If you’re thinking about dining at Shogun Restaurant in Franklin (Brentwood), TN, please read this review first. We recently went to take advantage of their Early Bird savings, but even this frugal girl would much rather have paid full price elsewhere in exchange for better food and a more comfortable experience.

Let me also preface this Shogun review by saying that I was not asked to eat there nor was I asked to write this review. I was purely going to the Shogun Restaurant because the only thing I wanted for my recent birthday was to have a Japanese dinner and learned about their special pricing from 4:30-6:30pm.

Unfortunately, it was a bit of a joke from the beginning. I learned it was a Hibachi grill, but we don’t necessarily like to eat Hibachi exclusively. So when I was told you could order from their regular menu from the Hibachi side too, we sat there so the kids could enjoy the show.

As we sat down, however, we opened the menu to find there were ONLY Hibachi offerings (as well as Sushi). The Hibachi chicken was only $11.95 for dinner, so we just decided to go with it anyway.

When the young waitress arrived, she seemed like she just had been working out and was called in to cover a shift, and was a little bitter about it. There was no smile, her hair was messily pulled back and she wore a very low cut tank top with a fleece jacket over it, with a logo from another establishment! Not to mention, she had a young man shadowing her (I’m guessing, because she never introduced him) who was much more professionally dressed, yet she treated him like a dog. She impolitely corrected him in front of us and it made all of us at the table feel awkward.

On to the food: the soup was literally stone cold, the portions varied greatly from person to person and ultimately we were told they had certain things, waited for them, and then finally were told they didn’t actually carry those items, thus making it a very disjointed meal where it seemed like one of us was always waiting on the other to eat because of the inefficient service.

Overall, the food itself was fair – nothing to throw away, but certainly not something I would be willing to overlook the poor service over in order to return to eat. And certainly not the meal I was hoping to have to celebrate my birthday.

They did sing a lovely traditional Japanese song and bring out some (frozen) cheesecake in honor of my big day, but again, not worth a return trip.

I wanted to share this with you as a perfect case in point: sometimes it isn’t worth “saving” money at a restaurant (or anywhere else for that matter!) if you’re not actually going to enjoy your overall experience. Of course, if you can find a coupon or discount for a place you LOVE, then by all means go for it!

So that being said, does anyone have a Japanese restaurant in Nashville that you actually love?