Happi House Teriyaki

absolutely the worst establishment ive ever been to.
1. took over 25 minutes for one meal to-​go.
2. made me repeat my order twice and my order is still wrong
cant stress enough, do not choose this location!!!

Yo, peep this place is you want top shelf food along with excellent customer service. The manager is cool but sometimes he may be a stickler on giving out the teriyaki sauce packets haha
Bomb food, people are cool, open pretty late.

If you want teriyaki DON’T COME HERE. Even though there are 6 items on the TERIYAKI MENU. NONE OF IT IS ACTUAL TERIYAKI. You get cold rice and 3 slabs of beef on top. Shredded lettuce is warm and disgusting. Please, please, please do yourself a favor and go to Panda Express or anywhere else for some actual teriyaki.

I’ve been coming to Happi House since I was a sixth grader. Though their food is good, their prices are a bit high so I’m no longer a regular. The Teriyaki Chicken #1 is still a favorite, the rice bowls are filling and their chicken wrap is just right for a quick bite to eat.
It’s busy during the lunch hour.
Their Spicy Teriyaki Sauce is delicious but once again pricy!

I work in Japantown and haven’t tried this place yet, so rods was the day.
Short and simple: For what it is, it’s pretty good. I wouldn’t do fast food Japanese that much, but it wasn’t terrible.
I went in to use the bathroom, and it is pretty gross. I wish I was just being a privileged American, the staff are so sweet.
But if you’re reading this staff, the men’s restroom looks like an empty grease trap. So 3 stars seems appropriate. Other than that, pretty standard stuff. If you’re into «different» fast food, you won’t be disappointed.

The food is pretty tasty and the employees are nice from my experience. When they got my order wrong they let me keep the messed up order and made a new one free of charge. The only reason for a 3 star review is the happi bowls. For the price I feel like I got ripped off, the bowl was 80% rice and the rest eggplant and tofu, it was tasty tho.

When I first walked in, I thought, «OMG, why did I come here?» It reminded me of El Pollo Loco or Taco Bell. The tables were greasy. I ordered the sample plate. Service at the register was less than desirable. Plates were being prepared and placed on the counter and sat there for a while. They weren’t THAT busy. But then I tasted the tempura and the gates of Heaven opened up… for a minute or two. Having grown up with a family who was in the Japanese restaurant industry, I know my tempura and what makes good tempura. This was good. The beef, although very thinly sliced, was tender and tasty (not beef jerky like other establishments serve). The katsu was thin, but also cooked well; the breading was light and crunchy. Ponzu sauce would have made it even better. The chicken, on the other hand, was overcooked and dried out with not much flavor. It didn’t look like chicken. Someone else mentioned a «dead rat.» *gulp* Is THAT what that was?! (Chicken…the only downfall besides the cleanliness of the place… oh, and the girl at the register.) All in all, I was quite «happi» with my meal. Would I come back? Maybe if I’ve got a hankering for «Tempura 4 Less.»

As soon as we went in the place, I smell pee! The place is not clean. The place and signs look nice in the outside I won’t say the same thing inside. We didn’t eat here coz we cant stand the smell.

I’ve come here maybe 3 times this year because it’s down the street from where I live and very convenient. I am officially disenchanted; the food is always dry, over salted or overcooked and they are stingy with the meat. The servers are verry polite, the restaurant is clean, but it seems expensive for what is and it’s nothing special.

Happi House Teriyaki has been around for years, and I’ve forgotten all about them until I saw them on Groupon. I thought I’d give it a try again.
It was Saturday afternoon around 5pm, and there was still a significant amount of people coming in and out. The menu has quite few choices and it took me a while to decide on what I wanted. I decided on the combination rice plate with chicken, pork beef and steamed rice. I also got edamame.
Edamame was good. Salted well and good texture. That’s a lot I can say about the fast food place, as even in a restaurant the texture is sometimes really off.
The rice bowl was ok. Good sauce, but really nothing special. They gave me a boned in chicken breast which was well marinated. Beef and pork slices were rather tough. This was to go order, so by the time I got home, the fried veggies were soggy since it was put inside the rice place.
Overall, it was ok for what it was… could be better… won’t be looking to go there anytime soon again.

For fast kinda Japanese food, it’s ok. My chicken had good flavor but was really dry. I had a little tiny burnt wing and a thigh that was so small that I still left hungry. The beef flavor rice was good, but the salad was soggy. Some days it’s better than others and that’s why it gets 3 stars, but today was a 2 star day.

It’s «Japanese Fast Food»…if the name had «Express» in it then no one would be complaining about the quality, authenticity, or anything else.
It’s good, cheap, fast food that’s not bad for you if you don’t get tempura fried everything and lay off the sodium. I say give it a shot if you’re in a hurry and want something decent.

They were the only ones open and yet we should’ve really got in our cars and went to Panda Express instead. My friend feels ashamed to be Asian because of this place. There was something wrong with everything we eat. But there music choice is alright and they have good drinks.

If the manager digs at his nose, how are employees going to listen to instructions to was your hands? While I had been a frequent visitor to this Happi House and the one on McKee, NO MORE. Enjoyed conversations with manager. But we had just talked during a prior visit about workers at other establishments not washing hands after handling money. So what does he do during my follow-​up visit? digs at his nose several times and once touches hand sanitizer. And he put my plate together. I tossed the food!
Washing hands is not a joke. People cam get ill when food workers don’t do something as simple as washing hands after handling cash register or personal hygiene. He did neither.
Not telling you not to visit. But make sure they wash hands before handling your food.

Famous chicken salad and great tenders plate

Wow, this place was so much worse than I thought it was going to be!
So, my husband loves the place «I love teriyaki» and was looking for a place close by that was similar. We had been by this place a few times and decided to give it a try — what a mistake!
So we go in and the staff are miserable as hell. Look, I get it, this probably wasn’t your career choice and you’re not thrilled about being there, but at the same time it’s a job, you’re getting paid, so suck it up.
My husband ordered the teriyaki chicken combo bowl and I had the middle soup.
It came out pretty quickly… probably helped by one of two if the microwaves they have hearing this stuff up!!!
My husbands bowl was 90% rice, 6% vegetables and %4 chicken. The chicken apparently wasn’t bad, but for what it was it was totally overpriced.
The dish I had looked odd… oh wait, that’s because they failed to put any meat on it! So I take it back and of course, give the microwave another use while they heat up the meat.
So the bowl comes back, with a side of tempura onion rings in a separate bowl — that’s great but what about this mush in the bowl? Oh right, that’s soggy tempura batter that fell off from the 2 that were in there before… yummy.
The taste was bland, the noodles could have easily been out of a packet from the store and meat was devoid of flavor since it been zapped to inch of its life.
Overall it was all just terrible. Terrible food, terrible service and totally overpriced.
Will not be going back.

I really like the veggie tempura, and my husband is a fan of the chicken rice bowls! The portions are quite large and the price seems more than fair. This is an excellent fast food option, in my opinion. They have a bit of everything.
I always take my orders home, so I have no insight on what it is like to eat there. However, this location is clean and quiet each time I visit and so if it weren’t for the fact that I live so nearby, I doubt that I’d mind eating there.
TLDR; No complaints, decent food! :)

Not a bad option when the mood for Japanese food strikes. The tempura is pretty good, as is the chicken katsu and teriyaki. I was a little less enthralled with the beef teriyaki. Fast and cheap, but since this location is smack in the middle of Japantown, unless I am really pressed for time, I’d rather go to a more authentic restaurant.

Disappointed. I just dont see the point in eating the «fast food» from here if I can just grab something more savory from some place else. Honestly, I didnt like the way they manhandled the food, and scooped pre cooked food into plates. It made me feel like I would have been better off getting something from McDonalds.

Two stars.
Not that I’m expecting authentic Japanese/​Chinese food (although I see that Thai is starting to sneak into the menu now).
1. The cashier is passive-​aggressive. My husband asked for a little dressing for the dry chicken salad and she brings out a plastic container of sesame seed oil. I love sesame seed oil, but yuck. Then on the way out, big smile and «Thank you». Puzzling.
2. Happi House uses WAY TOO MUCH PLASTIC. There has to be a solution. I haven’t seen this much blatant waste since Disneyland. See my photo of the plastic that I brought home. We had 2 soups, 1 chicken salad, 3 shrimp teriyaki (pieces), 1 meal of teriyaki chicken and white rice. I brought all of the plastic home, because I can’t stand throwing one-​use plastics away anymore (this is standard practice w/​me when I can do it). Plastic food containers are used once and then straight to the landfill where (depending on type of plastic and conditions), it can take hundreds of years for them to degrade –not to mention the toxins that are released when they do. There has to be a solution for this that won’t be too much of a pain for anyone if they care about things like this. The plastic from our meal (not including the styrofoam container that got tossed, because I can’t recycle those) filled half of a plastic grocery-​sized bag.
OK that’s my rant on the food containers. The food was as expected. And the inside of the restaurant is actually pretty nice and clean. The women’s restroom was clean as well.
I’d give another ½ star for the landscaping and the architectural style of the building.