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| - They say "never say never" but Japango? I say... Never. Ever. Again.
TDLR: I found a cockroach in my salad and they called it a "vegetable bug".
My friends and I visited Japango last night. Our plan was to visit another restaurant but that did not work out, so we settled for Japango last-minute because it was nearby, and it seemed to have pretty good reviews on Yelp. At 4:30 PM, the three of us were the first ones to sit down for dinner. My first thought as I stepped into the restaurant was how small and cramped this place is. The chefs greeted us from the sushi bar as they were preparing for dinner service, then a waitress showed us to a table and gave us hot tea.
Among the three of us, we ordered two chirashi dinners and three rolls: Japango, crunchy spicy salmon, and spider.
We started with two bowls of salad, which was included in the chirashi dinners. It was the same kind of salad that other Japanese restaurants typically serve, but their dressing was more gingery than usual. As I was about to pick up the last bite of my salad with my chopsticks, I noticed something black, and it seemed unusually out of place. I took a closer look at it, and it was something I have never seen in my food before.
EVER.
There, at the bottom of my salad, laid a dead cockroach. Squished. In the corner. It was a little less than 1 cm long.
I was shocked. I showed it to my friend as soon as I realized what it was, and I had to ask her, "Is this for real..?" She could not believe it either.
I really should have taken a picture of the dead cockroach in my salad. However, in that moment, taking a picture did not cross my mind. I have had hair and plastic in my food before, but...a bug? A cockroach? Are you kidding me? I showed one of the waiters my salad bowl and his immediate response was, "Oh my gosh..."
He returned a few minutes later, and informed us that he showed it the chef. Apparently, the chef's response was, "The bug is not from the kitchen, but it is a vegetable bug." I was speechless. (We thought of this as we were walking out the door, but we really should have asked him, "Do you not wash your vegetables then?")
I sort of lost my appetite...
The waiter came back with complimentary seaweed salad, as well as shrimp and vegetable tempura for the table. My friends would not touch the seaweed salad because they felt another bug could easily go unnoticed. I love seaweed salad and it looked safe, so I did have a little bit. As for the tempura, I only had a shrimp tempura and I thought there was way too batter for such a small shrimp.
With regard to the chirashi dinners, the presentation was nice and the rice had a bit of flavour to it. However, other than the lightly torched butterfish, I did not like the sashimi and it is THE most important part of a chirashi dinner. I felt the fish was not that fresh and it was not served at the right temperature. It definitely did not taste chilled. For $21, this was far from my expectation. (Fune is quite a walk from here, but it is well worth it. Their fish is fresh and their chirashi dinner is actually less expensive.)
The Japango roll looked good and tasted decent. It was quite unique. From what I remember, there was red tobiko, lightly torched scallop sashimi, and salmon sashimi on top of an avocado, cucumber, and imitation crabmeat roll, drizzled with spicy mayo and teriyaki sauce. The other two rolls were unimpressive. They were poorly constructed, particularly the crunchy spicy salmon roll, and all I could taste in the crunchy spicy salmon was how spicy it was. The chef did put some effort into the presentation of the spider roll, but that was not enough to make up for small loosely rolled sushi that lacked in taste.
All in all, Japango was a huge disappointment. I am sad to discover that a restaurant with a 4-star rating on Yelp would serve a salad with a cockroach in it and call it a "vegetable bug". I am never coming back here again. I would not give them any stars if I could.
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