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| - There are some things to like here, but so far they have a lot of kinks to work out before they can really turn this into the restaurant that I think they are trying to be.
First the good.
The steam buns. The bun was fluffy and had the slight chewiness that I really like. I had the wagyu strip bun, and would definitely order this again.
Udon bowl. The broth was delicate, complemented the udon noodles very well. The wagyu beef that came with my order seemed as though I was accidentally given gristle. I ended up eating around the fatty/rubbery part and what meat I was able to eat was tender and rich in the beef flavor I expected.
Now for the not-so-good. I don't want to call it bad, because it wasn't horrible, but they were small annoyances.
Atmosphere. It is LOUD. I mean REALLY loud for the space. The acoustics are so bad that you can literally hear the conversation from 2 tables over as if they were sitting at your table. There is also a lack of anything on the walls. I don't know if it is because they have only been open for a few weeks, but the design of the interior was so bland you could mistake that you were sitting in an office cafeteria. There is a lack of the space being "vibrant" like some of the other well known "Asian Fusion" style restaurants in Cleveland - like Voodoo Tuna and Noodlecat.
Service. While our server was polite and did his best to answer any questions we may have had, it was starting to become annoying that he would check in on us every few minutes. It was so much so that he even apologized, and said that the management requires the wait staff to do it.
Price. This will be a huge issue in regards to getting repeat customers. For the occasional diner it may not be a deal breaker, but restaurants can only survive on establishing a healthy following of repeat customers. Being two doors down from Barrio may also hurt their business, because well...it's Barrio.
So, overall, there is a lot of promise here, but they are still learning how to crawl when they should have just hit the ground running.
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