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Haruko's Japanese Restaurant
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Private Lot
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- No
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good for:
- Dinner
- Alcohol:
- Beer & Wine Only
4 reviews for Haruko's Japanese Restaurant
Okay, I love Haruko's. I come here all the time when I am visiting home. I usually opt to get the special because it comes with rice, salad and tempura prawns and is usually very nicely priced. Since I hate prawns they allow you to swap the prawns for battered white fish which is delicious. Their teriyaki sauce is very good and I like the teriyaki New York strip but be aware, they cook it well so if you like your meat pink, speak up. Also, their salad alone is worth coming. It is a shredded cabbage mixed with lettuce salad with a wonderful asian-vinaigrette. Also their sushi, tempura, sukiyaki, yakinuki dom buri are very good too. Oh! Go during lunch and get much cheaper priced meals for more food.
The servers have worked there forever and are so great. The owner is a bit cold at first but you realize she is just not the type to act fake to seek your approval, she's great.
Love you Haruko's.
The succulent breaded oysters at Haruko's are to die for! And so is the dipping sauce that comes with them.
Haruko's tonight was one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions after work, especially since JP decreed that there would be no more eating out this week. But I went ahead and did it anyway.
I entered a cute little restaurant illuminated by overhead skylights. Only a couple tables had customers.
So why is at Japanese restaurants on Mercer Island that workers get confused when I say "no sauce on the meat, just on the side"? When I made this request for my chicken teriyaki, the girl taking my take-out order donned a baffled look and told me that it would be too dry without the sauce and that I wouldn't like it. I told her no, no, don't worry, that I was sure it would be fine.
She finally agreed to my request and wrote up my order. Then she had me take a seat at the sushi bar and brought me a pot of hot tea and a brand new Newsweek magazine. That was a nice touch! I liked the tea, though some people might snark that it tastes like a shredded wheat biscuit (well, it does, but that's OK). You'll find the same tea at Mio Sushi Hawthorne in PDX.
My order was ready in about ten minutes. For $11.95 (the 3 oysters were $6.95), I received chicken, white rice, miso soup, cabbage salad, and in one pocket of the takeout box, a couple grapes, a slice of cantaloupe, a slice of honeydew melon and this little thingie of pickled cucumber, delicately topped with a few strands of krab meat. For routine take-out teriyaki, the presentation was quite pleasing!
The chicken, which seems to have been marinated for a lengthy period of time was very tender. But it had an odd non-grilled and uncrispy appearance. Flavor was odd as appearance. The miso soup was fine, however.
The oysters made the experience worth it this evening, but the prices are steep for what you get.
Oh, as I was waiting for my order, the other gal working in Haruko's suddenly launched into tai-chi exercises in the middle of the little dining room. The things you see when casing out restaurants for Yelp reviews!
I have been a customer of Haruko's for 15 years. When my aunts from Japan came to visit me, I took them to Haruko's for lunch and they were about closing. The owner of Haruko's was nice to keep open the restaurant until we finished eating our lunch. My picky Japanese aunts had lunch specials and loved it. My sons love eel Sushi and Tonkatsu Teishoku. I like lunch special because it is delicious, inexpensive and fill my stomach.
GREAT FOOD, TERRIFIC SERVICE. This long-time Island institution is like dining in a private home. The space is intimate and quiet. The waitresses greet you like visiting family. Although the range of the menu is not as large as much bigger Japanese restaurants, there is still good variety on the menu, plus nightly specials. The nightly special is always a great value. During a recent house remodel, we ate here 2-3 times a week for several months. We never grew weary. The only negative of Haruko's is that it isn't open on Sunday or Monday.
