Onigashima

[Daniel]

Perhaps my letter to the restaurant could be used as my review

"I just wanted to tell you what a horrible experience I had at your restaurant last night. We were a party of three with an eight year old child. I had read on Chowhound, egullet, mouthfulsfood.com, yelp, and menupages about your food and restaurant.. I have also heard wonderful things about Menchanko-tei during the years.. This is why we were so shocked by the horrible service, the off food, and the over all lack of cleanliness of the restaurant.. Our first complaint was the huge cockroach that crawled down the wall right next to the eight year old.. I quickly stood up, killed the bug and handed the napkin with the cockroach in to the hostess/manager? She took the napkin without saying anything and we never spoke again.. I don't know if this is common place to have bugs going through the dining room but, we were expecting some sort of reaction. We did not receive an apology, or even a new napkin.. We had to bus our on table. We ordered several different things and during the course of dinner, not one plate was ever cleared.. The sauces for the tempora, the plate of pickled vegetables, we finished a bottle of sake and were never asked if we wanted more, or water glasses refilled.. Finally, when the udon arrived, the table was so cluttered, I had to get a tray and clear the table myself. Meanwhile, my waiter watched me do it and thanked me.. We ordered the broiled yellowtail collar and it was probably the worst piece I have had in a restaurant.. It was dried out, with fatty grisly pieces.. Half of the fish was inedible.. Somethings we had were very enjoyable but, the whole dinner and night was killed not just by a cockroach running around the child's head but, just the indifference of the staff. I dont know if anyone reads these emails but,if I were the owner I would really like to know.. I myself run a few businesses and these types of things keep me up at night..

Thank you,

Daniel"

Edited November 19, 2008 by Daniel (log)

[mjc]

Wow. I can't believe that any place could have service as bad as that. Did you say anything while you were there?

[Daniel]

Really, it was a strange night.. We were kind of hanging out and didnt want to cause problems. If I say something and nothing happens then it just gets me angry.. I was with the little one and didnt want her night to be ruined.. She was happy sitting there drawing and talking. Rather write to the restaurant later.

[Jamon.Iberico]

Wow, that is positively dreadful. I feel bad for you just having read about your piss-poor experience!

Sadly, I can almost guarantee you'll get no response. It's pretty clear that they are far more content ignoring the problems (and the customers) than they are to fix them. It amazes me how places like this exist. How can a restaurant like Gilt, or ADNY close, and a place like this remains? Atrocious.

[sockster]

I really think there should be a total blog for panned restaurants: Listen everybody has differences of opinion about food tastes, quality of service, etc., but to ignore bugs, and not respond...that should have a blog page of it's own.

The best way to let people know about places like your experience last night..is to do just what you did- WRITE ABOUT IT AND LET THE WORLD KNOW the place sucks!!

[raji]

Really, it was a strange night.. We were kind of hanging out and didnt want to cause problems.  If I say something and nothing happens then it just gets me angry.. I was with the little one and didnt want her night to be ruined.. She was happy sitting there drawing and talking. Rather write to the restaurant later.

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Daniel, frankly I'm surprised that you had quite such a bad experience, but more surprised that you were surprised that you did.

Menchanko-tei, Onigashima, and Katsuhama are all owned by the same group.

Katsuhama is unique in that they have a dedicated katsu chef who mixes his oils and runs a proper katsu restaurant. However, if you try the rest of the menu, it's pretty average. Menchanko-tei and onigashima run pretty run-of-the-mill noodle/mini-izakaya menus with the cheapest possible ingredients with the same ingredients because they all use the same supplier.

There are a skant few Japanese suppliers who supply the entire Japanese restaurant arena - your experience won't be that be that different between, say, village yokocho, and onigashima. Which is why I'm such a big proponent of those who ue different suppliers, like Aburiya