I used to go to this place when I started to try Japanese food. Place looks great, pretty clean and neat, and food was pretty good, but as years passed, quality of the dishes started to decrease to the point I preferred to make my own Japanese dishes. Here is my review of Sukiyaki.
Service: Waiters are polite, but sometimes they arrive late to ask for your order or they just disappear when you are ready to ask for the bill, and it has happened to me twice that they mix up the orders and I get a different beverage from what I ordered, it has become usual that it takes a while for your meal to be prepared and served, sometimes you end up waiting 15+ minutes for a regular dish.
Food: Dishes here are not 100% Japanese style, they somehow arranged and prepared the menu according to the regional taste and preferences, id est, they add Mexican ingredients to the rolls so you get a nice fusion, but honestly you can find the very same dishes in any other Japanese restaurant in the area, so creativity is not a their strongest feature.
As I wrote above, I was able to see how quality of dishes started to go down, I remember back in the day that Ebi cheese were just great, skewed shrimps were big and the dip sauce served along was tasty and sufficient. Now if you go there and ask for the same dish you will get a downgraded and smaller version of the former meal. Shrimp are way small, and the dip tasted thinned, considering that you get only a very small portion of it. Miso soup was a great entrée back then as well, I really loved the slightly salted flavor of it, but now it seems like the soup is watered down, plus very small and scarce cubes of tofu and seaweed are contained in the small bowl (another reason that made me to prepare my own homemade miso soup full of tofu and seaweed just the way I like it).
I almost forgot: One thing that really pisses me off is realizing that some allegedly "Japanese restaurants" use regular rice for preparing the dishes, yes, the regular rice you can find at any market store. In case you are not familiar with Japanese food, for rice based meals such as sushi and teriyaki a special rice grain MUST be used as main ingredient, either uruchimai or mochigone rice, you can easily spot the difference since this kind of rice is short and thick, when prepared it has a firm and chewie texture, that way is easier to pick rice portion with chopsticks. And yes, it tastes different, and no, Sukiyaki does not use Japanese rice in any item from the menu.
While menu is quite big, taste is not that good, rolls are just average, not that great to make me come to this place at least once a month.
Prices: You get what you paid for, food is cheap but you end up getting average (or below average) meals, there is no way you will get surprised.
Pros
- Prices are average.
- Plenty of dishes to choose from.
Cons
- Not very good service.
- Too regionalized dishes.
- Small portions and lack of taste.
- No real Japanese rice is used in any dish.
And nope, I would not recommend this place to anyone. read more
