Kenji Hibachi & Sushi Bar

First time here… Went during lunch and decided on the chicken Katsu bento box! Was super pleased with my portion and all the different yummy items that came with my meal. The atmosphere was nice, and my server Harry was super attentive and pleasant. Can’t beat the price for the quality of food! Will definitely be back

Very nice service, but disappointing food. The udon I had was very salty, and everything else was just ok. Portions were also pretty small for the price. I can see why this place isn’t as popular as some other hibachi/​sushi choices around here.

What happened to Kenji? Hibachi chef needs training. Staff needs training. Recommend a visit from Restaurant Impossible. Tummy is now a bit rumbly, hope not from the food. Alcohol license suspended. Please fix this place.

The NEW management GREAT! Best chicken fried. Very Underrated ! I tend to always go and eat almost every other day

Food is not bad but they are «temporarily» not serving alcohol. The beautiful waterfall at the front was not working. Service was okay but the staff seemed bored and chef just cooked, no real «show» Overall okay but the competition is better. I have been here several times, but not in the past year, and the whole experience just was not as good as before.

Worse dinner ever. No flavor no taste. Place is not worth a visit. Don’t go there.
Customer service is out the door. This I don’t speak English is getting old. Learn it and learn to talk to people.

This place saddens me. The hibachi has always been good but its the fact that you can’t get it that bothers me. Saturday night I tried to order two to go orders, I was told «we are too busy to do to-​go orders right now» — okay no biggie I understand its Saturday night in Richmond and I worked in a hibachi restaurant for five years throughout high school/​college I know that there are only so many chefs and room for to-​go orders on a busy day, but let me tell you about my to-​go experience today on a Tuesday at 12:30 in the afternoon:
My husband is sick, all he request is the chicken soup that comes with hibachi, I thought fine, I will order a to go chicken and shrimp and have it as my dinner tonight. I call ahead, and the waitress/​hostess is frazzled and said a new computer system was just installed and to bare with her as it was a downgrade for her not an upgrade. After 5 tedious minutes of trying to place the order ahead of time and her telling me that it will be $ 3.00 to add 4 extra shrimp I tell her well I am almost there now so I will just order at the bar and have a few beers as clearly I am going to be there a while.
I arrive, I sit at the bar, I wait for five minutes before I am greeted, mind you the entire building is empty except for two tables (a two top and I would guess from my view afar and 8 top near the sushi bar). She immediately knows who I am from our recent phone conversation and says Im sorry I don’t think we will be able to do your to-​go order for the chicken and shrimp and I said why not? She said we just got really busy. I almost fell out in the floor but I was just really tired getting off work and did not feel up to addressing it, I said okay fine, I am really just here for soup for my husband and can I please have a michelob ultra while I wait. She then pops the top off of a miller lite and sits it in front of me, I said no I wanted a michelob ultra, she then says sorry turns around and says we are out of michelob ultra, almost like she was pushing me to just except the miller lite, which I do not like, so I ordered a budweiser instead.
I just don’t understand, I am a paying customer and I am willing to sit at your bar for an hour and drink 3 – 4 beers and tip yet I cannot because you are too busy with two tables in the entire restaurant? I would hate to see this place on a so called busy Saturday night haha. Also I heard a server come over asking for a Sapporo on draft for his table and she immediately poured one, then dumped it out, and looked at him and said the first one is always gross… ummm hello clean your lines.
Will not be going back, they certainly should hope that their ½ price entrée coupons on the local Kroger receipts can keep them in business or train the staff properly. I don’t know of any restaurant that would turn down a to-​go order when the building was basically empty, but hey to each their own…

Great sushi place for lunch, it’s clean and a great spacious atmosphere.
The service was just a little slow but once we got the food the follow up service was great.
Price: $$
Cleanliness: ⁹⁄₁₀
Service: ⁸⁄₁₀
Food: ⁸⁄₁₀

The hibachi was awful. Service was abysmal and rude while the chef was rather disengaged and overcooked all but the scallops. We were a party of 13 for a birthday. Took almost an hour to get the soup. The salad came some time after. It took 3 hours from arrival to check. Worse yet, management did not recognize an issue with the service or ignored it completely and was patronizing when complaints were made. I would not recommend this establishment to anyone and feel it was a waste of a rare night out with friends. Would give 0 stars if possible. The «shared misery» and good company was the only saving grace.

Utterly atrocious. Worst service I have ever encountered. Food was overcooked on the whole but not terrible, came out for our friends birthday and just turned into a 3 hour nightmare. Finally got the manager to understand the problem and met with a pile of nonsense from her, nothing comped — they tried to give us I’ve cream and pretend it was ok… despite the extra 2 hours some of us had to pay babysitters. To top it all the manager then decided to call our female friend ‘little guy’. Avoid. Like the plague.

My friend and I went here for lunch yesterday, and we split a groupon to pay 8 $ for 15 $ and it was a great deal! We managed to get a bento box a pice of sushi and a sushi roll! Great deal, great service, I will be back again!

Warning: THE RESTAURANT IS NOT ALLERGY FRIENDLY.
I have a shellfish and mollusk allergy. I have been to sushi and hibachi restaurants before and they were always very accommodating. Kenji has been by far, the worst experience I’ve had.
First I tried to get the sushi and sashimi combo. The server said they couldn’t substitute out the non-​fish items. Said the fish was too expensive. I could order individual pieces but couldn’t get the combo. Not even an option to pay more for the combo.
Then I asked about the hibachi. They said they would cook my food on one portion of the grill and the shellfish on another part. However, they would use the same utensils to cook my food as the shellfish. If you have an allergy, you’ll know that won’t work even a little. So I had no choice but to pass on the hibachi as well.
Finally I ordered a bento box. The bento boxes come with miso soup, salad, your entrée, rice, 2 crab puffs, and 2 pieces of a volcano roll (containing crab). I explained to the server I couldn’t have the crab puffs or the volcano roll since they contained crab. No problem he said. When I got my meal, they did not include the crab puffs or volcano roll. However, they did not substitute anything in place! So I got ³⁄₅ items. Plus the salmon they did provide was the tiniest piece of salmon I’ve ever seen as a meal portion. It could not have been more than 3 ounces.
To top all of this off, other people with me ordered the hibachi. At the end of the cooking process, there were 2 extra shrimp on the grill. To my horror, I watched as he flung shrimp across the grill towards the person sitting next to me. Thankfully it didn’t land in my food, but it came close.
The only thing that kept me from a 1 star review what that the food I received was pretty good.
Bottom line: If you are like me and have a shellfish/​mollusk allergy you should avoid this restaurant completely.

Just went for a quick hibachi lunch. Nice restaurant, chef cooked the seafood and chicken quite well. Look forward to returning. Great prices for Hibachi!

After the restaurant changed management, the Chefs rule the roost. No more take out. What a joke. We used to take out at least 2x per month at 80.00 per.
Great way to go out of business if you ask me.

I wasn’t expecting too much out of a sushi and hibachi place in metro Richmond. This fell short of those expectations.
We went in at lunch and found the place mostly dead. The first sign of real trouble was when I went to order pieces of salmon and hamachi nigiri and the server had no clue what that meant.
After straightening out what is what I hoped to order and adding a few maki rolls, I received the order. The fish seemed to all be previously frozen and wasn’t cut very well. The hamachi still had a big chunk of bloodline in particular.
Overall, I can’t recommend this place unless they improve their product quality and knowledge.
For a positive, the staff was very friendly and the service was quick.

There has been some changes to this restaurant which made me decide to update this review. Last time I went there, I ordered the bubba roll which used to be one of my favorite rolls. That time the scallops on top came out fried/​tempura-​ed instead of broiled, the sauce changed as well. I honestly did not enjoy that. The service isn’t what it used to be since the staff have changed completely. This used to be one of my go to Japanese restaurants in Richmond but I will no longer return.

Some friends and I decided to eat here since we were a big group and it fit everyone’s food preferences. We got seated at a hibachi station and got served the standard soup and salad. Both were good and still left me hungry for my entrée.
My entrée was the hibachi steak cooked medium. It came with hibachi fried rice and veggies. My steak was cooked to perfection and everything on the plate was eaten. With that said, I question if the portions are actually worth the money. I think I’ve been to places where I know I had to pack some to-​go from being so full. Still, I thought my money was well spent and it satisfied everyone else with their picky food demands without any problems.

I have a love affair with sushi and anyone that know me know I always look for the best of the best places wherever I go. Kenji is one of my favorite spots for sushi in Short Pump. And, who does not love to sit at the bar and watch it being made? Kenji has excellent service as well as ideal prices so you are going to get your fill without having to empty all of your wallet to do it.
Sushi dinner for two, yes please! With various rolls as well as shasmi and yakisoba noodle dishes, you will appease most appetites. This does not even include the hibachi grill that they have on the other half of the building — that we said we would have to do again real soon!
If you are looking for a more price-​saving meal here, go for lunch over dinner to save a few bucks on sushi or hibachi. And, if you cannot dine in, thats okay– because you can always call and order to-​go. With a clean restaurant and kind people, you will prefer to sit in if you have the time to. Who wouldnt want to enjoy a good meal with friends in a great atmosphere?!

It’s contemporary and clean. There’s a waterfall wall… that’s kinda cool.
This was my second time here in four years. I really like it, though the rolls are smaller than a lot of places. Yummy gyoza. I haven’t tried the hibachi because I’m not so much a fan [anywhere]. Kenji is cool, quite possibly because of its location. There’s no other place like it in the radius of where I spend the weekends.

I’ve been to a ton of teppanyaki places recently, and this was my least favorite thus far. While the interior of this restaurant is definitely the most impressive of the ones I’ve been to (with a nice waterfall wall, high ceilings, lovely furnishings and a full, wall-​length mural of the Japanese countryside), the food was just not up to par.
The ginger salad dressing was much too sweet (more than it needed to be in my opinion). The soup was pretty good though, and nice and hot too.
When my steamed rice came, it was served as a single ice-​cream scoop ball in a small bowl. Rice is not a very big cost for the restaurant, so I felt like that was a somewhat stingy offering.
Our chef was an older fellow who was friendly but not as personable and sociable/​entertaining. He kept jokingly «hitting on» one of our table’s diners, which got old. When he prepared the fried rice, he cracked the egg into the butter (which was different), and also didn’t cut up the egg into small pieces before mixing with the rice. I thought he would break up the egg subsequently when he added it to the rice, but instead, he just kept mashing everything together as if he hoped it would mix itself (it didn’t, so the egg was not very evenly mixed throughout).
I will mention that this place is unique in serving broccoli with the shrimp orders and mushroom with the steak. That was different for me.
The cook also added teriyaki sauce to EVERYTHING (even the fried rice, which is highly unusual). He added some to the salmon, some to the shrimp appetizer, and to other things which didn’t have «teriyaki» in the name on the menu. Our sauteed onions were also undercooked, which left them very sharp tasting.
To top it off, there must have been miscommunication between the waiter and the kitchen, because my order was wrong (I received hibachi steak even though I ordered sukiyaki steak), and one of the other people at my table received steamed rice instead of fried rice. Speaking of which, when there was extra fried rice after he finished cooking it, the cook set it aside on a platter instead of distributing it among the people who had ordered fried rice (or giving some to the people who hadn’t ordered any, which some other teppanyaki places have done).
I honestly just don’t think our chef was very skilled at cooking. He did play his harmonica for us at the end of cooking (very impressively might I add), and he was still a nice guy, but he needs more training. The prices here were also comparable to (if not slightly lower than) other teppanyaki restaurants in the area.
To summarize, this isn’t a horrible place for teppanyaki, but there are much better restaurants available.