over to order more food.

The only problem? We filled it out once and then literally never saw the sheet or our waitress again. So we paid the AYCE price for one serving. Pretty ridiculous when you factor in that this place is also pretty firm about their 90m time limit rule.

That said, thank goodness we weren't able to order more than one serving, as 5 hours after the meal both of us were smacked with violent food poisoning symptoms that lasted a full 24 hours. My partner had it so badly she had to go to the doctor.

We looked through yelp and google reviews and learned that at least 6 other people had the same experience the same night, and that's just the folks that wrote reviews.

We contacted the restaurant, and while they seemed apologetic at first when I asked for a refund they requested my partner's MEDICAL RECEIPTS, saying that they want their insurance to pay it out and need documentation. They have since gone totally dark and stopped responding.

Do not eat here. Plenty of awesome AYCE restaurants in the area that come with good service and without 24+ hours in...

Place looks nice, we got the AYCE hot pot. Food came out with decent portions and in a timely manner, the unlimited drink selection was cool to choose from. Lots of asian drinks I used to have as a kid. Servers were attentive and came around in a timely manner

Their side bar has an interesting but well made selection of candies, chips, cali rolls, soup dumplings, dim sum, herbal soup, roast duck, ceviche, fruits and a wonderful dish of wasabi octopus. (Amongst other items I don't remember)

My knocks on the place would be 1) that the manager came at us a bit sideways as we played on the arcade machine while waiting to be seated. Put a "display only" sign if you don't want people playing the free arcade machine, we weren't being beligerent with it and it gave us a weird vibe to start our dinner. 2) I think the experience can be better utilizing the right dishes. Instead of giving us small plates, I'd suggest medium sized bowls; we had food and broth coming off the sides of our plates as we went along.

All in all, I think they have a good formula and are working out the kinks of a new restaurant. Food is definitely good enough to warrant...