Isobe

Our lunches were 3,000 yen plus tax (that is, 3,240 yen), but although there was a lot of food, the dishes were nothing special. Definitely that was too high a price for what we got in terms of quality. The chawan mushi was blander than usual. The grilled fish was cold (not room temperature, cold!).... The miso soup was made from white miso; it was too sweet for my taste. The tempura was quite greasy. I peeled the coating off my tempura shrimp and ate just the shrimp, leaving the coating uneaten. My Japanese friends, knowing more about Japanese food than I do, agreed with me that the lunch had not been very good. For example, they told me that the yuba (a tofu product) which is said to be famous there, was not very good. We sat at a low table, with a well below the table for our legs. What seemed to be a wooden floor below our feet was actually an electric carpet with a wood-grain pattern. Our feet were comfortably warmed. Next to our table was a tokenoma with clematis in a vase. It wasn't the clematis season, and when we touched the plant material, we realized that the flowers and leaves were fake. It’s unbelievable that a good Japanese restaurant would have fake flowers, especially a restaurant where the lunch is 3,000 yen. Overpriced!

Visited April 2019

We got the Mayori box with tempura for 4120. My GF and I shared it, and usually we get full but this was a very small amount. The food was not fresh. The miso soup was strangely milk like, the tempura bland, and the rest mostly tasteless. The tofu was pretty good, everything else was really bad. Our... worst meal in Japan.

Visited July 2016