Restaurant Review: Hiroshi?s Pub in Beachwood, Ohio

It seems like I am doing a lot of restaurant reviews recently… no worries, there are more recipes to come and a ton more stuff about my burgeoning culinary education if anybody is interested in either of those areas. So about a week ago a good friend of mine suggested that we hit the Dim & Den Sum food truck which was about ten minutes from our house that day. I was stoked to catch some grub flying out the window of their food truck and even offered to drive. When we got there, the line was huge. Even though both of us are relatively chubby and certainly hungry, neither of us wanted to wait in that kind of line.

So, we headed around the corner to the newly established Hiroshi’s Pub. I’ve been hearing all kinds of really strange information about this place from friends and through the Cleveland grapevine. People were telling me that they have steak in their sushi or sushi on the same plate as a burger… the closest and most accurate report that came to me was that the menu at Hiroshi’s has a little bit of everything on it. All the reports coming in weren’t glowing, but weren’t bad either. Before we get into the good and the bad, let’s talk about the joint itself.

This place is hard to find if you don’t know where to look for it. It’s close to Moxie, but doesn’t have a sign that can be seen from the road. Best of luck if you are new to the area. We both knew where to find the restaurant since it was the former site of the doomed Sumo. Man, if you ever ate at Sumo you know just how bad sushi can be. The interior of the restaurant is really kinda all over the place. Bright colors, massive pictures of music icons like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin splash the walls. The sushi bar itself has multicolored lights which slightly resemble a bad discothèque. The dudes making the sushi have t-shirts on that have Hiroshi’s Pub sprawled across their chests. To be honest, I like the look of the sushi chefs at Pacific East or Wasabi much better- they fit the part of a high end sushi joint. I’ve seen better dressed sushi chefs in Heinens grocery store.

Eclectic interior design and an almost empty bar at noon. Photo by Scott Groth

To say that Hiroshi’s is a sushi joint is completely inaccurate. Yes, they have two guys making sushi, but there is so much more going on here. They have BBQ, wings, a full deli selection, burgers, pasta dishes, ceviche, hot dogs, hamburgers, panini sandwiches, a smattering of comfort food and sushi. Wow, that’s one heck of a list. When you look at the menu, which you have to really look at because of all the choices, the feeling is of being slightly overwhelmed. It’s like they thought they could do just about anything and everything. The best restaurants have identified those things that they do extremely well. The owners of Hiroshi’s Pub never sat down and said “Hey, what should we focus on and really deliver to our customers?” Instead, you have to choose between meatloaf or the Godzilla Futomaki. It’s the craziest damn thing I have ever seen in a restaurant.

What's with the cheap lights and t-shirts on the sushi chefs? Photo by Scott Groth

One of my immediate concerns when I was reviewing the menu was with freshness. With so many items and all of them being so wildly divergent from one another, how do they keep all their food fresh without massive loss to spoilage. Perhaps they have so many customers ordering all over the menu and it just works out. The problem is that we were there from 12:15 to 1:15 which covers the two lunch rush time slots in the Beachwood area and the restaurant was more than half empty. The bar had two other people sitting at it and the sushi bar was empty. Typically, if you try to get to a place at anytime between 12 and 1 in Beachwood you’re going to have a wait to get in. PF Changs is just around the corner from Hiroshi’s Pub- try getting a table there at 12:15. Good luck. This place, I’d say you’re safe walking in just about whenever.

After perusing the menu while waiting for quite some time for the bartender to show up, I landed on the burger to end all burgers. This is a pub after all and just like with the Burntwood Tavern, I think that the best judge of pub or tavern food is their burger. They have a great burger selection at Hiroshi’s and I landed on the Bacon Egg & Cheeseburger. Here’s the description “We take Twin 5 oz. Angus beef patties then add Maple Cured Bacon, double up the American cheese and to it w/ a fried egg over easy.” Sounds awesome- right? Michael Symon has a similar burger called the Lola Burger over at B-Spot which I just had about a week earlier. I love egg on a burger. Cheese too. Bacon- get outta town. They should have called this heaven on a plate. Read on.

The burger looks awesome, massive and juicy. Only massive applies here! Photo by Scott Groth.

This burger looked incredible when it was delivered. It was huge with two massive patties and all the trimmings. They really delivered on my expectations. When I put the bun on the top, the egg burst all over the scene. Absolutely awesome looking. With much expectation, I took my first bite. Oh man… what an… absolute letdown. Instead of hearing Flight of the Valkyries in my head and triumphantly declaring that I had indeed ordered an eating experience, I looked at my burger in defeat. The patties they use are frozen, not fresh made. These massive disks of what might be beef had so much commercial binder in them that it was truly akin to eating wet cardboard. No amount of cheese, bacon or egg can mask that cheap burger flavor. It’s kinda funny because Hiroshi’s tagline on their website says “Casual dining with seriously good food!” I’d call it casual dining with really not good food. If they claim that these burgers are fresh made in house, they really need to find someone to make them who knows what they are doing. This burger is terrible. Along with the joke of a burger I just ate at Burntwood Tavern in Chagrin Falls, the burger at Hiroshi’s Pub falls in my bottom 5 all time worst burgers in Cleveland.

My friend ordered the vegetarian sandwich with a side of cole slaw. He’s got an excellent palate (www.drunkandfull.com) and said that the slaw had way too much mayo in it. The veggie sandwich was just okay. He told me that he likes the place because the whole family can find something on the menu that they like. I wouldn’t doubt that at all with a menu that reaches from here to China. What I would doubt if any of it is worth driving to Hiroshi’s Pub to eat.

To make matters worse from lunch, the fries were not good either. They tasted like old, dirty oil. Then it got even worse. As I was walking out of the restaurant talking with my friend about just what a bust our lunch was, I started to get the aftertaste of old fish in the old oil. If you’ve ever had this horrendous aftertaste, you know what I mean. Great… the bad lunch that keeps on giving. I had to stop for some gum to get the flavor out of my mouth. Just terrible.

We didn’t get any of the sushi here simply because the price point on the Futomaki at $13 per roll had better be pretty good stuff. Based on what we ate and the dressed down, overly casual sushi chefs, I’ll spend my money elsewhere. There are a lot of people I know in Cleveland that eat sushi on a regular basis in this area and none of them have told me that I just have to get over to Hiroshi’s Pub to try it out. Never a good sign that nobody has told me to get over there. The funny thing is that one of their $13 rolls is the Japanese Vegan which has mushrooms, spinach, cucumber, daikon radish, roasted red peppers and is wrapped in soy paper and sticky rice. What in there is worth anywhere near $13 bucks? This place is even confused on its sushi menu.

Here’s my overall recommendation. For bar food with burgers, go to B-Spot about 2 minutes away. For sushi, go to Pacific East, about 2 minutes away. For comfort food, head to Yours Truly which is about a minute away. For deli sandwiches, hit Davis Bakery which is about 3 minutes away. To eat some great salads or burgers or fish, hit Moxie which is a minute walk away from Hiroshi’s. If you really want to sit in a fake Asian inspired restaurant, hit PF Changs about a minute drive from here. In my opinion, Hiroshi’s Pub has too much selection without enough focus.