Shogun Restaurant — Restaurant in Spokane Valley

I made a reservation online for 5:30pm. I got to the restaurant at about 5:25pm. I checked in with the front, and at first, they said that they did not see a reservation for me. I showed the confirmation text message that I received, and when the hostess took another look, voila! There it was. We were sat at a table with another couple. This was my partner's first ever experience having Hibachi, so we were excited. We each got the Imperial Special (#18 I think?). According to your menu, the Imperial Special is Shogun Salad Bowl, steak, lobster tail, vegetables, fried rice, mushroom a la Japanese soup, and Shogun tea. We also got a Vegas Roll and an order of Shrimp Tempura. The Vegas Roll and Shrimp Tempura were good, and came out in a timely manner. I would like to note that the restaurant was NOT busy at all. There were two other tables one of them had pretty much wrapped up their meals by the time we arrived. Again, we were seated with one other couple, so our table was only a four-top. My partner and I ordered drinks, and we did not receive them. Then, for some reason, the hostess came by and asked for our drink orders again, so we re-ordered them, and again, did not not receive them. Then the cook came to our table and made our food. I noticed that the fried rice tasted very crunchy and under cooked right off the bat. I was hoping for an onion volcano, as I saw the other tables get one, but we did not get one. (That's kind of nitpicky, but it's part of the experience). Also, the menu states that all hibachi entrees come with soup, salad, mixed hibachi veg, and steamed rice (you can upgrade to fried rice or noodles). We all got our soup, but NO ONE at our table received salad. Our Imperial Special was supposed to come with Shogun Tea. We did not receive that either. At the end of our meal, when they were getting ready to give us our check, and they asked about our drinks.... AGAIN. We informed them that we did not receive them. So our waitress (after blaming the hostess, VERY poor taste if you ask me) brought us a couple of drinks on the house. That was very much appreciated. She then proceeded to essentially BEG us to go on Google and leave a 5 star review as they need to get bodies in the door. I have worked as a hostess and a server. I know how difficult the industry is and how overwhelming it can be. However, I have to say. It was not busy that night. At all. This was the kind of evening that everything should have been seamless and PERFECT. The staff definitely had the time to check in on all of us more often. This is one of those nights that someone should have checking on us like every 10 minutes to the point we were annoyed, but we didn't get that kind of interaction. The couple we were seated with had to go up front to pay their bill even!!! No one came to collect it! You're out here struggling to get bodies in the house, and you don't come collect your payment? I ended up spending almost $200 (because I still left a good tip) for non-attentive service, forgotten drinks, mediocre food, not ALL of the food and beverage I should have gotten, and the most time a staff member spent with me was to beg me to give a good review online. I am not a fan of going online to bash an establishment, but this was unacceptable. I tried reaching out to Shogun directly, but no one could be bothered to hear what I had to say about my experience, so here is the review they asked for. NOT five stars. I wanted to give them time to respond or SOMETHING, but no such luck. I will definitely...

I really wanted to like this place and their food. It was sadly not to be. The food was very low quality. Cold shrimp (haha 2 gross, stinky slugs) tempura and vegetable tempura, bad tasting, fishy sashimi and sushi along with the same gross, fishy tasting, grey, sluglike shrimp imposters were served for the hibachi meals. I grew up eating fresh, just caught seafood and I know what shrimp should smell and taste like and these were just really bad. Spit them out, bad.

We were celebrating a double birthday. The first red flag should have been the need for a 90.00 deposit for the online reservation for a Wednesday. It never occurred to me that this is something a restaurant that is struggling for business might do. I thought it signified their business was busy, lol! Definitely not the case. Which should have been red flag number two, but what can I say, I'm an optimist! I was hoping since it wasn't busy our party of 9 wouldn't have too long to wait for silly things like hot appetizers or cold ones, as the case turned out.

The majority of our party ordered some sort of steak hibachi dinner and a drink. A few ordered alcohol while the rest of us were regretting not, after trying to eat the shrimp and quite overcooked steaks. I ordered rare, got medium well. Everyone else got well to very well, they ordered medium, medium rare and rare, lol. The sides were cooked nicely and the vegetables appeared fresh (I didn't try any). The 2 people who ordered chicken were very pleased. It was cooked well and was not dry at all. The salads all looked nice.

No, we didn't complain because there was really no point; we didn't want anything free or a discount and the biggest reason, because it was my daughter's 17th Birthday and my 31st, again. No one wanted to say anything to dampen the mood as it's very rare that we're all together in one place. That's ultimately what our dinner was about, family, so a little not so great food wasn't going to ruin our fun.

You'd think that was the end of it, but there was an issue with the deposit I paid not being applied to our bill. If I had caught the mistake sooner our bank wouldn't have prompted a fraud freeze, but 2 charges for over 550.00, back to back didn't seem legit to my bank. Not that big of a deal, but my husband didn't know about the automatic fraud protection, so he was in a bit of a confused panic for a moment when the server came over to tell us our card was declined. After hitting a few buttons the fraud freeze was lifted and they could run the card for the 3rd time.

That's my honest review. I really hated writing this review, because I really...

I've been to Shogun many times - probably 2-3 times per year since the 90's. I've been twice now since it reopened in its new location. I think the service has generally gone downhill over the past 10 years or so, but last Saturday was the worst I've ever seen.

They were clearly under-staffed and trying to serve a large private party in addition to a Saturday night crowd. They had 2 servers for the whole restaurant. They needed about 6. We waited at our table for more than 30 minutes before anyone came to the table. Then we waited more for the soup/salad service, and then waited a very long time for the chef to come to the table. We were there for nearly 3 hours. We're usually in and out in well under 1.5 hours. Even people who hang around a while after eating are rarely there over 90 minutes.

We were told our first round of drinks would be on the house, but they weren't. The manager (who turned into our server) even had the guts to take our initial bill away to add a forgotten (non-alcoholic) drink that my daughter had. That $4 really added insult to injury.

Additionally, they have reduced to laughably small sizes the bowls soup and salad are served in. Like the broth soup and cheap iceberg lettuce mix were really breaking the bank in the larger bowls. The change just seems really tacky and makes one wonder what else they are cutting corners on.

Well, one thing is the steak. The menu says they have New York and Filet Mignon. I ordered a meal that should have come with the NY, and my daughter ordered Filet. The meat we got was the same - all the steak served to the table came from one big pile. And it was neither NY nor Filet. It tasted fine, but it's clearly false advertising and the price is way too high for some random cheap cut of meat.

The chef was very good and the food tasted fine. However, the extremely poor service and overall cheapskate impression left a bad taste. After going to Shogun several times per year for more than 20 years, I...