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Review: Haiku Hibachi & Sushi

exterior of Haiku HIbachi in Muhlenberg Township

Late in 2015, a new restaurant appeared on the scene that was quite…different.

Located in a former fast food restaurant along the Fifth Street Highway – directly across the street from Jumbo China Buffet – Haiku Hibachi & Sushi brought something completely new to Berks County: drive-thru hibachi.

A drive-thru hibachi is certainly a unique concept, a one-of-a-kind experience in our region, if not beyond.

There is a dining room at Haiku, but it’s the window — a leftover from the Taco Bell that once occupied the space — that sets this apart from Berks County’s many Asian inspired restaurants.

screenshot of an order screen for Haiku HIbachi

Anyone who wants to take advantage of the drive-thru service has two options: order in line or place it  ahead of time and use the window for pick-up. We decided to use the online ordering system to place our order.

It’s a very convenient system. The entire menu is available and customizable. For example, if you order steak, you can choose how you want it prepared. You can choose the type of roll for your sushi. You can ask to hold the onions (though why anyone would do that, I have no idea).

At the end of the process, it asks for your payment method. Haiku doesn’t accept online payments. The options are cash and credit upon pick-up or a phone call for a credit card. This saves the customer money because there’s no commission or online processing fees tacked on to the bill.

Once finished, a message flashed on the screen saying my order would be ready in 15 minutes.

screenshot of an ordering screen for Haiku Hibachi

Then I was given the option to boast on Facebook about placing my order.

I drove from my home base in Wyomissing to the restaurant along the Fifth Street Highway with no problem getting there before the 15 minutes were up.

My biggest problem was finding the entrance to the drive-thru lane. In an inherited design quirk, the drive-thru lane is surrounded by curbs on either side so it’s completely inaccessible from the dine-in parking.

a car waits in the drive-thru line at Haiku HIbachi

I pulled up to the microphone and menu board, told them my name and that I was here to pick up an order and was ushered around to the window where I had just a short wait while the car in front of me, who obviously had not ordered ahead, sat idling while the driver’s food was prepared.

After getting my order, I brought it home and opened up the to-go bags. I have to give it to Haiku because the presentation was outstanding.

black takeout container with chicken, mixed vegetables, carrots and fried rice

Our hibachi dinners were compartmentalized. For mine, my chicken, fried rice and vegetables were all separated. There was nothing to do but dump everything onto one plate and dug in.

It was delicious. This was not fast food, this was a real hibachi-cooked dinner. The sauce for the chicken was thick, sweet and salty. The rice was done perfectly. And the vegetables were a beautiful al dente.

It all worked. I couldn’t believe that this came from a drive-thru window.

black takeout container with stir fry noodles, steak, mixed vegetables and carrots

Julie took full advantage of the order customization for her dinner, choosing steak (and opting for well-done) and an upgrade from rice to noodles.

It was the same delicious sauce, this time with perfectly cooked steak meat. The noodles were nicely done as well for a complete, enjoyable meal.

But Haiku doesn’t stop with hibachi. As the name suggests, there’s also sushi.

plate with a dozen sushi rolls

Neither Julie nor I are willing to take the plunge into raw sushi, but there are plenty of cooked sushi rolls to enjoy from haiku. We ordered two: shrimp tempura rolls and sweet potato rolls (don’t judge me, I’m still very much Pennsylvania Dutch).

Both were fantastic. At Haiku, all of the sushi is rolled to order so all of the flavors are fresh and vibrant. The rice-covered slices were the perfect size for an appetizer or side dish and we had no problem finishing off all 11 of them.

One of the great things about Haiku’s concept is the price. By skipping the tableside hibachi presentation (once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all) and focusing strictly on food, the price comes down dramatically. Our total dinner cost came in at about $25.

By comparison, our meal at Tokyo Hibachi two years ago cost $44.

There’s room in Berks County for both concepts, but for this frugal eater, give me the convenience, value and quality of Haiku Hibachi & Sushi.

BCE Rating
Food: Very Good
Service: Excellent
Ambiance: Fair
Price: Very Reasonable

Haiku Hibachi & Sushi
3215 N. 5th Street Highway
Reading, PA 19605

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tokyo hibachi and bar exterior
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Review: Tokyo Hibachi and Bar

brown colored building with red neon lights that read "Tokyo Hibachi & Bar"

Dinner is a sensory experience.

Taste is at the top of the list, but a truly great dinner encompasses all five senses: taste, sight, smell, touch and sound.

No dining experience can touch all five quite the way a hibachi can.

Wyomissing’s Tokyo Hibachi & Bar offers diners an experience that is just not available at most restaurants. Three circular seating areas with six hibachi grills are set up in what was originally a Denny’s along Woodland Road.

Tokyo Hibachi arrived in 2008, offering not only the tableside cooking show, but a large menu featuring nearly 50 different types of sushi as well as Chinese chicken and beef dinners.

But we were only interested in the hibachi.

Things started off slow at our table as we had to wait for more groups to fill around the table. Five must have been the magic number because after three more people trickled in, the waitress took our orders.

bowl of salad topped with creamy dressing

While we waited for the chef to emerge, our server brought out house salads for everyone. The simple salad consisted of a bowl of lettuce and one cherry tomato topped in the house dressing, a creamy Thousand Island-like sauce with a strong taste of citrus and just the slightest sour note from the vinegar. It was very good, and I was more than happy to have something to hold us over until our chef emerged from the kitchen with a cart full of food and equipment.

Hibachi grilling is part dinner, part show. And the show began with quite a flash.

flame rising from a hibachi grill

Following a display of Ninja-like moves with the spatula, the chef oiled up the hibachi and set it ablaze. The eggs, which were to be chopped and toss with the fried rice, were the first to hit the grill, after a bit of juggling on the spatula. Then came a pile of rice, enough for all five of us at the table.

hibachi grill with sliced onion mounded to look like a volcano with flame coming out the top

After throwing on the vegetables, it was time to play catch. Everyone at the table took turns trying to catch a piece of broccoli that was flipped to us off the grill. I failed (twice), taking one sprout off my chest and another in the face. Julie didn’t fare any better, but two of our tablemates caught there’s in one shot. Being first and second in line, I’m going to say the chef’s accuracy got better as he went along.

Items were dished out one at a time as they were finished so our plates gradually filled, giving me a chance to taste everything hot off the grill.

plate of fried rice

First came the fried rice. It was, hands down, the best fried rice I have ever tried. From the fresh cooked egg to the nicely browned rice, everything was perfect. If I didn’t have that salad to hold me over, the rice would have been gone before anything else hit my plate.

plate of fried rice with two pieces of shrimp

With every hibachi dinner, you get a two-piece “shrimp sampler.” I’m not a big seafood fan, but I gave them a try, and I have to admit that they weren’t bad. And seeing them transformed from the raw, gray blobs into the nice pink pinwheels was pretty impressive.

plate with a stir fry of steak, rice, broccoli and onion

The final pieces to the puzzle were my NY strip steak and mixed vegetables (thankfully no game of catch was involved for these). The steak was nicely caramelized from the oil and sauces that it was cooked in. It was just a little greasy, but the strong flavors made up for it.

plate of shrimp with lo mein noodles

Julie decided to go a different route for her meal, opting for a side of noodles instead of rice for her shrimp. Everything on the plate really absorbed the soy sauce, but somehow the sauce did not overpower it.

two chambered bowl with two dipping sauces, one light brown and one dark brown

Everyone at the table also gets two dipping sauces: mustard and ginger. The mustard was a little more complex that your store-bought brand; it reminded me a little of a Carolina barbecue sauce, but not as sweet. The ginger sauce was my favorite, though. The namesake spice was very strong and I thought it went perfectly with the steak.

With the hibachi dinner, you are paying a premium for the experience, but at $44 for the two of us, it was still a good deal considering the sheer amount of food (and entertainment) we received.

We could have gone to the restaurant and sat at a booth and had the exact same food. But I know it wouldn’t have been the same.

Instead of having plates of food delivered to us, we got to watch our dinner crafted from scratch, feel the heat of the hibachi (and the broccoli hitting my face), hear the sizzle of the grill and smell the aromas of everything that was prepared.

The fact that the food was outstanding made it all the more enjoyable.

BCE Rating
Food: Very Good
Service: Very Good
Ambiance: Very Good
Price: Reasonable

Tokyo Hibachi & Bar
960 Woodland Rd
Wyomissing, PA 19610

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