Sushi Niko Niko Hibachi
HE SAID: Ok, so we went to this place ‘sight-unseen’ because it stayed open 30mins later at lunch time (another international restaurant tradition of closing after lunch until dinner…jsyk, not favorable in America)… I have passed this place a million times and always overlooked it. SHE SAID: That’s not saying much for him…as a creature of habit, getting him to try new restaurants is an act of Congress. You see, the outside signage is not attractive and so though I have seen it, it is one of those places folks typically ignore in a strip mall. But the interior of the restaurant is gorgeous! I would never know this if I hadn’t happened in here because their competition closed 3o mins earlier than they did. We got there at 1:45p, they closed at 3p… their competition that we called closed at 2p and 2:30p. First things to note Mr Restaurant, your hours can bring you business and your signage can have them overlook you. SHE SAID: Yeah, what is the deal with hibachi restaurants in a high traffic/retail/business area closing in the middle of the day? Super annoying.
Anyway, we get there and it says ‘please use other door’…it appears that there are two store fronts, each with similar signage… the more awesome of the two (the one with the awning) is the one that had the sign. So we go to the other door as directed (the less spectacular, though not by much, entrance). SHE SAID: So everyone dining on the inside gets to watch as we drift from one door to the other in confusion just as they had. They smile knowingly but relish in the idea that they were not the only ones to look that aimless. I know, because I did this to others once we were seated. ;-) Then there is a sign to wait to be seated but there is no hostess station… instead we are waved to the middle of the restaurant (next to the other entrance that we were directed not to use.) We indicate that we are here for Hibachi (we searched maps in our iPhone for Hibachi, it’s what we wanted and how we found them… and it’s on their badly designed sign.) Well, they girl says “I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that”… What? Wait, what!? “we can do it from the kitchen but not the hibachi table”… ok, well, we wanted the food more than the experience but this really knocks down the experience and wait… Why are you talking to us like it’s an imposition to have a main entree on your menu?…one that’s in your logo on the door? Note #2 for Mr Restaurant, customer service will help people have a good experience and increase loyalty/repeat business to your restaurant.
So, they sit us down at the non-hibachi table so we can order it from the kitchen. The menu she gave us was literally a binder notebook with photo pockets in it where they have placed undesigned inkjet printed pages. That settles it, this place wins the prize for worst marketing/business communications ever! SHE SAID: Seriously! It looked like a 7th grade art project. None of the fonts matched and there were pages and pages of stuff that actually sounded delicious but had no organization. And their lunch menu (labeled “LUNCH”) was very expensive and exactly the same as the dinner menu. As far as lunch specials go, they were very pricey — like $11–$18 a plate!) But we figure, the food here must be amazing! The impression was so bad that they could only be in business because the food was awesome, right? SHE SAID: And there were tons of people in the restaurant. So we were hopeful… It’s all gonna be worth it, right?
Wrong. The salad was as expected, not bad just…normal with traditional Japanese hibachi restaurant dressing. Which I like, it was good. SHE SAID The salad had just come from an icebox. It was very cold — like unnaturally cold. And the dressing was very minimal. And it was all iceberg lettuce, nothing else. He likes it that way but I like a little goodie...like some radish or something… Next the soup… ooooh, not good. It was some sort of Tofu based miso soup. When did Tofu become standard enough to be a natural part of an entree without specifically asking for it? Just no. Eating around the tofu, the broth wasn’t bad, just not good. SHE SAID: Tofu is like that person that sneaks into your group of friends, hoping no one notices, wanting to be accepted as an equal but when you discover Tofu you first get really pissed, then you kinda feel sorry for him and try to make it work. But in the end it’s just not gonna happen so you kick him out. How dare he sneak into your soup to begin with!
So the main courses come, the plating is quite nice. — well displayed…fitting to the interior of the restaurant. However, the traditional ‘yum-yum’ sauce was not ‘yum-yum’ sauce but rather some some odd seafood sauce that my girl didn’t like. SHE SAID: Yes, it was seafood sauce and it was Yuck-Yuck. I don’t like ‘yum-yum’ either way, but the ginger sauce was adequate. However, the fried rice… just not good. Not sure if it wasn’t cooked well or had some sort of sauce in it … just not good. SHE SAID: They had soy sauce on the table in a little, decorative (but extremely nondescript) ceramic block. He actually reached over at one point and poured it out on the table to see what was in it. I can’t take him anywhere… I had steak and chicken hibachi. The chicken was adequate but there were 3 pieces of the steak that were all, or majority, fat. The kind that the chef would have tossed if we had been together at a hibachi table. SHE SAID: I had the shrimp and it was served separate from the rice and in a stirfry sauce that was very good. My shrimp was cooked well and very tasty. But overall, not worth the $$$$.
So suffice to say, Niko Niko gets a No from me. SHE SAID: It’s a NO for me, too. I understand why hibachi is so expensive. You are paying for the fresh ingredients and the “show”. Since there was no show — I felt the prices should have come way down. Also…. still upset they tried to sneak Tofu into my soup. I SEE YOU IN THERE!!!
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There are a number of factors that go into one of these little reviews. I’ll rank each one (1/10 with 5 being “normal/ok/as expected/adequate”):
- Convenience (7) (7)
- Customer Service (3) (4 — we had a very nice waiter. But there was this little Asian woman that kept coming by our table every 10 minutes, are you ready to order now? Ummm…. I’m eating. ?)
- Environment (8) (9)
- Presentation (6) (8 — except for the Tofu)
- Portion Size (5) (8 — great potion size, but not for that amount of $$$)
- Taste (3.5) (7)
- Cost (4) (2)
This is our first review… and you should know, negative experiences that make an impact are the type of things that launch ideas like doing a review site. But I hope to have more positive experiences in the future… but here’s the place that started GwinnettLife.com.
