This place has heaps of potential – prime spot and popular food but has to make some substantial changes to retain customers.
I’m staying with Kim this week so we thought we would go for a walk up the road to check it out.
The food itself was pretty good. We had prawn gyoza (can’t say it tasted prawn like), teriyaki chicken Gyoza, edamame, yakitori and pork Katsu.
They have a terrible operating system though. You walk in and it is a very narrow area where you sit by the bar – no issue there but you then have to get up again to go to the front of the store to order.
The staff weren’t particularly polite or pleasant. I ordered a lychee tea from their fridge but it turned out they had just sold the last one and offered me to purchase a creaming soda. No thank you. They should have additional stock ready, they only had a few cans left. We settled for water and was told there was a water station at the back.
After sitting down I dodged my way through people to the end where the water station is. I felt incredibly rude as there was someone eating in front of the cups and water jug due to lack of space so I had to interrupt them and ask for the 2 cups and jug.
Of course the jug was empty a I couldn’t get anyone’s attention so I took it back down to where we were (it’s a big open kitchen so there are chefs right in front of you) and advised that it was empty and could they please refill so we could fill our cups.
After a while I noticed that the jug had been returned to the spot at the back. I asked the lady serving food if we could have some water to which she replied ‘down back’ I tried to explain I had just given it back to be refilled and had given up when a chef requested her to fill it up for us. She was not happy and then only half filled our cups.
Half way through the meal I finished my water but we both felt too rude to go down and interrupt the lady in front again.
The other thing I noticed was the egg was still raw and runny in a lot of places on the Katsu.
If they can sort out their procedures it will be a good spot and I do recommend the yakitori!