Akira — Restaurant in Voorhees Township

My significant other and I have gone to Akira many times for lunch, dinner, dates, etc. We tell our friends about how amazing the food is and we bring more customers because it truly is a very good restaurant. Great atmosphere, great staff, very quiet nice place to have lunch at. Akira had kind of become my significant other and I’s lunch spot, we went so often that they started to remember our order lol! Today we went in and all was normal, they have a few new busboys I believe and we’ve seen them the past couple of times we’ve gone. But today my s/o and I sat down to eat and as we were eating our starters I felt someone staring at me and I looked up and saw it was one of the bus boys. I made at least 3 seconds of direct eye contact with him, which I do to anyone who I don’t want staring to tell them to back off, and he looked away. I said something to my s/o, it was noted and we continued eating. Our entrees came out and we started to eat. I was sitting in the booth with my s/o in a chair, the bus boy was standing in the hallway where they do the hibachi between the dining room, he was directly behind my s/o so each time he stared I would see because I couldn’t even have a conversation with my s/o without seeing him over my s/o shoulder. It made me extremely uncomfortable and as customers that come often we truly did not want to make a scene. I could see him over my s/o shoulder reading my lips when I would try to tell my s/o about this happening. It came to a point where I had lost my appetite because I do not like when people watch me or stare at me eat. I saw him staring again, and again I made direct eye contact but this time he didn’t look away and continued to stare to the point where I had to raise my hands to motion what is your problem, trying to not make a scene. At this point my s/o started to turn around and the bus boy immediately walked away and got a broom and started sweeping acting like he was doing that because he saw that we were getting the waitress. He was standing by the wall the entire time and just staring at me before. I called the waitress over, since we have gone there for awhile and never caused a scene or made any fuss, I thought she would have cared about it more. Instead it was dismissed and she said that he didn’t speak English. There was no problem about him speaking English, it was him making me wildly uncomfortable staring at me all throughout my meal while I’m eating and trying to have a nice lunch. I was truly astonished by the way she didn’t try to talk to him about it or seemingly care about the situation. I have seen this bus boy many times, I’ve had no problem any other time they usually don’t stare you down as you eat. And when I brought that to their attention it was just upsetting how much they...

We had a very poor experience at this restaurant for my daughter's 15th birthday. First off, I reserved the hibachi table for 15 people about 1 month in advance. I also gave a $100 deposit to hold the table.

We had a 6:00 reservation, and we were seated at 6:10. We gave our dinner orders & salad / soup were served quickly. However, not everyone received soup and we had to ask them to please serve each guest.

The hibachi chef was 'average' at best. He was not engaging or fun at all, but we were willing to overlook that because my daughter was enjoying time with her friends.

Entrees were dished out, and everyone seemed to enjoy their food.

It took a WHILE for the servers to start clearing plates, and they actually stopped mid-way. I was waiting for the dishes to be cleared so that I could serve the cake we brought. (I called in advance and asked to bring a cake. They obliged, and said they would have plates/ forks for us to use.)

We had to ask the wait staff to clear the rest of the entree dishes after waiting about 20 minutes. Then, we were able to serve cookie cake. At this time, another large group arrived. It became clear that they were waiting for us to leave so that they could use our table.

After we paid our bill of almost $400, but were still wrapping things up, a young staff member asked us to LEAVE THE TABLE bc they needed it for the next party. We were appalled . We expressed our disappointment and annoyance bc we were not made aware of a 'time limit' on the table.

To make matters worse, the other large party was giving us angry stares the entire time- as if it was our fault.

As we were leaving , one of the guests from the other large party even started CLAPPING as we walked past! This infuriated me- the other guests did not realize that we were being rushed out to accommodate their party. The restaurant really messed up by not allotting sufficient time between parties.

We shared all of our disappointment with the manager. She was kind, and offered us a $30 gift card. We refused, as I was not trying to gain something from complaining. I truly was so disappointed and aggravated. I hope they will learn from this experience and plan better in the future. This could have been avoided if they communicated a time limit on table reservations.

Unfortunately I will not return to this restaurant, and I will not...

Came to dine in and do hibachi 3 days ago. It was a party of 2. Pretty BAD experience. Servers could careless. It takes forever to place order and be greeted. They are rude and just walk away before you can even finish your sentence completely. Once we finally got serviced and placed orders. The chef came over and probably cooked the food for both of us in less then 5 minutes, no exaggeration. So it was really rushed. We still tipped him and proceeded to eat. Of course the food was disgusting. We only ate the hibachi rice. The filet, shrimp and chicken were poorly seasoned and chewy. We had to send the drinks back twice because the sodas taste like tonic water. The bill came and not only the sodas was still on there, 18% gratuity was automatically added. We pointed out that it was strange being it was only a party of 2 and there was no mention of automatic gratuity. They responded it was to make sure chef got paid. As mentioned before, we tipped him directly for cooking and a party of 2 usually manually adds additional tip, not automatic gratuity. Also if you scroll reviews you can see no other customer had automatic gratuity on their bill as one lady posted a pic of hers. So I’m pretty sure we both were stereotyped and discriminated against as assumptions of people who don’t tip. As automatic gratuity was not on anyone else’s bill or they simply knew the service was bad and pulled a fast one. When I started pointed out this she said she’ll take it off but after paying she still charged me for it after bringing the receipt back. NEVER again. Service and food was horrible. May even report this location for that shady tactic they pulled to the state. Nasty food and shady tactics. If you are African American you may be discriminated against like we were. Don’t waste your time or money! Go to Sakura or Benihana if you want Hibachi. This place is not a good...