Skewers By Morimoto

Disappointed.
After a long flight from Costa Rica, my colleague and I had a layover in LAX on our way to Bay Area. We have great Asian restaurants back home and we’re both craving good Japanese skewers.
We sat for about 15 minutes without anyone stopping by to greet us. The table hadn’t been properly cleaned but had new flatware laid out.
The flatware is plastic and food is served on paper plates.
We both ordered the chicken skewer that was deep fried in Panko with side of veggies and rice.
Both of us got beef skewers brought to the table, the rice was fine, but the vegetables were horrific. Tasted like canned broccoli, onion and carrots. When we finally saw our waitress she was confused but the realized that she did put the ticket for chicken and brought us beef. Took another 8 minutes to fix and chicken was blend of primarily brown meat with average flavor.
Pretty sad to say, white rice was my favorite and I left very disappointed.
Hope it gets improved soon for service and flavor.

Never a bad day when you can have a bowl of ramen at the airport. Was this the best ramen I’ve had? Nowhere close. Is this better than having Subways or Burger King that most airports offer? Hell, yes. The broth was creamy yet full of flavor. Toppings were good. Noodle was excellent. Nice surprise to find a place for ramen that’s in the airport.
It wasn’t cheap and service was ok but like I said, this is expected from being in an airport.

It’s not easy being a captive at airport gates. I simply look for fresh, healthy choices when searching for a meal. At the Delta gate at LAX, and after visiting three restaurants on three separate ocassions, my goal remains elusive. Skewers by Morimoto was the choice today. It has a good selection of bowls and plates of beef, pork, and seafood (as well as sandwiches) but I was served nothing more than lukewarm rice and about 5 small slices of thin pork in a plastic bowl. The philosophy overall at the restaurants here seems to be– we have you captive. We don’t have to try. C’mon LAX– light a fire under these restaurants and demand better. Why can’t you bring some delicious healthy choices to the airport?

I ordered the beef bowl. I remember ordering it about a year ago and then my memory it was very good. The meat in this beef bowl was actually fatty webs of… wait for it… fat.
So I basically paid $ 12 for boil-​in-​bag type rice, and beef fat, and some hot pink pickled ginger.
What a waste of money and poor representation of Iron Chef Morimito.

Dreadful! This place is one step up from what I image prison food to taste like. We ordered the shrimp skewers ($ 14.50) and the cheeseburger ($ 12) – Both awful. To add insult to injury food was served on paper plates and we were given plastic utensils. The atmosphere and price seemed to suggest patrons should expect a much better dining experience. Avoid at all costs.

Not really sure what everyone is so upset about. To be fair, I have only tried one dish from Skewers. I got the spicy pork ramen bowl and it wasn’t the best ramen bowl I’ve ever had, but I actually thought it was pretty good for airport food! I got it to go for my 4 hour plane ride back to Atlanta (haha– yes, I brought a ramen bowl onto a plane). It came in a pretty sturdy to go bowl. There wasn’t much meat in it, but it was still satisfying and hit the spot. If I were flying from LAX again, I would get the ramen bowl again. Definitely better than some other airport options.

NPS = 4
Extremely disappointing and makes you regret having chose a restaurant because of its name rather than because of its Unilocal review.
We asked for the chicken skewer salad. It was 3 – 4 mediocre, sad chicken skewers on a bed of greens and some grape tomatoes. The chicken get and tasted like it was just dunked on a teriyaki-​ish sauce and served with honey mustard. I think I would’ve been better off buying the frozen pre-​made salads at the concession stands lining the terminal.
We also had the pork noodle soup. We asked for it «not spicy.» Now, I don’t know if Cali taste buds differ from Miami taste buds, but that soup definitely had a HELL of a kick. I’d hate to see what the spicy soup tastes like. The noodle soup was okay and had good flavor.
The service wasn’t top notch other, but with Morimoto on the name I expected more overall from the restaurant.

I agree that some are way to harsh on this place. Airport food costs more — get over it.
My server was fast, and the spicy pork bowl tasted pretty damn good as someone else stated. Top it off with cold Rebel IPA, all within viewing of your gate, a good experience.

It’s not easy being an eatery inside an airport, where you likely have to charge a bit more for your food in order to stay in business and have to deal with customers who feel like you’re price gouging.
It’s not easy being an eatery inside LAX, where diners are used to exceptional food in Los Angeles, especially Asian food.
I was in the Delta Terminal (#5) and wanted to eat at Lemonade nearby, but the line was super long and my flight was going to take off in 20 minutes. Since I love Asian food, and have even been to Chef Morimoto’s restaurant in Philadelphia, Skewers seemed like a good choice.
I was actually very pleased with my dish, the «pork salad bowl» which was the American-​friendly way to say authentic cold ramen, which came with a bunch of toppings including pork. I would recommend this place solely based on the dish I got, as it was full of fresh toppings, the ramen was perfectly al dente and chilled well, and the portion was very large albeit a little steep at $ 12 plus tax. The toppings included fresh (not dried) seaweed, scallions, omelette egg slices, pickled ginger, crunchy crisp rice, corn, cucumbers, a sweet teriyaki-​like sauce, spicy chili.
They have a real robata grill for the skewered meats.
I did notice they have less exciting items like a cold chicken curry sandwich for $ 12 or other salads that are already packaged in a grab-​and-​go refrigerated case. It seems that in order to be happy with your experience here you need to order the right thing, and the cold ramen is one of those right things.

So the food is pretty decent for an airport eatery. The prices not so great. You get a small portion of some good food. I guess that is pretty common in LA but still.
I didn’t have to worry too much about service because I was in the portion of the restaurant where you order at a counter and pick up your food when your number is called. The tables however were not clean and it is hard to get in and out if you are pulling a suitcase.
I don’t know that this will be my go to place in this terminal however it may be the better of the places to go here if you aren’t looking for a full on waited sit down meal.

This place is so slow. Also so dirty. I try to take a order, but all the waiter just walk away from me. Also there have sauce on the table and chair. I am not recommend to come here.

Skewers definitely exceeded our expectations!
Don’t expect that Morimoto will actually be cooking your meal here because this is airport food after all and you’re not going to be getting the best ramen in the world. However, with that said, I thought the food was pretty good here. It could’ve been my hunger masking the flavors at 10pm, but it held me over for my red eye flight.
OK, so the ramen was a bit pricey at around $ 12.50 and they don’t give the largest serving in the world, but it satisfied the both of us. I had the Spicy Ramen Pork Noodle Bowl and I felt the portioning was fair for what I paid for (considering this is the airport where everything is priced sky high — no pun intended). To me, it tasted like decent ramen and the flavors were all there. The amount of pork in the order was also good. Honestly, I had no complaints about the quality. It was what it was, ramen. I’m not saying it was the best ramen I had, but it also wasn’t close to the worst. Also, they have seats for customers so you can take as long as you want just chilling here.

Not sure why all the bad reviews but I think I had a pretty good experience here. I was stuck at LAX for a four hour layover and wanted something ethnic but not Mexican food. My friends and I decided that we would try Skewers given the beautiful pictures posted of their menu items as we walked by. I ordered the pork ramen (non-​spicy) for $ 12.50.
Delicious and filling, lots of flavor. Very casual dining, order at the counter, pick up at the counter.
The only reason why I only gave it four stars was because I had to wait really long for my ramen to be ready.
Would definitely come back again and recommend to a friend.

The reviews seem a bit harsh. If you’re not approaching airport food with lowered expectations you really need to travel more. I’ve eaten here once before — it was nothing memorable. This time was a bit better — I had the ramen, which I’drecommend over the other items — the other meals people chose looked meh. The ramen was decent. The broth and pork were both better than I expected, the noodles needed a minute more, and it could have been a touch hotter. Naturally it was overpriced ($ 12) but that’s to be expected. Service was a little slow which can be a problem if you’re in a hurry to catch your flight but if you’re in a hurry you shouldn’t be stopping for a sit down meal anyway. Overall a decent option for a hot meal — wouldn’t snuff my nose at it the next time I happen to be in this terminal again.

Just as we landed my boyfriends phone notified him that our one hour layover had been extended to 4 hours — joy to the world. We decided some day drinking was in order and wandered through the airport to select something. I saw a bunch of sports bar type places that I would have enjoyed but my boyfriend saw Morimoto on the sign and decided it must be good so in we went. We saw a table and snagged it quickly.
The menu sounded okay; after looking it up on Unilocal,some of the portions seemed small so that helped us make our decisions. Skewers and bowls, salads, etc. A waitress came over and brought us napkins and plastic silverware while we were looking. The burgers & sandwiches sounded like the best deal on the menu and we were ready pretty quickly. I mean, we are in an airport. We sat for about 15 minutes before I started to get really antsy. I was watching numerous people get served who came after me and we were receiving no service. After almost 25 minutes I couldn’t take it and I went to a different waitress and asked for service from anyone because we legit seemed to be being ignored. Pissed doesn’t describe where I was at. Our original waitress final came back & acted like nothing had happened. I was ready to stand up & go but to appease the boyfriend, I stayed in my seat & we ordered: cheeseburger for him, chicken sandwich for me, bloody mary & a beer.
My pretty bland bloody mary came fast but as stated, nothing impressive and way too costly. The food came out within minutes which was shocking given the beginning of our service. His burger had american cheese, yakitori sauce, pickled ginger, sesame seeds, lettuce, tomato & onion with a side of fries and looked good. It didn’t come with the side of wasabi ranch like the menu stated. My chicken sandwich was grilled chicken on a french bread of sorts [they called it brioche but yeah] with spicy mayo over chinoa salad with sweet chili, tomatoes & cilantro; also with a side of fries. After throwing on some sriracha, my sandwich was actually rather tasty. I’m not huge on mayo & there was bit much but overall, not a bad sandwich. Fries were crispy. My boyfriends burger was actually an excellent asian twist. The yakitori sauce was so good he actually waved down the waitress to ask for extra for the burger. At this point our waitress smiled & said ‘Yes, you want the wasabi ranch?’ like she already knew she didn’t do her job. Awesome. Nope, your wrong. She did bring our extra sauce which we covered the burger in along with dipping our fries. As soon as our plates were done we got the hell out of there to go have margaritas down the terminal. The food was better than expected but it was way overpriced and service was less then pleasant. We never tip badly; in fact, my boyfriend is adamant about it but this was our one exception. I’m kind of surprised Morimoto has his name on this place.

When you put the Morimoto name on the sign, it better be good. Well, it was underwhelming. Yes, this is the airport and prices are inflated. I couldn’t tell the difference between getting packaged spring mix, adding teriyaki sauce and microwaving chicken pieces from Trader Joe’s.
I had the skewer chicken salad. As an entrée, not enough for me. Almost like a side salad. May pass on this when I am at LAX next time.

The atmosphere and aesthetics of the place suggests a modern Japanese expereince.
But, the food reminds me of Yoshinoya.
I tried the pork bowl, as well as the combination chicken skewers.
Out came small bowls, about the size of those styrofoam bowls at Yoshinoya.
Flavorwise, alright, like Yoshinoya.
Pricewise, much more expensive than Yoshinoya.
Why am I comparing this so much with Yoshinoya? I don’t know, but now I kind of have a craving for salty Japanese fast food.

When did EVERYTHING at LAX become so ghastly expensive?! I’ve flown in and out of LAX more times than I can count and it’s just recently (past couple of years) that I’ve noticed the shift in affordability when it comes to food and drink.
I recently had a 2 hour layover and needed a place to chill before my connection to SFO. Skewers was right by my gate, so I parked at the bar and sipped on a $ 10 small-​ish glass of house white. Food prices were also obscene — $ 15 for a tiny, unappetizing looking plate of grilled chicken and vegetables. Even the presentation was poor. $ 5 for miso soup (!!!) and kids meals are in the $ 8-​$ 9 range.
They also have misleading signs advertising cocktails for much cheaper than they actually are. This is honestly was lured me to the bar, and I was incredibly disappointed to find out the true cost of everything.
The only positive of my experience at Skewers was the friendly bartender.

I kinda feel Carlina’s vibe when she says «there’s no such thing as a good airport restaurant», but Skewers put up a brave fight with their spicy pork ramen.
I eat ramens for breakfast. Literally, figuratively, metaphorically, and any other way that’s possible, and combining that with Australia’s superior ramen stylez and my deep, primal loathing of all things LAX, well, they were always going to find me a tough customer to please. But you know what? I’m happy to report they gave it a damn good shot. Yeah, it was a tiny bowl, and yeah, it was over-​priced, but hey, airport rent is expenno, and the garlic oil and chilli was on point, even if they did use Maggi 2 min-​style noodles in the ramen. Buy hey again, I like those kind noods, so no harm done.
The seating is a bit weird but apart from that, big ups to Skewers, I’ve found a tiny port in the very large shitstorm that is LAX.

This terminal sucks. Not a lot of food options. The Rock and brew was so packed that we came here. We got the grilled calamari. Over priced.
Beer. Over priced.
Cocktail. Over priced.
Server was nice though.
But I was in vacation mode and didn’t mind overpaying because I would rather be drinking here then waiting at the gate doing nothing.