restaurant was sooo pretty it had a japanese garden+pool at the entrance, shoji sliding doors for privacy, and very cute dishware!
long story bc a lot happened here…
so when we arrived we were looking for nearby restaurant week deals and decided to walk in. at the front we rang the bell as instructed on tiny sign and no one showed for 4-5min so we walked further into the restaurant and found the manager at the back, she was japanese and we spoke japanese with her so ig she liked us bc she seated us immediately and it felt like she snuck us in (we found out later they don’t do walk-ins). we sit for a while and get no service for water/ordering/etc which is weird but then we overhear the next table getting pissed off.. they’re a white family and sternly telling the cute old japanese woman that they’ve been here for nearly 1.5-2 hrs and haven’t eaten bc the grill isn’t working and it keeps turning off and they wanna leave :0 お婆ちゃん is now apologizing to them and sounding very sad so the white ppl start comforting her lol (fair). but they pay and leave anyway.. then we hear another table near us (young asian couple) tell her that they’ve waited for 2 hrs and have only gotten one course of meat 🥩 and they sound pissed.. this happens again with 2-3 more tables so now we are reevaluating if we should stay or not, we decide to stay bc we can be patient + if they leave then maybe our service will be faster (we can only hope). we walk back to the kitchen and order directly from the old lady who is crying ;-; so we are comforting her and asking her if we can help her lol she says no ofc but then we were like fuck it let’s help her (there is no one else working here except the chef - an old man who only speaks japanese). so now we are bussing tables at this high end yakiniku restaurant and laughing bc it’s fun (reminded me of highschool) and the lady takes a liking to us so she moves us to the nicest private table room and gives us free tartare + drinks + a nice sake bottle to-go 🥹
later お婆ちゃん explains that ICE was the problem all along 😡 the waitresses had visa issues and they were in a meeting room discussing what to do so she had no help for a few hrs..
if u read this far i 100% recommend this restaurant the meat was really good and the people are sweet i think they just had a rough day :3 and FUCK ICE 🧊
