I don't want to believe it and I don't want to write it, but Sake Bar Kushi is losing it. I hope they notice and make a change (for the better) because otherwise the trend is undeniable. It is really sad because I loved them before but now anything good remaining is from their early days. Other than those Kushi (meaning skewered items in Japanese) is rolling downhill.
The good (from the early days and still today):
tried hard to create an attractive atmosphere
nice decorations and dark syle
comfortable booths
usually offer free food which is a nice and caring touch
A variety of sake
cool music but not too loud so you can speak and hear
THE SERVICE.. welcome you, open the door, walk out with you, bow, excuse themselves when arriving and shout in cool Japanese style
lots of kushi on the menu
The bad (getting worse with every visit) now:
Food is getting strange. I am sure they have changed chefs. Once they had very good Japanese food. Now they have fusion weird tastes instead. They now have oden. It arrived at the table boiling!! What? oden is boiling?? And it had mushrooms and seaweed inside!? And they forgot to peel the radish's skin! It was cooked with the skin on! None of these are oden style.
The skewers which were so delicious are now always burnt and have no taste. Er, where is the taste and could you not char everything? Also, we don't want Korean style hot sauce on everything please stop. Isn't this a Japanese restaurant?
Fish with ketchup. Seriously salmon and ketchup?
Chicken karaage has lost its taste and really shrunk in size. Two years ago they had great juicy karaage with taste. Now? zero taste.
Generally ask your chef to go back to Japanese style or bring back the original days' chefs who knew Japanese izakaya menu. If I want fusion Korean hot sauce stuff I know where to go for that.
As you see the best parts of Kushi are leftover traditions from their opening days. Nowadays things are going downhill. I think they have replaced their Japanese front and kitchen staff with non-Japanese and they are letting the whole things go.