| rev:text
| - I remember coming here since about 2008, 2009? I think at the time, it was a great alternative for the numerous Japanese restaurants out there. It was simple, a la carte and nothing more. I think this restaurant hadn't aged well.
One of the most interesting things that brought me to write something about this place was that I've always thought it was good enough you don't have to say too much, people still flocked over here. Look at the number of check-ins, reviews and tips, and you can see: this place is quite good. So, why have I suddenly felt the urge to start writing?
Simple, this place has changed now. Meals here always were simple and quick, with a Yakult yogurt drink. Times have definitely changed, I know everything is more expensive, but those are a thing of the past.
But what has made things a lot worse nowadays is that the food quality has drastically decreased. The speed at which food is being delivered is rather slow. There's a lot of fuss and bustling about in the kitchen, and behind the sushi bar, but it seems like food isn't coming out that quickly. In the past there were two chefs working behind the sushi bar, now it's down to the work of one person. I'm guessing that is the reason they've been giving out the salmon's head out on the house to keep people from getting too hungry. While we were there, two other people had ordered takeout, and they've been around for quite a while. Our order didn't get out much quicker based on that progression.
So, now that the food we ordered finally got to us, we weren't too thrilled though, and the wait was not justified at all. For lunch, our order was 3 lunch specials, 1 each of L1, L2, and L3. The sushi rice was unfortunately dry, the seaweed (sorry, the nori) was soggy, there was no pickled ginger, and the pieces were just tiny. Pair that with some dry rice, well, it wasn't that great.
Then came the question of the food that came out with the rest of our lunch. L2 and L3 orders were chicken teriyaki. The food in general was cold. Considering a restaurant where they really cranked the heat on a day that was cold for April (7 feeling like 3), I was surprised the chicken teriyaki was dry and cold, the fried tofu was soggy as well cold. The sweet sauce on the tofu that caused the sogginess? That was cold too. The vegetables that came with the chicken teriyaki wasn't cooked well enough, so a few of the onions were a bit on the raw end. The rice was also dry here, and cold. We heard a few beeps of the microwave, so I'm not sure if the chicken teriyaki was heated that way, although I won't be surprised if it did. What we can tell though, was that the dryness of the rice is likely a result of being pre-scooped and just left sitting there for a while.
Ok, the food wasn't stellar, but why only 1 star? The pass, i.e..the window where food comes from the kitchen to the dining room, is visible to many diners. A few diners (including one from my party) noticed someone taste-testing the soup for the ramen, and subsequently putting the same used spoon into the ramen bowl. Whoops. Something else that a member of my party pointed out was that they weren't entirely careful about the way they handled food. It's these sort of things that causes you to lose your ease of eating out. I know no kitchen is perfect, and you're bound to run into a lot of restaurants where the food handlers aren't perfect, but the part where we are able to see the faults being made is much more traumatizing.
I don't know what happened in the short period of time between everyone's mid-level reviews in January of this year, and today, but things have gone down a lot. Yes, there's that one unusual 4 star review from April this year, but it seems to be trending downwards. I used to think this place was consistent enough and didn't need me to write about it to boost its attending numbers, but it seems like the team working the food has lost the touch the previous teams had. Part of me wants to come back and give them a second chance because of how great they always had been in the past. However, after what I witnessed today, I'm inclined not to come back.
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