Live, from East Peoria, it’s Saturday Night starring this week’s host, Shogun Japanese Restaurant with special guest stars, Alex, Troy, Shawn and Stacy! Now please welcome this week’s host from East Peoria, Shogun Japanese Restaurant!

Signpost ahead: Shogun Japanese Restaurant! This is quite an impressive looking building. I’ve known about this place for a while, but stayed away because I thought it was a chain restaurant, but it turns out it’s locally-owned and the owner is the same gentleman who owns the Hokkaido Restaurant on University! I love that place, so I thought I’d stop in and sample the food from its sister restaurant, Shogun tonight.

In we go through the front foyer to the hostess stand. Hey, where’s the hostess at?

She’s right here! This is Alex, the cute hostess for the evening. I told her I had planned on sitting at the bar and she pointed me in the right direction...

And here we are at the Shogun Bar, I love it when things work out like this! I found a seat at the end of the bar and there’s Troy the friendly bartender with a giant can of Sapporo beer! The evening is off to a great start and it turns out that Troy is a local musician and we have several friends in common. Time to cue this up!

Just like its sister restaurant, Hokkaido, the menu here is huge and there’s so many selections! I chose a two-course meal and Troy turned my order in. We’ll sample that soon, but now we’ll take a look around in here!

This is Shawn and Stacy who were also seated at the bar enjoying their dinner, until I barged in with the MBIP Camera! I know Shawn from facecrack, but we’ve never met in person, it was great to meet him and Stacy. We had a nice conversation on various topics including New York, London and various Peoria local restaurants. They said they love the food in here and I’m anxious for the Saturday night dinner to happen!

There’s the back of the bar and the half dozen beers on tap. I also took a shot from the opposite end of the bar.

Now we’ll take a little walk and check out the dining room. It’s an impressive area all lit up in a purple hue that would make Prince happy, but he’s dead so that’s not going to happen! On a livelier note, there’s a sushi bar in here where you can eat and there’s the sushi chef behind the bar! Everybody in here is really friendly and welcoming.

There’s also several hibachi stations where you can bring a group and have the chef cook the meal up while you watch. That’s always entertaining and makes for a fun meal.

Meanwhile, back at the bar, the first course has arrived! I got a bowl of hot and sour soup to start off with. I love hot and sour soup and this was so delicious and a great start for dinner!

Like I said earlier, there’s so many choices on the menu, it was kind of mind-boggling to decide on a main course. I went with one of their signature Maki Rolls, the Shogun Roll. I figured since it’s named after the restaurant, it has to be good and it looks so tasty! It’s almost too beautiful to eat, but after admiring it for a few minutes I decided to dig in!

I took a piece and let it bathe is a soy sauce bath for a minute and then I sampled it. You can read more about it in the review, but this was such a tasty Maki Roll! It had a nice mixture of flavors and the consistency was also top-notch! It was such a large roll, I didn’t think I’d be able to finish it, but it was so delicious I ended up scarfing down the entire roll!

And for the last shot of the evening, I present you with a photo of the world’s largest cell phone!

It’s really hard to decide on what to order because the menu here has so many items, everything from sushi to Tempura dinners to Bento Box Meals to Panang Curry to Japanese Steaks and everything in-between!

I decided to start with a bowl of hot and sour soup since that’s my favorite Asian type of soup and it did not disappoint! You can order it mild, medium or hot and I chose the medium style and it had just right amount of spice and heat in the soup. It was loaded with fresh mushrooms, tofu, and crunchy vegetables. Really savory and satisfying. Now on to the main course!

For my main entree, I chose the signature Shogun Maki Roll and it was a monster of a roll! There were ten pieces of sushi and it was topped off with a couple of spicy sauces. The roll itself consisted of rice, Tempura shrimp, cucumber and seared filet mignon. It was loaded with flavor and was such a tasty treat! I’m definitely going back to sample more items from that mighty menu!