Watami Hibachi Steak House — Restaurant in West Mifflin

We were excited to try this place after hearing rave reviews from multiple people. We live about an hour away but were told it would be worth the drive. So, we made reservations about a week in advance for a party of 4.

Unfortunately, we had anything but a positive experience. The food was bad and the service was worse. I ordered the filet mignon with noodles. I’ve seen child portions which were larger than the portions we received (pic of my plate included). The consensus from all parties at the grill which consisted of our party of 4, a party of 2, and another party of 4 was that the noodles and rice were charred and crunchy; the veggies were mushy; the portions were not filling; and the proteins were over cooked.

Everyone at the table except my husband and I had been to Watami on multiple occasions and all stated that the food and service were a huge disappointment this visit. They said the food tasted nothing like previous visits and that the same ingredients weren’t even used. (For example, no teriyaki sauce on the “fried rice”. It was basically burned white rice with soy sauce.)

My drink was good though (chocolate martini)…good enough that I wanted a second one. Unfortunately, the server never came back to our table throughout our entire meal so we were all unable to get refills on our drinks…despite trying numerous times to get her attention. And 2 people from the party of 4 never received the white rice they ordered in place of fried rice despite asking for it numerous times. They asked the chef and I even saw them get up from the table and track down the waitress to ask. But they still hadn’t received it when the waitress finally showed back up to bring us our checks.

I’d like to believe this was just a bad night for Watami…but we won’t risk it again. With drinks and a few sushi rolls we shared as apps, it was almost $200 for 4 people (which is about the same as any other hibachi)…except here we all left hungry when we usually all leave with take home boxes!

I’ll stick with Fusion in Washington, PA for now on. I’ve never had a...

While I didn't go to the hibachi side of the restaurant with all the party animals that sounded like they were having a blast, I still have a lot to say about the rest of the experience.

This is not the place to go if you wanna impress someone. This seems to be the place to go to have some fun, get a little or very tipsy and watch the chefs do their thing with fire and alcohol spraying around. The neon beer signs in the windows and the old furniture is less than inspiring. You get sort of a grimey feeling being there.

Next, service service, service. I think our waitress needs to have retraining sessions. She was fairly rude, and seemed to ignore us quite a bit. Perhaps it's because it was somewhat busy at first but even later when there was hardly anyone she was still very rude and seemed to ignore us. There were also a lot of serving faux pas like reaching across the whole table rather than moving to the other side which was open and many more things to be improved on.

The mixed drinks were okay but not great. Little too much juice or too sweet but they were pretty. Get it for the Gram. I got the pain killer and my life still has a lot of pain in it so that's just false advertising.

We got the veal and scallop hibachi meal. Gotta say, for $30 it's a pretty sad amount of meat. It's only 4 scallops and not much more veal. It was mostly veggies and rice and neither were that great. We had to get it redone the first time (why yes, we are fun at parties) because not only was the veal not even close to medium rare it was charred and very tough, tasted burnt. When we got it back however, I gotta say the new veal was quite good. It was an incredible improvement being well seasoned and tender.

The samurai sushi special roll was indeed special. It had this creamy, almost buttery taste and texture. I couldn't get enough of it and I found it to be quite good. This review would have gotten 2 stars if it wasn't for the sushi. No joke, the sushi alone was enough to move this review from bad to adequate. Would go again only...

I just went to watami steakhouse hibachi 2/1/22. Do not ever!!! Eat at Watami!!! They will serve you contaminated food! And give a 15% discount and cover your medical bills if you get sick. But what if you die? It isn’t ain't right! Food safety is paramount!!! There is no but... there is only get it right the first time!!! An "oops, we forgot to modify your food" is one thing. But "oops, we did something that could kill you" is absolutely intolerable!!! And just to be clear about what happened. He put chicken bacteria in ready to eat products and served the ready to eat product to my family and I. And when I said something to the manager, she said well that's how hibachi goes. Umm, no. Food safety trumps culture, cooking styles and any restaurants motto.

They served contaminated food. Persons who perform the act of preparing food for human consumption in what some people believe is in an entertaining fashion(a cook, a chef) are using that long spatula/turner/flipper tool to handle both raw meats and ready to eat products. at Watami I observed and recorded persons using that tool to handle shrimp, chicken, beef, salmon, in that order. In a big square, everything touching. Then use that same tool to handle vegetables, rice, and noodles, then insert that tool into ready to eat products. Then flip the meats, go back into the ready to eat products. And served us those same ready to eat products with the same tool. My wife and brother both were sick afterwards. And as you can see from the pictures… where are the other utensils? The ones used to handle different types of food? He doesn’t have them and you can see the variety of meats which have to be handled separately.

It wasn’t...