Clubhouse Japanese Restaurant

We were craving Japanese food so we thought it was about time we tried the restaurants in our new hood.

First we stopped at Toko, because Google said it was a Japanese Restaurant and it was heavily advertising their Asahi. After we walked in, I noticed the decor seemed more Chinese than Japanese. Lo and behold we looked at the menu, and saw wonton, chow mein, and a bunch of Chinese dishes. We left.

Then we thought we should try the yakitori place down the road because we walked by it once. The host greeted us, asked us how many (2), and said wait a moment. He proceeds to walk around the restaurant and then grab two menus and set them on a table. Then he walks around the restaurant some more, serves a couple dishes, and tells us to wait 5 more minutes. It struck me as odd until B heard the host say something about happy hour ending soon to a couple patrons. So basically, he didn't want to seat us until 6pm, when regular dinner begins. Why didn't he just say so? Or just seat us and wait until 6pm to take our order? We left.

Finally we thought maybe we should try the Clubhouse since we drive by it all the time and it looks pretty cool from the outside. We walked in, and it strikes me as one of those restaurants on Restaurant Impossible that used to be good and then everyone just gave up trying to make it better.

We started with the Assorted Sashimi. We didn't expect it to be good, but we didn't think it could be this bad either. The knife cuts were noticeably sloppy, the tuna was still frozen, and the salmon had no taste at all. 

The Sweet Jane vegetable tempera roll was better than the sashimi but not that great. The rice was overcooked and soggy, the seaweed was tough, and he yam tempera was undercooked and had a bit of crunch to it still.

Next we had the Chicken Yaki Soba. It tastes like ketchup. B said he's had bad food and he keeps eating it, very rare does he not want to eat something and this was the dish.

The Squid okonomiyaki came smelling like it was burnt-and not because of the smoky fish flakes on top. It tasted a little burnt too, and soggy, and generally had very little texture. We found four squid rings in total. If the chef would only chop them up and divide it evenly throughout the pancake, it would have more texture and we wouldn't notice how little squid there is.

The only redeeming factor was that the owner came to pick up the dishes and saw that we didn't finish the okonomiyaki and asked if we didn't like it. We told her it was bad and she offered to refund us. We didn't want to be those customers who complain to get free stuff, because then our complaints won't be taken seriously. She thanked us for our feedback so we decided to tell her how bad EVERYTHING was. She seems to take it all seriously so I appreciated that. We probably won't return, but I appreciate the effort.