I went to Shono's with a friend the first time and had the chicken steak rice bowl. It was delicious. My goal after that was to get my husband in to try it. I finally managed to get him there and he declared that he will return often. The restaurant is clean and the service is excellent. I highly recommend trying Shono's. Try the bowls for sure but the plates also looked wonderful.
Start off lunch with the salad with ginger dressing. The shrimp entree with sautéed vegetables and fried rice is always excellent. The shrimp sauce used for dipping is like crack. One cannot get enough of it. I always enjoy a meal at Shono's. The food is great and the employees are always helpful.
This place is amazing. I usually get the shrimp and it is always amazing. I love their fried rice and vegetables that come with the meal. It's different than the typical Japanese restaurants usually take. The flavor here is more rich and authentic.
I work for The Takeout Birmingham and I deliver food from this restaurant often. Today, I decided to stop in and have lunch. I was blown away by the prices and how delicious the food is. I will for sure be back to make this a usual stop for my lunch! A+
Randomly stumbled upon this place..best egg roll I've ever had and the food was awesome..will be back
Love this place!! Can be quite addicting. Try to go there at least once a week. Get a huge plate of food! And, at a much better price than at other Japanese steakhouses since you're not paying for the show. (And, don't expect sushi just because this is a Japanese restaurant. Don't knock them for not having it. They never said they did.) Menu is very simple, but, delicious! I'm a huge fan of their "white" sauce. I usually douse the entire plate in this sauce, mix all and eat until it's gone. Sometimes I try to save half for later, but, if go with a group of people & talking, it all seems to disappear before we realize quite how much we've eaten.
Quite good. Good food at a very good price. The portions were perfect. Service was above average. Impressed three people can pull this off so well.
I drive 35 minutes just to eat here.. Chef Eddie and Mrs. Flora are awesome! If you think the food will be good, just wait until you try it!! Oh my! The atmosphere is great, the wait staff is excellent and the food. Ohhhh the food! You HAVE to try it! Oh and let me tell you, the price us excellent too!!
We love coming here. Chef Eddie and his wife know us well. All I can say is, once you try it, you will love it.
LOVE IT!!!. We love this restaurant! My kid's favorite restaurant in town....hands down! The food is delicious and reasonably priced! We love the dumplings too!! The people who manage and run the restaurant are extremely nice, and efficient. GO, GO, GO to this restaurant!!
This place serves high quality Japanese steakhouse food without all the glitz and glamour. Therefore, you are paying the extra price for all the extra decor.
Very good, it is kind of Nuevo Japanese food. Very reasonable & ESP clean rest. Have had just about everything on the menu....the best is the dumplings on the appatizer menu, but my better half insists on the miso
Love this place. I could eat here every day and never grow tired of it.
You must try: Egg rolls, Gyoza's, Eddie Special with shrimp sauce and their salad with the ginger dressing. It is delicious!
Chef Eddie is so nice, too, I love talking to him and his wife.
Best Japanese Restaurant around. I eat as often as I can at Shonos (which means Farmer In The Morning in Japanese) - The wait staff (usually Chef Eddie's wife, Flora) is very attentive and friendly. The food is served up fresh and prepared quickly. The salad with ginger dressing is very good. I highly recommend trying the gyozas (dumplings) and eggrolls and the Eddie Special. I can't get enough of that white sauce in the bottle. That stuff is incredible.
Awesome Food. Clean place, food is very tasty and delicious. Owner Eddie and his wife are very attentive and super nice. Service is perfect. Would eat there more if my wife wasn't such a great cook. My son and I eat there whenever we can. I get cut up rib eye and fried rice, he always gets steak and shrimp also with fried rice.
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Amelia Earhart, D. B. Cooper, and my Waitress. I had lunch at Shono's last year with a group from work. My memory of that experience is a varied menu with authentic Japanese dishes (as opposed to Americanized Japanese dishes) but it's been so long that I can't be certain. I had lunch at Shono's today and the menu wasn't what I thought i remembered. Maybe the dinner menu is different? Lunch fare was traditional Japanese fare minus the song and dance you get at tepanyaki restaurants. My waitiress appeared before I was finished sitting down. She took my drink order and when she brought my soda asked if I was ready to order. I got the Eddie Special, chicken and beef in a spicy sauce with fried rice (steamed is another option), veggies and a salad with ginger dressing.
The salad was chopped iceberg lettuce. That's it. Not so much as a slivered carrot to give it a little color. The dressing was pretty good, if a little strong. The food came out before I'd finished the salad. My waitiress set down the plate and the check and I never saw her again. No "how is everything" no refills on the drink, she just vanished into the ether. She may have gone home.
Everyone raves about the food at Shono's so I can only assume I was here on an off day. Both the chicken and the beef tasted of nothing but the spicy sauce, which wasn't all that spicy. I tried to detect some difference in taste between the chicken and the beef but they could have come from the same animal for all I could tell. They were very dry. I suspect they were smushed several times by the spatula while they were on the grill. Every last drop of moisture was pressed out of them before the spicy sauce was applied. (There's a photo of Eddie's Special on the Shono's page on Urban Spoon. My lunch looked nothing like that photo, again leading me to believe I was here on an off day.)
The rice was rice. A few months ago a friend turned me on to squirting an unnamed sauce that accompanies every entree served at Japanese restaurants onto fried rice. I know what it is but have to pretend I don't or else I'll stop eating it. It does make the rice taste better IMO. I'm not sure if that's what it's intended for, or if it is only to be used for dipping the meat in. The veggies were very good. Except for the mushrooms I ate them all.
I'm willing to give them another try based soley on the number of positive reviews on Urban Spoon. I may try dinner next time. And I'm for sure going to sneak a GPS tracking device onto my waitress when she isn't looking.
Great Lunch Spot!. If you are like me, you love Hibachi style food but could do without the loud show and crowded tables with kids running around. That is what makes Shonos one of my favorite lunch spots in Hoover. The food is just what you would expect from a Japanese hibachi restaurant but the price is much lower and the environment is quiet and peaceful. My only wish is that they had a small sushi menu.
Good. Shonos is always good. My family and I like the Eddie's Special and Teriyaki Chicken. We particularly like that it is fresh and uses no MSG, which allows us to lessen our sodium intake.
Light and Fresh. I had the Eddie speacial with fried rice. This was the best textured and flavored fried rice I have ever had. It was not hard as rock or wieghed down with heavy oils. I love spicy foods and even though I was tempted to add Sriracha sauce to my entree to make it hotter...I couldn't do it. The flavors were great as is. I plan to eat at Shonos at least twice a week. Hats of to the chef.
I love.love.love Shonos!!! Way better then any other Japanese place in town & much cheaper!!
The best Japanese food! My husband and I eat there at least one a week. It is so fresh and reasonably priced. You get the great food without all the traditional "hoopla" at most Japanese places. YUM!!!!!
Consistently superb. This small restaurant in a strip mall with some vacancies serves fresh Japanese food without the Teppanyaki show.
We predictably order the Eddie's Special, which is grilled chicken and beef with choice of fried or steamed rice and a Japanese salad. The chef/owner does not begin cooking until the order is placed. Each portion of the meal is consistently excellent, with no need for soy sauce. However, a bottle of house white sauce enhances both the rice and meat immeasurably. Apart from mayonnaise, we are not sure what is in the sauce, but it makes the already flavorful meat and rice positively unique.
Service is speedy. and friendly
In short, whenever I am in the mood for freshly cooked, nutritious food, I head to Shonos. I've never been anything less than completely satisfied.
My #1. I have eaten at Shonos more than 50 times and some believe close to 100 times. Do I have to say more? The vegetable fry is fresh, crisp, tasty, the ginger dressing flavorful, Eddy a great guy, the wait stuff attentive and the price is right. Simple and simply good. I wish Eddy would offer tofu as a choice but he claims that I am the only one asking for it. *sigh*
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Great food!! :). With a good excuse that I have been living by myself since 15 yrs old in the middle of nowhere town in Missouri as a dorm chum highschooler, I have been very fortunate to have a luxury of eating out a lot. When I moved here for college, my dorm was right next to Al's deli (24hrs/day) and I ate their cheese burgers everyday for breakfast for good 5 months. When I lived in five points area for two years as an undergraduate, I ate lunch every weekday at the Surin West, every weekend at the Jim & Nicks, and friday night $1 sushi at the Sakura (now, SPR). And in past 2 years while I have been working on my Master's, I have been frequently visiting the original pancake house, Taj India (one of my favorites), five guys (one of my favorites, again), Newk's, Jason's deli, Mr.Chen's, Taziki, Rojo, etc. Not to mention, nicer restaurants like Chez FonFon, PF Chang, Brio Tuscan, Cheesecake factory, Veranda on Highland (fun sunday brunch!), and melting pot (this place became very special to me).
Thus, you can obviously see that I eat out a lot!
And then, I found out about this place. Not from a casual conversation. I needed extra money to save to move out of the state when I graduate and they were looking for a person to hire. So, I work here for couple of days a week. Now, I didn't have to mention the fact that I work here for those that are argumentative. But I still did. Because I stand by their food as the part-time waitress and an avid food lover. Even on days that I do not work, I call Flora (the lady owner) in their business times three days a week for to-go orders. Because I believe it's the combination of their ginger sauce, and light, but full-flavored teriyaki sauce and the white sauce (and sometimes red hot sauce) that makes their food so freaking good!! And as the server, I can tell you that there are no gimmicks. They freshly cut cabbage and carrots for the salad, and freshly cut all vegetables for the dish and the sauces! Other than the red hot sauce and the duck sauce for the egg roll, everything gets made freshly with no manufacturers.
And the price very affordable, too! So, come stop by and because I only work two days, chances are, I probably won't get your tips :). I honestly believe that Shonos have the best teriyaki entrees in Birmingham area!
OMG...the white sauce.. The chicken bowl and shrimp bowl are a-mazing. I could literally drink the white sauce. Mr Shono says there are 13 different things in the sauce. DEE LICIOUS!!!!!
Candace Kelly Sargent
+4.5
Fantastic food! Healthy and always fresh, the portions are plentiful and far tastier than the expensive hibachi places around. I have had everything on the menu and it is all delicious! Highly recommended, a hidden gem in Hoover.
Great Food!. I love this place. It is cheap and really really good! I have eaten here SO many times and it is where I eat every time I am in Hoover. The shrimp bowl is my favorite thing on the menu and the fried dumplings and egg rolls are amazing too! I have never had a bad experience at this restaurant and I am always telling people to eat there!
When you do go into Shonos, be sure to chat it up with Chef Eddie. He is a funny man and has 27 years of experience in the business. He has lived all over, cooking up these delicious and affordable meals.
Steak bowl was glorious! Nice quick lunch, very filling and great flavor for such a simple dish. Also the sweet tea is crazy good!
Mom and pop's restaurant. The food was good. Portion is good. A little pricey but great overall. I got the Eddie's Special. It came with chicken & beef stir fried with some onions, cabbage. The sauce is teriyaki based and delicious. Side salad with ginger based dressing.
Great spot for a quick hibachi meal without the show! Eddie's Special is my favorite. Comes with a ginger salad.
Little hole in the wall restaurant with good food, quick service and friendly staff. Got the chicken teriyaki and fried rice.
Delicious!! Tried this place based on the ratings and was not dissappointed! Entrées were flavored perfectly, not too salty, not too bland... the portions were plenty. Hibachi styled food but served at your table versus watching the chef cook at your group table. We enjoyed the three meat combination dinner.. Steak, Chicken and Shrimp for one, and Steak, Shrimp and Scallops for the other... You get what you pay for, I'll definitely return when I'm back in Birmingham!
Shonos is the best kept secret in the Hoover area! Best Japanese food in town. They have been around for a long time and have exceptional food and service! They still actually sanitize tables after people eat there too which is impressive to me!
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