Teppan Steak House

I’m never eating here again. I’ll admit that in the past, this place was one of my favorites places to eat. My family adores this place, but I am just over it. Their miso soup has weird, snot like things roaming around in it, there salads are not very appetizing, and their sushi is mediocre at best. I have always thought that the rice was best part of the whole experience, but the last time I went, I gave my boyfriend the left overs and he found half of a hairy house fly in the rice. I am disgusted and never returning.

My family and I have been enjoying this place for many years. We have tried other similar locations in Ventura County, but there’s simply no comparison in flavor & great service.
Whichever dish you decide to order, make sure to order fried rice with it. It’s SOOOO worth the $ 1.95 extra charge. I personally love the shrimp fried rice special. They give you an extra portion of fried rice with it. The best deal is when you arrive between 1130a and 3p for their lunch specials

I ate here a couple days ago for the first time and I enjoyed dining here. The staff were prompt with sitting us down and providing us customer service. The cook did an amazing job and the food turned out perfect. I like the atmosphere it’s nice. The only thing is that to me it looked a bit small. Not a really bad thing for the fact that I loved this place. Just me myself I would prefer a more bigger more roomy restaurant. But this place is great and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Japanese food.

I went to this place yesterday with family for a birthday dinner. Our waitress was in training and it showed, she had no clue what was on the menu and was very unattentive. Our chef hardly spoke English and dumped so much salt on our food it was not even edible and I like salty stuff. The miso soup was cold and had clumps of fat floating in it from being so cold. I ordered shrimp, scallops and filet. The shrimp were tough the scallops were over cooked at least the steak was done on point. Then our meals came with desert the stupid waitress asks us what we want then goes oh I don’t know if we carry that, when it was right there on the menu in front of her face. Just go to something’s fishy in Santa Barbara this place used to be really good just went down hill bad.

Made it just before they closed and they were still able to fit us in! Great food and beer :) Have to praise Roger for his great service. He was very attentive to everyone and patient as well. Highly reccomend this place!

Great food, great service, great show! The boyfriend and I shared sushi and a hibachi dinner and we will definitely be back!

I really like this place! I usually go during lunch time and order the #3 which is two types of meats, rice and veggies! My boys love this place as well and even tho it is a bit pricy, we get or money’s worth with the «show» since the boys love it and eat their veggies too! I don’t give the 5^th star because the waitresses don’t go check on you like they normally do at other places, specially if you only order water! I’ve had to flag them down to get a refill but they will be there promptly when it’s time to pay!

We were away from the teppan place we normally go to and looked at this place on Unilocal and it was a decent experience but nothing spectacular.

Not too busy when we went in, loved that you could BYOB. The Chef had a great personality and was making jokes and the server was very attentive. Overall a very good experience. Food was really good, especially the fried rice.

Excellent Christmas Eve Dinner.
— Chef Escobar was excellent
— Soup and Salad was delightful
— Service was attentive & pleasant
— Filet mignon was tender & well flavored
— Vegetarian meal featured tofu & grilled red peppers

My son got very sick not long after leaving. I called and spoke to Jen.
She was sweet and said they would pay for him to go to the hospital. I called the hospital and explained his symptoms of vomiting and the other and they agreed that since he couldn’t be off the toilet for more than five minutes, trying to get him there would be awful. They told me to keep him hydrated and to bring him if it did not subside within a few hours. It did subside within four hours.
Jen said after reading my first review, they wanted me to come back for half off.
I spent $ 140 for my kid to suffer a violent bout of food poisoning. (He had chicken. The rest of us had filet and seafood. Though we all felt yucky, he was the only one with actual food poisoning) I definitely will not return.
Jen, thank you for your kindness and sincerity, it was much appreciated.

Warning: they add a tip into the bill, which I hate. The credit card receipt I signed said «pre-​tip total» but it had a tip added in that total. Below the total is a blank line labeled «Tip:». Silly me, I didn’t check carefully and added a tip. So they got a very nice doubled-​up tip, the 18% they added plus 20% I added on top of it. Sadly the chef wasn’t worth the massive tip as he messed up our order pretty bad, serving the wrong items, dropping food, and his presentation was at best lack-​luster showmanship. Wish we had the chef at the next table over, he put on quite a show for that table! (I tipped him a $ 5 since we were enjoying his show. even though he wasn’t our chef!) Bottom line, we’re local, but won’t be back. Tried to call the number on the bill and ask about the tip, but nobody answers the phone.
Update: Timothy from Teppan Steak House contacted me regarding this post, and sent me a check refunding the automatic tip that was added to my bill.

As much as I love Unilocal,I am glad it did not exist when I first discovered this restaurant, because based on the stars I may not have visited. I have been eating here for over five years now, and it is definitely one of my favorites. I have never had a bad experience or bad food. Just this last week on a Tuesday it was a 20 minute wait to get a seat! Therefore it seems to be pretty popular and I am not sure why there are so many negative reviews. The only reason I am taking one star away is because whenever I want to go here it is a very long wait after seated to finally get food or sometimes just simply get a water even if the place is nearly empty every single time, so my recommendation is do not come here very hungry and you will be better off, otherwise, it’s great!

Definitely your average teppanyaki restaurant, lots of food at the price you’d expect for that type of place. Good ambiance, staff was friendly.

This place used to be amazing now it’s somewhere to avoid. A bring your own beer policy makes it feel trashy and a bullpen of terrible chefs who don’t speak English make it terrible. I asked for rare steak and shrimp with an extra side of shrimp. I received burnt steak and no extra shrimp. The owner that is running this place into the ground gave me half off the order I didn’t eat. There is a teppan house in Ventura that is still good I hope.

I love this place but we order the vegetarian and they keep cutting down on the veggies. They brought one slice of carrot for 4 people. We asked for extra broccoli and it was 5 little pieces. They used to serve mushrooms until they cheaped out and stopped serving them.
Good place but getting worse.

Nice little gem in Oxnard — good staff excellent tap beer! Steak and chicken combo rocks! Sandy had the scallops and loved them — she said 5 stars, I’m saying 4 — we’ll stay at 4 stars since I paid!!! Could be 5 next time — stay tuned!!!

Great Teppan Sushi restaurant with awesome lunch specials.
When looking Into teppan for lunch I’m always hunting for a special which I’m happy to say this location has! Two teppan items for under $ 15 is a great deal especially for all the food you get! I’d highly recommend this location if your starving and wanting a good deal.
The food falls somewhere around 3 – 4 stars with hits and misses! The overall proteins are fabulous, great chicken, steak, and shrimp. Also the sushi bar looks a little dicey but I did order a rainbow roll once and it was great so I think it just depends on what you order. Their fried rice falls into that three star mix, not that great, decent but I’ve had better. Same with the miso soup, not very appetizing despite miso soup being something I’m normally looking forward to. Lastly the other miss would be the sauces, not as flavorful as other places. I’d say they are good for the overall meal but not 5 stars because of these misses.
Staff pros: I appreciate that if they are having a slow day they’ll literally give you a whole teppan table for yourself instead of making you wait for the whole table of 8 – 10 to be filled. To me this is great customer service! Also the chefs are fantastic, quick and friendly!
Staff cons: the general wait staff seems to be lacking on most of our visits… always needing to ask for refills which is a bummer but I’ve looked past it for the overall price of my meals.

BYOB!
They have a special going on where you can bring in your own beer or wine. You can even bring in a small cooler! Too bad I didn’t know this before having lunch here on Sunday. Cuz if you’ve been to one teppan place you’ve been to them all. The service was lacking a bit. I didn’t see our server after she took our order, not even to refill my drink. The chefs are always friendly and have a great attitude. The other patrons at our table were also friendly or maybe they were humoring me. Haha.

To start off I want to state that the main reason for visiting this place was a groupon and some positive reviews I read. The groupon offer seemed pretty good so I said what the heck.
When we arrived at the restaurant I was confused as to where the door was, it is literally an unmarked door on the side, similar to those found in a sketchy L.A. back alley.
Once we made our way inside, I immediately started to get a bad feeling. It was a Saturday night and the place was pretty empty. I mean even the Olive Garden is packed on a Saturday night.
With these red flags already in mind we proceeded to our table and so far it had been a pleasant experience. Even the waitress we got was nice and kindly explained what our groupon entailed.
Once our food started coming out we started to see why this place was so empty. I mean really what kind of Japanese restaurant ruins a miso soup?!?
The salad dressing was good so I still had hopes.
Once the cook came out I immediately lost a bet with my wife. She said we would be getting a Mexican cook, I said no he will probably be Asian, right? Wrong! Not that it matters if you know how to cook. Unfortunately for us that was not the case…
I won’t go into detail on all of the food, there is no single thing he did that caused our dislike so I’ll just summarize:
Protein — Halibut, was like eating dry, over salted shredded chicken, I mean seriously who pours soy sauce on what looked like a beautiful cut of fish. It literally looked like scrambled eggs when he put it on my plate.
The veggies — (or lack there of) is suppose to be the star of the teppan dish, but it turned out to be a very sad, over seasoned and burnt representation of what they call vegetables. Sadly to say frozen veggies heated in the microwave would have been better.
The fried rice — another important part of the meal ruined by what seem to be an experienced cook, which is the impression he was giving out slicing and dicing away performing his onion volcano and even more ridiculous onion train. I mean c’mon it was only adults at the table, did he really have to do that?
Maybe if he had focused more on the cooking method that the entertaining antics, the food would have been edible.
So after it was all over I told our waitress about our dislikes (in a polite way of course) and she spoke with the manager which also was very nice and offered us 20% off our next meal if we came back to try it with a different chef.
Sadly to say I don’t think I will be back. One bad experience is enough for me when it comes to food and when you order a meal like that and your favorite part of it was the free salad you get before the meal then there’s not much a second visit is going to do for you.
So lesson learned, just because its a good deal on Unilocal doesn’t mean the food will be good or even edible!
Oh yeah and the two stars were because of the salad and the manager and waitress’s attitudes. Even though I was telling them how bad it was they were still very polite and sympathetic.